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Kiswahili Kiddies Song Book Launched in Zanzibar

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 23 May 2011   |   

It was all merry as pupils of Dunga Primary school and Shining Star Junior Academy, from Zanzibar, graced the launching of a CD and a Kiswahili children song book called ‘Ukuti Ukuti,’ at the Norwegian ambassador’s residence on Tuesday.

the launching event because she now has prospects of learning new vocabularies of her favourite songs through the translations in the book .The book’s title is an all time kids’ favourite play-song called Ukuti. The song, believed to have originated from the coast, has over the years won the children’s liking throughout the country.
The book is a land mark in children literature in the country, as it contains several play songs written in Kiswahili with English translations.

The book contains a collection of 58 traditional Kiswahili children’s songs, transcribed into music notation, beautifully illustrated with paintings by children from Zanzibar, and accompanied by texts in Kiswahili and English as well as descriptions of activities for parents and teachers.
According to some of the children who featured in the illustrations, it was a wonderful experience to be part of the book.

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Beautiful Creatures Empire Hits the Stage

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 28 Mar 2011   |   

Imvubu The Happiest Hippo by Ed Jordan, Alan Glass and Sandy Lightley (Beautiful Creatures), R105. ISBN: 9780620485050 – The empire keeps expanding, as Ed Jordan and Alan Glass take the creatures created to populate the songs on their Beautiful Creatures albums into a se- cond book (via a stage musical).

Imvubu is a sweet enough little tale, about a young hippo who likes to dance, but it can’t make up its mind whether it wants to educate – telling young readers that hippos are dangerous, or about their eating habits – or entertaining (the dancing scenes could potentially inspire a child to follow the actions).

Ultimately, it fails to really integrate these two angles.

Sandy Lightley’s illustrations are cheerful, but the best new children’s books offer more.

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Beautiful Creatures Keep Kids Rocking

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 10 Aug 2010   |   

I was very thrilled when I came across this music review of Beautiful Creatures because I could immediatly relate to the excitment and passion. Beautiful creatures is a huge hit in my house, the kids love every song, even I find them catchy and fun. The good news is that there are about three more CD’s that have since come out. Read more here.

With all these “rhyme time” and “music” classes available for our toddlers, parents often forget that they can enjoy music together at home. I have sought out nice music for us to listen to together from the beginning and am always keen to try out new things, as well as expose my children to classical music.

So I was very pleased when the lovely people at Beautiful Creatures asked me to review their children’s music album.

Beautiful Creatures is fab new music production from South Africa. I was chuffed to download their original Beautiful Creatures album. We have always enjoyed eclectic music and have all sorts from the very traditional nursery rhymes to American vintage songs to alternative music such as Putumayo. What Putumayo is to “to the world”, Beautiful Creatures is to Africa. Catchy tunes with an African twist (lots of African animals of course). One song reminds me a little of the Rocky Horror Picture show (Lucas the Lazy Lion), whilst others are wonderfully mellow (Down comes the rain). When we put it on for Red Ted, he started jumping up and down and twisting and turning. He particularly like the Mafutha song (“More Tut Tut Tut more!” – Tut tut tut = Elephant in Red Ted speak).

You have adults singing the lead with chidlren in the chorus. No annoying high pitched or patronizing adult voices. Proper singing! What says it all for me, is that The Englishman will put on this album! He isn’t very good with the normal children’s music…

If you are uncertain about buying you can preview it on the Beautiful Creatures blog, but I do think this is worth adding to your music library!

• Read the complete article at Redtedart

Better Off Books Partners with Music Festival for Global Literacy

by Bontle on 01 Aug 2010   |   

After a 10 year hiatus, the music festival Lilith Fair is back and doing good for global literacy. Better World Books, a company that collects and sells books online to fund global literacy initiatives, will be at the festival to distribute coupons and information about their global literacy initiatives.

10 percent of all revenue generated by Better Off Books goes to these projects. This is not just profit in terms of profit, but counterintuitive to most standard business models, the company pays the cause first, and the company later.

Now global, the company supports organizations like Books For Africa, Invisible Children, the National Center for Family Literacy, Room to Read and Worldfund to give those in need better access to educational resources.

In addition to monetary contributions, Better World Books has donated more than 1.5 million college textbooks to schools in Africa, established a relationship with Feed the Children to send them children’s books and diverted more than 29 million pounds of books from landfills.

• Read the complete article at Montgomerynews