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Children's Author, Nicky Jacobs, and Others Sell Books for Good Cause

by Bontle on 20 Jul 2010   |   

In the spirit of Mandela Day, Cavendish Square and Well Read Books hosted a book sale on behalf of Wola Nani, an HIV/AIDS NGO, from Friday, 16 to Sunday, 18 July. The public did their part by donating an overwhelming number of books and signing up as volunteers. Saskia Falken, Heart FM DJ, and Nicky Jacobs, a children’s author, were among the personalities who sold books for charity for 67 minutes.

Wola Nani, Xhosa for ‘we embrace and develop one another’, was established in 1994 as a non-profit organisation to help bring relief to the communities hardest hit by the HIV crisis.Formed against a background of economic curtailment on welfare spending and a huge increase in the number of HIV and AIDS cases, Wola Nani initiated programmes to help HIV+ people in the local community cope with the emotional and financial strains brought about by HIV and AIDS.

Focusing on the needs of HIV+ women and their children, Wola Nani’s services aim to ease the burden of HIV by enabling people living with the virus to respond positively and attain the skills to develop their own coping strategies.Historically disenfranchised, disempowered and marginalised, women bear the brunt of the national pandemic. They have little voice to articulate their needs or to claim the services on which their survival depends.

• Visit the Wola Nani Website

• Read the complete article at media update

Invitation to IBBY SA AGM and Winter Bookbash

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 20 Jul 2010   |   

The AGM of IBBY SA
This will take place at 17:30 for 18:00 on Thursday 5 August 2010 at SASNEV (the new name for Huis der Nederlanden), 4 Central Square Pinelands
The Winter Bookbash
What’s new from Jacana Media? Come and listen to Carol Broomhall
of Jacana on their current and future books for children and young people. Hear what Jacana have up their collective editorial sleeve!
2
After that, join us for some of Yvette’s
delicious soup-n-rolls.
RSVP to info@ibbysa.org.za before Monday 2 August 2010
… and immediately after the AGM:
(so you have to attend the AGM!)

Angolan Writer Fernandes Wins Top Children's Literature Prize

by Bontle on 06 Jul 2010   |   

The writer Maria Celestina Fernandes recently won the first prize for literature for children in Angola.

The writer got the prize with her 24-page book entitled As Amigas em Kalandula, and according to the head of the Institute of Cultural Industries, (INIC), António Fonseca, the award is due to its creative value and the accessible language.

• Read the complete article

SA Publishers Worry About Government Plan to Centralise School Textbook Procurement

by Bontle on 21 Jun 2010   |   

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga plans to centralise school textbook procurement from next year in an effort to curb costs and corruption, despite concerns from South Africa’s publishing industry. Education recieves the biggest slice of South Africa’s budget with the government spending R6 billion on educating the country’s 12 million learners.

Local publishers however have some concerns over the minister’s move. The Publishers Association of South Africa (Pasa) is worried that South Africa’s small, but “very vibrant” textbook industry will feel the pinch if Ms Motshekga’s plans to force schools to choose textbooks from a catalogue drawn up by the national department succeed.

The Presidency gave Ms Motshekga’s department an extra R524m to ensure textbooks got to children in public schools early this year.

But, in the latest in a litany of poor logistics, Ms Motshekga last month discovered that seven of SA’s poorest-performing high schools, in the Bushbuckridge area of Mpumalanga, the province that fared worst in last year’s matric exams, still did not have textbooks at the end of last month.

• Read the complete article at All Africa

Desmond Tutu's Bible for Children to be Launched at the Cape Town Book Fair

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 19 May 2010   |   

A new illustrated children’s storybook Bible, The Children of God Storybook Bible written by Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu will be launched at the opening of the Cape Town Book Fair on 30 July 2010.

Desmond Tutu Children’s Bible
“It’s a cause for celebration. I’m looking forward to launching that brand new beautiful book at the Cape Town Book Fair,” says Archbishop Tutu. “It’s been a two-year project that’s very close to my heart.”

The Archbishop has dedicated the Bible to his friend, publisher and one time colleague, the late Dr Luke Stubbs, an Anglican priest whose idea it was to involve Tutu as the storyteller of a Children’s Bible. Stubbs was diagnosed with colon cancer shortly after the project began, but continued to work on the book as commissioning editor until three weeks before his death in 2009.

• Read the complete article at suite101

PUKU to Review The Gift of Gold

by Bontle on 11 May 2010   |   

Dorothy Kowen’s new book Gift of Gold just arrived at PUKU! Keep posted for the review, coming soon!

Book details

• The Gift of Gold by Dorothy Kowen
  EAN: 9781770097964
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

Banned Books Smuggled in Tunnels from Egypt to Gaza

by Bontle on 21 Apr 2010   |   

Children’s books are the latest goods to be smuggled into Gaza along the Gaza-Egypt border. Thousands of underground tunnels linking the Egyptian border town of Rafah with the Palestinian city of the same name smuggle weapons, drugs, cars and now, books.

Xinhua Newspaper interviewed Ahmed B., one of the six importers of books in Gaza City. His family bookshop was opened 25 years ago. He claims that smuggling is expensive and dangerous but necessary: when Egyptian authorities found a shipment of books, they never released it. Since then, books have been hidden or smuggled.

The Al-Qattan Cultural Center for Children used to bring books from the international exhibition, but since 2007, the centre became short of books and the publications now are smuggled through the tunnels, said Arif al-Hout, the manager of the center’s technical service unit.

Although the shelves of the vast and attractive library for children under 15 seem well furnished, al-Hout said the center can no longer get weekly periodicals and specialized magazines.

• Read the complete article at Palestine note

Overcrowded School Causes Violent Student Protest in Malmesbury

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 15 Apr 2010   |   

Extra mobile classrooms should have been delivered to the overcrowded Naphakade Secondary and Primary schools, but failure to do so has caused the pupils to continue violent protests for a second day.

On Wednesday night, a heavy police contingent monitored the volatile community surrounding the schools, which share the same buildings and where pupils are suspected to have set alight two more classrooms.

They are upset about overcrowding at the schools, where 61 pupils are crammed into classes.

On Wednesday night, Education MEC Donald Grant’s spokeswoman Bronagh Casey said extra mobile classrooms should have been delivered to the schools earlier this year, but because of “delays at the Department of Public Works” this had not happened.

• Read the complete article at IOL

Doran Isaacs Talks to Business Day about the Desperate Need for Libraries

by Bontle on 06 Apr 2010   |   

Doran Isaacs follows the uplifting story of Nokubonga Yawa who was in Grade 9 when she fell pregnant. She had to leave school to give birth to her daughter, Sinaye.

Now as a 22 year old HIV-positive single mother, Yawa works at Equal Education (EE), an advocacy group that organises youth, parents, teachers and community members to transform education through active involvement at school level, and nationally through campaigns such as the current Campaign for School Libraries. At weekends Yawa is often filming on location, as host of Siyanqoba-Beat It, SA’s most important HIV-education TV show. Her daughter, Sinaye, who is HIV-negative , is now six.

This year she started Grade 1 at Mountain Road Primary, a school with a diverse student body and a good standard of education, at Woodstock in Cape Town. As a Grade 1 at Mountain Road she reads two books a week. The two weekly books her daughter’s school bag contains amaze Yawa. She remembers being in Grade 1 and having one or two books for the entire year, a reality that still pertains in many township schools.

The national picture is bleak. Only 8% of public schools have functioning libraries. The results are obvious. In the decade’s main sub-Saharan African study of 14 countries, SA ranked ninth behind countries including Mozambique and Swaziland. As is often discussed in Yawa’s youth group, there is no single solution to our education crisis.

Libraries are one thing that work. The world’s largest school library study, conducted in Colorado, showed that Grade 4 reading ability improves by an average 18% when a functioning library is added to a school.

At EE everyone helps out opening the letters and petitions that arrive from all parts of the country in support of the call for school libraries. Yawa recently opened this one from Shihlobyeni Primary School in Limpopo: “Our school has been without a library since 1940 when it was established. It has been difficult to improve the culture of reading in this rural community. It is our resolve as educators, parents, learners and the entire school community to request government to establish a library.”

• Read the Complete Article at Business Day

SA's Toby the Tugboat to Move to Television and Will be Available in all 11 Languages

by Nonikiwe - Editor on 23 Mar 2010   |   

My son got Toby Learns a Lesson and Toby to the Rescue by Leonard Donaldson for his birthday last year and was really hooked on to the two books for a few months, so I’m really happy to hear that not only will we be able to watch Toby on TV but that he will also be available to all South African children once the books are translated into all 11 languages.

A Jeffrey Bay writer has made a television breakthrough with his Toby the Tugboat children’s books. by Mthetho Ndoni

Leo Donaldson, 44, a father of two, has signed a contract with Johannesburg TV production house Ukhamba Communications Company to produce 260 episodes based on his stories for either M-Net or the SABC.

He said the daily, five- minute animation shows would target children up to five years old.

Donaldson, a writer, 3D animator, graphic designer and songwriter, said his ideas were motivated and inspired by the love of and the bond he had with children.

“I approached the SABC this year to find out how my books could be made into animation TV shows.

“After my visit to their studios, I received a call from this production company and they told me they wanted to sign up my work.”

Donaldson said the company would produce the series and then outsource the production to any broadcasting company.

“I’ve been working very hard to get TV production of my work and this contract came at the right time – just as I was thinking about giving up on writing Toby stories.”

Donaldson intends to write more children’s books and he also wants to have all of his books translated into South Africa’s 11 official languages.

• Read the complete article at Film Contact

Book details

• Toby Learns a Lesson by Leonard Donaldson
  EAN: 9781770072480
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

• Toby to the Rescue by Leonard Donaldson
  EAN: 9781770072473
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!