Since the outbreak of Ebola in Liberia, schools across the region have closed — leaving children without access to traditional education opportunities and the moral support teachers provide during times of crisis.
So when we received a call from our friends at the International Book Bank and the We Care Foundation and Library asking to include books in schooling kits they were creating, we jumped at the chance. Kids were waiting. They needed out help.
Within hours, we began a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to send as many books as possible, with a minimum goal of $5,000.
Thanks to generous support from individuals and partners like C&S Wholesale Grocers, Lee & Low Books, The NEA Foundation, Penguin Random House and Townsend Press, we ended up raising enough funds to send more than 40,000 brand new books (with a retail value of more than $320,000) to children in Liberia.
“We know books provide educational opportunities,” said Chandler Arnold, First Book’s Chief Operating Officer, “But in times of trauma they also provide comforting bedtime stories, moments of family togetherness and the chance for children to temporarily escape from a frightening situation”
The books, now on their way to children and families in the affected area, will accompany child-focused information about preventing the spread of the disease.
“When our partner Michael Weah, director of the We-Care Foundation and Library in Monrovia, Liberia, asked us for a donation of books to be packaged up and hand-delivered to children locked out of school for a year or more due to the Ebola outbreak, we couldn’t say no,” said Brigid McDonnell, Program Director at International Book Bank. “These books not only serve as critical educational tools, but also provide entertainment and escape for kids that desperately need it. It was a pleasure for the International Book Bank to work with First Book on this donation!”
To continue to help get books to kids in need throughout the country and internationally, donate to First Book today.
The post Books for Kids in Ebola-Affected Liberia appeared first on First Book Blog.
Head, Body, Legs: A Story from Liberia by Won-Ldy Paye & Margaret Lippert (Illustrated by: Julie Paschkis)
Reviewed by: Chris Singer
About the authors:
Won-Ldy Paye is a multi-talented artist from the Dan people of northeastern Liberia, West Africa. He is a member of the Tlo Ker Mehn, the class of professional Dan entertainers who are keepers of the oral tradition. He was trained by his grandmother-Gowo to remember and retell the stories of the Dan people. Some of the published credits of Won-Ldy Paye include The Talking Vegetables, Head, Body, Legs: A Story from Liberia, Why Leopard Has Spots: Dan Stories from Liberia.
Margaret Lippert is the author of 22 books, including 9 anthologies and 13 books for children and young adults. Much of Lippert’s body of work draws from the storytelling and folklore traditions of Africa, Latin America, and Asia. After moving from New York to the Seattle area in 1990, she began a collaboration with Won-Ldy Paye, a Liberian storyteller from the Dan tribe tradition. Her most recent books have grown out of this partnership, and are co-authored by Paye. She lives on Mercer Island, Washington.
About the illustrator:
Julie Paschkis is a painter and illustrator, specializing in children’s books and posters. She was inspired by the Asafo flags of the Fante people from coastal Ghana while illustrating this book. Julie lives in Seattle, Washington.
About the book:
Head is all alone. Body bounces along, Arms swing about, and Legs stand around. They can’t do much by themselves, so they try to join together. But how? Should Head attach to the belly button? Should Legs stand on Arms? If only they can work together, everything will be perfect. Straight from the oral tradition comes this magical retelling of a creation story from Liberia.
My take on the book:
Head, Body, Legs is the wonderful retelling of a Liberian creation folktale and a terrific example of the oral storytelling tradition. I am also very pleased that it is my first book completed for my Read Around the World Challenge!
Young children are going to love this beautifully illustrated story of how head, arms, body and legs met and worked together to become one complete body. Although perhaps a little young for this story, my daughter really enjoyed pointing at the body parts she knew! Readers will undoubtedly giggle at the difficulty the body parts have upon coming together, such as when head becomes attached to belly button and arms get attached to legs. The lesson for children to take from this story is that the reason the body parts are able to eventually fit together pr
Anthony Bourdain — a traveling chef author celebrity — travelled to Liberia and the show aired this week. There was a lot of excitement among the folks I know who used to live there. A preview of the show was posted to his blog a while back, and some of the exact phrases were used in the broadcast.
But no place has so utterly confounded me, intimidated, horrified, amazed, sickened, depressed, inspired, exhausted and shown me–with every passing hour–how wrong I was about everything I might have thought only an hour previous.
He doesn’t explain what so utterly confounded him within an hour of landing, nor what he expected. Oh, well. We know what happened in Liberia, and he sums it up, then goes to the market to suck snails out of shells and so forth. He has fufu and soup with a friend he met at a scrabble club. Those scenes were fun to watch. He travels up to Nimba County, and they show fleeting footage of a pool I once swam in. He goes deep into the jungle for a ritual with a tribe he doesn’t name (or names so passingly I didn’t catch it). He doesn’t bother to show any marks of civilization, although I’m guessing he stayed in the comparatively luxurious Mamba Point hotel while in Monrovia, which even has a sushi restaurant. That’s very close to where Linus lives in Mamba Point, though it didn’t exist in in 1982. You would never guess from watching the show that anybody eats anything other than wildly unrecognizable things. But exotic cuisine is what the show is about, and I expected it. But he goes a little bit further.
He says on the blog:
There’s a church on nearly every corner–but underneath it all, traditional “masked societies” still rule the hearts and minds and behaviors of many…
A theme he expounds upon in the show, saying something about ritualistic cannibalism, suggesting that “Some people try to minimize it, but ask anybody who’s lived here for over fifteen years!” Bourdain was there for what, ten days? And now he’s an expert on Liberia’s cannibalistic practices? Admittedly confounded upon arrival, expecting something completely different from the war-ravaged, recovering, West African nation that he found (again, he didn’t explain this part very well), by the time he’s been led around by some generous guides for a few days, eaten fufu with his hands, and visited a couple of sites, he is prepared to speak to what really happens in those remote villages when the cameras are away.
But he’s wearing kid gloves in the broadcast. In a Slate article he goes a bit further to show how disgusted he was by Liberia.
[A]lthough I find certain tribal practices personally deeply repellant, I’d always felt uncomfortable with the idea of these “enlightened humanitarians” going to Africa and lecturing people who don’t have clean water and have been living with these systems for centuries about how to behave. And yet I gotta tell you, Liberia made me ask myself: Are some things just wrong? Genital mutilation would be one. Some of the practices of some of the traditional tribal elders—witch doctors, basically—are another. I really wonder whether there are absolutes in some cases.
Where does the genital mutilation come from? Was Bourdain invited to witness one after the fufu in Monrovia or the tribal dance in northern Nimba County? He doesn’t explain. Though perfectly willing to slight people who go to Africa for longer than a week or two, including those who want to truly make a difference instead of just sampling the food and shooting some exotic footage. I know this is the Africa that Americans want to see. Blood diamonds, genital mutilations, armies of giant ants that eat villages…. you know. Africa.
But to be hone
