Today’s Books at Bedtime feature is One Hen by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes. Much has been written already about this book in PaperTigers and elsewhere. It was selected for the Spirit of Paper Tigers Project and will likely see its way into many hands hence. The story is about microfinance and features Kojo, a little Ghanaian boy, who, with a loan, buys himself a hen. What Kojo does with that one hen changes his life and everyone else’s around it.
By the time I got to this book with my daughter for her bed time read, she’d already been exposed to it at school. But that did not diminish her enjoyment of the story the second time round. She loved the colorful illustrations by Eugenie Fernandes and was quick to point out some lovely things I would have never noticed in the pictures like the colorfully clad chicken mothers in the market of one drawing. The story is set up perfectly for children to understand. The purchase of one hen leads to the purchase of another and so forth until by the end of the book, Kojo, a grown man, is shown as a producer of one of the largest poultry farms in West Africa. That’s microfinance in a nutshell, or rather, in a children’s book! And the great thing about this book is that it’s based on the true life story of Ghanaian producer Kwabena Darko.
One Hen is a truly inspiration and informative read. If you can, I suggest you buy the book as some of the proceeds of the sales will go directly to the One Hen: Microfinance for Kids organization.