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Month: September 2020

Why Do We Celebrate Heritage Day?

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In South Africa, Heritage Day is celebrated on 24th September to honour the various cultures and diversities in our country, from the official languages, our cuisine, our music and creative expressions of our historical inheritance. (Department of Arts and Culture).

I love the annual Heritage Day celebrations at schools, with the colourful traditional costumes and dancing. It is a great celebration of our different cultures.  This year there was no dancing or singing at Cosmo City Primary, but many of the children arrived at school on Wednesday proudly wearing their beautiful and varied traditional dress, together with their masks.

Before 1994 some heritages were not freely appreciated or promoted in South Africa. In our democracy it is important for us to recognise the significance of our living heritage and to safeguard it for future generations. Language is an important part of people’s identities and their living heritage, and everyone in South Africa has the right to use any of the 11 official languages of their choice.

In Cosmo City Primary School, where we are conducting our pilot study, children are addressed by their teachers in their home languages, but a lot of formal teaching is conducted in English, and most textbooks are in English.  The graded reading scheme that we will be using for our Book village App has been specially developed for South African children learning English as their first additional language. The books depict the everyday lives of South African children, making them easier for the children to relate to than books set in England or America.  Other South African languages will be added as they become available.

Whilst most of the books in the Book Village library are in English, we have been trying our best to include books in the other SA languages so that the children can enjoy reading in their mother tongue.  We have formed a partnership with the excellent Nal’ibali organisation, and their wonderful stories, available in many South African languages, have been digitised and included in our library for children to borrow.

9 Springtime Stories

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Flowers on book

In South Africa, September brings Spring celebrations and perhaps flowers in the classroom for some lucky teachers. At Book Village, we had a look at books in our library inspired by nature, and some of the books that will take you into the exciting, secret and terrifying gardens essential for every childhood.

Fiction Books

1.The Tale of Peter Rabbit, set in the wonderful and frightening vegetable garden of Mr. McGregor is probably one of the first books many children will remember being read to them.  Peter is told by his mother not to go into Mr. McGregor’s garden, but of course he did and – you know the rest!

2. The children in The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett work together to plant their own garden of happiness. The magic of the growth and new life in the secret garden will make every child want to go out and experience the wonder of growing something for themselves.

3.  Alice is desperate to get into the “loveliest garden you ever saw”.  “How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains” as she peers out through the tiny door. From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

4.  In The Tree Doctor, Dr Seuss’ Cat in the Hat and Dr Twiggles help Sally and Nick discover why their tree won’t grow.  This is written for children learning to read and is perfect for Spring reading and Arbour Day celebrations.

5.  We love Richard Scarry, and Lowly Worm Meets the Early Bird is another book for beginner readers to enjoy.  Early Bird looks and looks for a worm to play with.  He is about to give up searching when he meets Lowly Worm. 

6.  The Garden Thief by Gertrude Chandler Warner is a book in the Boxcar Children Series, perfect for children in grades 2-6 to read by themselves. Something strange is happening in the community garden!  Who is stealing all the veggies?

We have many interesting non-fiction books that we hope might inspire children to think about nature.  Here are three that we think our children will really enjoy.

Non-fiction Books

7.  Counting Birds by Heidi Stemple is the award-winning story behind the first annual bird count in America.  It is a beautifully illustrated book that introduces children to the idea of bird counts and hopefully will inspire them to get involved in conservation at home.

8.  Eavesdropping on Elephants.  Patricia Newman takes readers behind the scenes at the Cornell University’s Elephant Listening Project to see how scientists are making new discoveries about elephant communication and how they are using what they learn to help with elephant conservation.

9.  South African children might have their own experiences of vervet monkeys and will surely enjoy Nicko, the Tale of a Vervet Monkey on an African Farm by Penny Haw.  This is the true story of Alice Kirk and the adventures of Nicko, the baby vervet monkey that was found abandoned on her home farm in the Kwa-Zulu Natal midlands.

There really is a story for every season, and most of the books mentioned are available from the Gauteng Provincial Online Library. 

The Quirks of a Digital Library

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Books in digital format

Photo cred: Pen Waggener 

We at Book Village have been loving the Gauteng Provincial Online Library during lockdown, but it really does have some odd quirks!

Unlike in a traditional library, digital books cannot be stolen, lost or overdue, but it seems that they can disappear from the library when the licence expires, which can be confusing!  So you might be able to put a hold on the third book in the wonderful Cicero Trilogy – Dictator because the library once owned it, but you might never receive it unless the librarian decides to repurchase the licence.  The other two books of the trilogy don’t seem to have ever been owned by the library, but you can make a recommendation for the library to buy them through the OverDrive website. So we’ve been busy recommending the purchase of obvious missing library books to the Gauteng Online Library.

Over the past few years we have worked in school libraries stocked entirely with donated books, and the best of these libraries all have some common features:  entire shelves of Enid Blyton books, several copies of each Roald Dahl book, the middle book of, say, His Dark Materials Trilogy and, in the best libraries, extremely tatty and loved copies of some of the Horrid Henry books, Diary of a Wimpy Kid and if the kids are really lucky, the odd Harry Potter book and some new teen fiction. The non-fiction is usually a dismal collection of 1950s biology textbooks and random books about writing batch files for MS-DOS or the Natural History of Guam.

Book Village Digital Library

The Book Village digital library was bought from OverDrive as a curated collection of children’s books and generally only shares the best aspects of a traditional library.  When having noticed a few quirks and gaps in the digital library, we asked them how they put the collection together. 

They replied stating that they consulted with librarians in South African Schools and focused on popular South African authors and titles, as well as titles popular in schools internationally.  They maintain the library by adding more copies of in-demand titles, as well as new releases and requests.  

The Book Village library is indeed a wonderful collection of books and we think there will be books for every child to love.  But we are quite sure that the kids would happily swop Anna Karenina for the 13 Storey Treehouse and The Lives of the Necromancers for anything by Philip Pullman.  

We are always looking for new book recommendations and so if you have any ideas please email them to sarah@bookvillage.co.za.

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