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How to share content on the ELRN

Alisha Niehaus Berger — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 12:56:03 +0000

How to share content on the ELRN

Thank you for your interest in learning more about international development publishing!

To discuss sharing your content with the Early Learning Resource Network, please share your contact information to info(@)earlylearningresourcenetwork.org and someone will be in touch with you.

If you would like to join the ELRN newsletter, please sign up here.

To contact Alisha Berger directly with comments, questions, or ideas, please email her at alisha.n.berger(@)gmail.com

Links from IBBY presentations

Alisha Niehaus… Mon, 08/26/2024 - 14:56

New: InDesign Templates to Support Improved Children’s Book Design

Alisha Niehaus Berger — Thu, 02 May 2024 14:26:16 +0000

New: InDesign Templates to Support Improved Children’s Book Design

Book design is crucial for readability, especially for beginning readers. Elements like fonts and how the words on the page are spaced are important for making books clear, useable, and appealing for readers. Good design and file set-up also makes it easier to print books and archive or store them for future print runs. But too often, children’s book designers in many countries do not have the opportunities to harness global best practices, resulting in books with lower-quality visual design or which are challenging to print.

The World Bank Read@Home initiative’s Early Learning Resource Network has released a set of InDesign templates to help designers improve the layout and visual appeal of children’s books.

There are five First Books InDesign templates to choose from, each using a different shape motif
throughout the pages.

These InDesign templates are part of ELRN’s efforts to support book developers in bringing higher quality design to all children. By using pre-set elements such as trim size, early grade fonts, and offering options for different page layouts, the templates maximize designers’ freedom and creativity to develop books for their context while avoiding common errors.

The user guides provide recommendations on suitable fonts.

The templates are based on Read@Home’s 100 First Children’s Books Framework and developed with inputs from children’s book experts and designers. Templates are aligned with common book sizes across printers across the world, include straightforward user guides, and support four different kinds of books:

First Books
Picturebooks
Leveled Readers (fiction and non-fiction)
Comic Book/Graphic Novels

For more information or to inquire about support for using these templates in your project, please contact info [at] earlylearningresourcenetwork [dot] org

Alisha Niehaus… Thu, 05/02/2024 - 16:26

Read@Home Releases 100 First Children’s Books Framework

Alisha Niehaus Berger — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 10:33:14 +0000

Read@Home Releases 100 First Children’s Books Framework

We read to learn, to laugh, to challenge ourselves, and to expand our views of the world. As we grow readers at home, we want children to value and love reading. We want them to read to learn, but also to read for pleasure–to choose to read. Access to a wide variety of books and opportunities to practice reading are vital for children to become readers and learners.

But what kinds of books help children to learn to read and develop a regular reading habit? Read@Home’s new 100 First Children’s Books Framework offers recommendations for a ‘first collection’ of children’s literature to support the development of children’s pre-reading and early reading skills.

The Framework outlines overall recommendations for creating a collection of books, the kinds of books that can inspire a love of reading, and the type and quantity of books that children's collections could contain at different ages.

Read@Home recommends that collections include, at a minimum, the number and types of titles listed below.

The Framework defines and shares examples of these different types of books, as well as offering ideas for variety in themes and topics and links to further reading.

Many wordless books can be used with children (and adults) of any age. (Access An unexpected adventure here: https://www.earlylearningresourcenetwork.org/unexpected-adventure)

First books introduce basic conceptual categories like colors, shapes, directions; patterns; and familiar nouns in their everyday lives

Picturebook nonfiction generally comes in two styles: narrative and expository literature (Access A Tiny Seed here: https://www.earlylearningresourcenetwork.org/tiny-seed)

Ultimately, the guidelines can serve as an important reference for projects that want to diversify their children’s books offerings, ensuring that all children have access to the critical variety of books that will build their skills and imaginations, and improve their future academic and personal outcomes.

InDesign templates to support the design of the five categories of books are also available on the ELRN.

For more information, please contact info [at] earlylearningresourcenetwork [dot] org (info[at]earlylearningresourcenetwork[dot]org)

Alisha Niehaus… Wed, 04/24/2024 - 12:33

Celebrating Reading: Supporting the Foundations of Book Provision

Alisha Niehaus Berger — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:58:12 +0000

Celebrating Reading: Supporting the Foundations of Book Provision

Today, on International Literacy Day, we celebrate reading—learning to read and loving to read.

In our excitement about the possibilities that accompany literacy, it can be easy to overlook the underpinnings. We know achieving literacy takes trained and supported teachers, a quality curriculum, and, of course, quality reading materials. To make those quality reading materials, we know we need authors, illustrators, and printers, plus editors and designers. But an often-ignored part of ensuring continued access to critical literacy materials is design file production and archiving.

Design file… production and archiving?!?

Indeed! Responsible publishing is not only creating clear, engaging text and illustrations, but producing proper design files and ensuring those files are stored for future use.

First, before initial printing, a design file (usually made with Adobe InDesign) must be reviewed to be sure that it is print ready. Are the images all high resolution? If not, they will look pixelated when printed. Are all the fonts working properly? If not, they won’t print correctly—there could be wonky shapes instead of letters, or a default font might be substituted that is too large or too small. Are there ‘bleeds’ around the area to be printed? If not, when the printer cuts the pages, they might snip off important bits of text or image. There are few worse moments in the production process than when a book comes off press, and you open it expecting to see a beautiful picture of an elephant—but half the trunk has been chopped off! (Yes, I may have experienced such a thing.)

Second, once books have rolled off the presses, the complete design files should be archived and metadata stored, so they can be retrieved whenever someone wants to reprint the book—of course, any identified issues (like the trunkless elephant) should be fixed before archiving. Later, readers may find typos or other errors, and it is important to record these errors as well, so that next time the file is used they too can be corrected.

If this sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is! In contexts with established large publishers, there are often four or five people with specific skill sets who ensure that a file is properly produced in pre-press, quality-checked, and printed. Others add metadata and upload to an archive; yet another staff member tracks ‘errata’ for fixing in future printings.

In the development space, we are not working with large teams of experienced publishing staff. Often, staff are education experts, without any publishing background. This has meant that, despite the incredible efforts that have gone into making textbooks, storybooks, and decodable readers across underserved languages over the past two decades, some critical book production pieces have been absent.

In my decade-long tenure as publisher at Room to Read, I spent 70% of my time implementing and improving production guidelines. First, we searched for and reviewed the organization’s 600 book files from its first ten years—including venturing into dark closets across the world to retrieve CD-Roms, and amassing scans of physical books from the dark recesses of staff hard drives. Sometimes, a design file would be missing one high-res image on page 4, or a font used on the cover; these could be fixed with some care and ingenuity. Some files were missing so many parts that they needed to be entirely rebuilt. Some were lost forever. Meanwhile, I worked with my team to create new systems to track, maintain, and archive the over 6,000 additional original books, adaptations, and digital editions we continued to produce.

I do get a bit of a headache even thinking about all of this work—but it was more than worth it. Yet what gives me both headache and heartache is all the materials created across our space that cannot be rescued or rebuilt. All of those quality reading materials made by well-meaning projects that were printed and then the project closed without taking the steps to ensure that those books could serve children beyond that initial printing.

This issue isn’t limited to any one organization. It’s a problem across the board. We have lost so, SO, SO many books. Books that children need—the children in early grades during that original, funded project—and all the children who have come, and will come after need as well.

We MUST do better. Because, unlike so many of the issues in our sector, this one can be solved.

And, in celebration of International Literacy Day 2023, I am happy—nay, thrilled!—to report that we are coming together to do just that.

The Early Learning Resource Network is a new effort by World Bank’s Read@Home program, in partnership with the Global Book Alliance and USAID, which offers just what’s been missing: a sector-wide platform on which to securely store print-ready files for downloading and reprinting; to find design files for adapting into other languages and contexts; and a plethora of resources to support book sharing work.

The platform offers courses on ensuring files are print-ready at the design stage, on using Creative Commons licenses so that the files can be freely leveraged by new projects, and on how to use the books with children and families. There is a print-cost calculator to help users understand how much a print-run of certain books might cost. And more resources are coming: courses on how to best manage book production, as well as curated instructional sets of textbooks, teacher’s guides, and leveled readers that can be easily printed to support a full literacy program.

And my favorite part: instructions on how to vet, upload, and archive books from new projects so that none of these crucial resources are ever lost again. On a day to applaud the many achievements of passionate, dedicated people in service of world literacy, this a true milestone to celebrate.

Happy International Literacy Day from the Early Learning Resource Network! Come visit, soon and often.

Alisha Niehaus Berger is a children’s book expert, author, and publisher. She served as Global Publisher at the literacy and girls' education nonprofit Room to Read (https://roomtoread.org) for a decade, where she directed their worldwide program in quality reading materials, guiding the publication of over 6000 print and digital storybooks in more than 50 languages and across 21 countries, as well as support to local publishers and publishing ecosystems. Prior to this, she worked at Simon & Schuster, Dorling Kindersley, and Penguin in New York, where she edited bestsellers and books that won some of the most prestigious children’s book prizes. She now lives in Switzerland with her family where she writes, hikes, and aspires to ensure that every child has access to great books in their languages. Reach her at alisha.n.berger(@)gmail.com

Follow the ELRN on Twitter and LinkedIn

Image source: Global Partnership for Education/Livia Barton (CC BY-NC-ND)

Alisha Niehaus… Fri, 09/08/2023 - 02:58

Reaching vulnerable families and improving preschools in Honduras

Emanuela Di Gropello — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 06:24:25 +0000

Reaching vulnerable families and improving preschools in Honduras

Originally published on World Bank Blogs on 3 August, 2023.

Children reading new library books at a school library in Lempira Department, Honduras. Copyright: Plan International Honduras

With close to 80 percent of age-10 children in Honduras experiencing learning poverty—which means that they are unable to read and understand a simple text— it’s never been more critical to expand children’s access to books and improve opportunities for children to learn and read at home.

Reading is an essential skill that unlocks the door to learning in every other area. Children need to learn to read before they can read to learn, and they need support at home and in school to foster a love of reading and build important foundational literacy skills. Parents and communities are also more likely to be involved in children’s learning when they have access to books in a language they know: global evidence consistently shows that students learn more in the language they understand best.

Accessing quality books and learning materials

The Read@Home initiative was created to support countries and tackle learning poverty by addressing some of the challenges that prevent children from accessing quality, age-appropriate books and learning materials. The initiative targets hard-to-reach families with children ages 3-12 and works to deliver reading and learning materials quickly, efficiently, with support to help parents and other caregivers support with children’s learning.

In Honduras, Read@Home is supporting vulnerable families and strengthening the quality of early childhood education. It also contributes to key actions that Honduras and other countries are taking across the Latin America region to reverse lost learning as a result of long school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are four components to the effort in Honduras:

Improving access to reading materials in home languages. Responding to the Ministry of Education’s request to expand reading materials into indigenous and Afro-Honduran languages, Read@Home partnered with Room to Read to work with the government and expert Honduran translators to translate 15 existing book titles developed in Spanish with Honduran authors and illustrators into Miskito and Garifuna. These are some of the first storybooks available in these languages and could be used by families and educators in neighboring countries who speak the same languages.
Making books free and accessible for all. It can be difficult to find free and open-source materials in a print-ready format so that governments, organizations, educators, and families can download and print what they need, when they need it. To ensure these stories are readily available, Read@Home worked with Room to Read to convert titles in Miskito, Garifuna, and Spanish into a print ready format. These titles are available on the Early Learning Resource Network, an online platform launched in 2022 to help governments and education partners access free, open-licensed children’s books and instructional materials for foundational literacy and numeracy programs.
Expanding access to quality storybooks at home. Read@Home partnered with Plan International to print over 200 titles for children from preschool age through 6th grade, including the titles developed by Room to Read. Over 8,000 storybooks were distributed to more than 30,000 children and their families through 40 school and public libraries in 10 municipalities of the Lempira Department, the country’s poorest department.
Expanding access to quality storybooks in preschools. Soon these storybooks will reach thousands more children and families in Honduras. Read@Home is supporting the World Bank’s Early Childhood Education Improvement Project to transform the quality of education in Honduras and equip children for school success. The project will develop a quality preschool model, support preschool educators with training, updated curriculums, improve learning environments, and provide quality, culturally relevant, learning materials and books to use during children’s story time to promote early literacy development, and make learning fun. Read@Home is providing book procurement assistance to the Honduran Ministry of Education to speed up the process of buying books, optimize technical specifications, and reduce costs to distribute storybooks to public preschools in the country.

Education is a right. Providing children with the opportunity to access books is a necessary first step to realize that promise.

Emanuela Di Gropello Fri, 08/04/2023 - 08:24

World Read Aloud Day '23 - Africa got here first!

Leanne Rencken — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 14:00:10 +0000

World Read Aloud Day '23 - Africa got here first!

What really struck me when attending the recent AfLIA-run World Read Aloud Day webinar was this profound quote our host, Dr Nkem Osuigwe, included in her presentation:

Africa got here first!
In Africa, stories were and still continue to be passed down from generation to generation. Oral storytelling is our natural way of ‘preserving human knowledge, insight, and creativity’.

On its own, it’s a meaningful statement, but in the context of World Read Aloud Day, which is celebrated on Wednesday 1 February, even more so.

While this webinar included an introduction to World Read Aloud Day, along with practical advice on how to participate, it was also an impassioned rallying cry for the librarians and library staff in attendance to remember these oral traditions, and to carry on their own rich history of storytelling.

Reading aloud is beneficial for children of all ages and can be enjoyed by children and adults of all ages. Image source: The National Library of Uganda.

Our elders got all those traditions and passed them down to us, you are a natural fit for this activity, you are an African, you are a librarian… – Dr Osuigwe

World Read Aloud Day was launched in 2010 by LitWorld to ‘promote diverse voices and narratives around the world’. The AfLIA webinar covered a lot of ground and once participants had been given some background on the history of this annual event, Dr Osuigwe spent time chatting about why reading aloud is important.

As Human Capacity Development and Training Director for the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA), she explained that having seen how impactful AfLIA’s Early Literacy Development course had been with the 2022 pilot group, and more recently the second cohort, she wanted to use this opportunity to emphasize the importance of African storytelling, reading aloud together in mother-tongue languages, and gifting African stories to the world.

‘This is important for us,’ she said, ‘we will be running the course twice a year so we can continue to teach kids how to learn to read, so in turn they can read to learn. Where do we start? We start right here!’

Dr Osuigwe recalled her own introduction to storytelling: As a young five-year-old in post-civil war Nigeria, she had been dropped off at a public library in Enugu, by her mother who had walked really far to visit the market and couldn’t keep an eye on two small children while shopping. When they arrived at the library it was story hour. She remembers the occasion clearly:

An old lady was reading a story about a competition between the sun and the wind to know which was stronger. This old lady would go from one side of the room to talk as the sun, and then she would go to the other side of the room and speak as the wind. The way she told the story, her body movement, her facial expressions… That encounter changed my life, opened something inside of me…

So powerful was that experience, Dr Osuigwe went on to become a librarian at that same library in Enugu, but more importantly she learnt how effective it can be to tell stories in a fun and lively way, with ‘your whole body’.

And this lesson formed part of the webinar as well: ‘It helps kids, you draw them into the story, you create connections for them, so they don’t think reading is a duty, or a routine daily thing we do. You make it fun; you make it inviting. Every child is curious, that curiosity quotient goes down as we age, unless you are a reader, then it continues to grow,’ she explained.

Practical matters: Open licensing, translation and poster design

This webinar was a powerful reminder of what a good teacher can accomplish in just a few short hours. Dr Osuigwe is a great teacher, and she spent a few critical moments talking about the value of openly licensed books and how important they are to the creation of mother tongue resources.

‘When we close things up, they remain closed!’ she said. ‘We teach a lot about open licensing in our early literacy course, it is the power we can leverage to create books for our kids in our local languages.’

AfLIA has a digital library of 159 openly licensed stories in different African languages on the StoryWeaver platform, many of these speak about Africa or feature Africans.

For World Read Aloud Day 2023, AfLIA has generated a theme: African stories to the world.

To this end, Dr Osuigwe is encouraging librarians to either read these existing stories during their story hour, or to try their hand at translation, creating a version of these stories in their mother tongue.

The webinar included a practical demonstration on how to translate a story using the StoryWeaver translation tool, as well as a lot of encouragement from Dr Osuigwe who has completed over 30 Igbo translations on the platform already.

Finally, webinar participants were given a tutorial on the online design programme CANVA, with the express instruction to ‘blow your own trumpets!’

This poster has been created by Dunstanette Bodkin-Davies, head of the children’s department, Sierra Leone Library Board, and the founder and director of the Dunamis Kids Organisation. It was shared by Bodkin-Davies on Facebook and by AfLIA on Twitter and captioned as ‘The Dunamis Kids Organisation in Sierra Leone is planning to engage school children on an exciting journey on World Read Aloud Day’. Will you be joining them on a journey of your own?

In order to promote African stories to the world, Dr Osuigwe took time to demonstrate how easy it is to create a simple poster that will go a long way to pushing World Read Aloud Day and each African library’s participation in the event.

Follow these hashtags on social media - #WRAD2023 #AfricaReads #Aflia and join the storytelling community in celebrating African stories and reading aloud in your mother tongue.

Contact AfLIA to find out more about the Early Literacy Development Course – you can also read more about it here

Additional resources for World Read Aloud Day

The title for Nal'ibali's World Read Aloud Day 2023 story is 'Every Day's a Story' - download your own version on the Nal'ibali website.

Additional 'how to read' resources can be found on the Nal’ibali website, including a story created just for World Read Aloud Day.

The Memory Tree, Who Took My Shoe and Look out, Luthando are just some of the latest Book Dash titles.

BookDash published ten new books last year during their Durban Book Dash, these can be found here, along with the rest of their catalogue, on their website. These books can also be translated, downloaded and printed.

African Storybook also has some new books available via their website.

The African Storybook website also hosts many openly licensed multilingual stories that can be read aloud online, translated, and downloaded.

Leanne Rencken Tue, 01/31/2023 - 16:00

How do we ensure quality, equitable and inclusive education for all? Early literacy Q&A part 3 of 3

Leanne Rencken — Wed, 16 Nov 2022 10:29:11 +0000

How do we ensure quality, equitable and inclusive education for all? Early literacy Q&A part 3 of 3

International Literacy Day has been celebrated annually since 1966. This year’s theme is ‘Transforming Literacy Learning Spaces… an opportunity to rethink the fundamental importance of literacy learning spaces to build resilience and ensure quality, equitable and inclusive education for all'.

Rather than focus on a single day in September, we asked some of the people and organizations that do critical work in the early literacy field to answer three important questions related to the theme and how they plan to sustain the good work they are doing over time.

As noted in the first part of this series, we have divided this piece into three parts. Read part two here.

Our Q&A participants

Dr Nkem Osuigwe was recently named the Wikimedia Newcomer of the Year and spoke to us on behalf of the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) where she works as Human Capacity Development and Training Director.

Dr Osuigwe nominated Dunstanette Davies, head of the children’s department at the Sierra Leone Library Board, to share her personal thoughts and early literacy experiences. Davies was also part of the first cohort of librarians to pilot AfLIA’s Early Literacy Development Course, specifically created, in partnership with NBA, for librarians and library staff in Africa, who want to support children in their early literacy learning journey. On finishing the course, Davies stated that ‘the Early Literacy course has given me more confidence to engage in discussions concerning early literacy development. Am forever grateful’. So, it’s great to have her included in this conversation.

Prolific South African author and translator, Lorato Trok, responded to our questions from her own point of view as well as that of that of the Puku Foundation, where she works as the Managing Editor.

We also heard from Dorcas Wepukhulu on behalf of African Storybook (ASb), a multilingual literacy initiative that works with educators and children to publish openly licensed storybooks for early reading in African languages. ASb was established by Saide, a non-governmental organization (NGO) where Wepukhulu works as the East and West African Coordinator.

Purvi Shah, Senior Director at StoryWeaver, an initiative by India’s non-profit publisher, Pratham Books, commented from her experience at StoryWeaver: A platform on which multilingual reading resources can be created, translated and freely accessed. It helps children build reading habits through openly licensed storybooks, reading programmes, audio books and videos, and is one of the largest open educational resources (OER) for children’s storybooks, with over 300 languages represented.

Julia Norrish, Executive Director at Book Dash, provided input from the South African-based, social impact publisher. Book Dash believes that every child should own one hundred books by the age of five. The books are created by volunteer groups of professional writers, editors, and illustrators, and are openly licensed so that they can be freely translated, printed, and distributed.

Noluthando Ncube, the Ulwazi Lwethu project manager gave insight to this African language reading materials project, which was set up by the Zenex Foundation in South Africa. This resource development initiative is developing African language reading books and teacher reading support resources targeted at teaching learners in the foundation phase to read in their home language.

Note: This is the final party of a three-part series. Some of the answers have been edited for length.

In Part 3 of our Q&A we asked:

How does the phrase ‘quality, equitable and inclusive education for all’ translate for you and your organization? Think about this in terms of open licensing of books and materials, accessibility to early literacy books and materials for children with disabilities, as well as the creation of mother-tongue books and materials.

Nkem Osuigwe for AfLIA: Children learn in the mother tongue first. They build their vocabulary and understanding of concepts and the world around them from listening and being spoken to at home. However, a great majority of supplementary reading materials available in libraries across Africa are in the ‘official languages’. AfLIA believes that quality, equitable and inclusive education should take cognizance of the multilingual nature of African communities and provide resources in different local languages. This may be all that is needed to assist children with reading difficulties to overcome their challenges.

Dunstanette Davies: It is our responsibility as a library to provide free, quality education for all. To accomplish this there are steps we need to take to make sure our services are efficient and effective. The major challenge in offering quality service is having the right resources and equipment. Thankfully we have been engaging with partners like AfLIA and Book Aid International to develop methods of acquiring needed resources and presenting our services. The library now accesses open licensing resources and makes them available for users. We are no longer limited to donations, and we have developed modern skills in the way we provide access to our collections. With training from AfLIA we now translate and use mother tongue books and materials in our libraries. We also believe that early literacy books should reach children with disabilities, and we do so by taking books to them in hospitals and via their communities.

Using what she learnt during AfLIA’s Early Literacy Development course, Dunstanette Davies was able to translate a StoryWeaver book from English into Krio for use in the library. Image source: StoryWeaver.

Lorato Trok: Our core work at Puku has always been about providing quality reviews done by people who are highly trained, equitable and inclusive. This means books that are reviewed are from all publishers, big and small, and especially in languages that are rarely represented in mainstream publishing, accessible through the Puku website to anyone who is able to connect. Our work is not just exclusive to Puku, we have shared our reviews with other entities, like the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), that share our vision. Our partner organizations like African Storybook provide openly licensed children's materials and cater for children with disabilities through audio stories in mother-tongue languages. Their apps are zero rated* and can be used without connecting with data. We ensure that we make the work of our partner organizations visible so that they can be widely accessed and used.

* Zero-rating a website or mobile app means that that website or app can be used without the consumer incurring any data costs.

Speaking of languages that are rarely represented in mainstream publishing, Trok, together with Puku, worked on getting Tortoise and Ostrich published, the first book available in South Africa’s endangered, N/uu language. The story is told by Katrina Esau, one of the last speakers of the N/uu language. It’s one of the San folk tales she was told as a child, sitting around the fire, listening to her family telling the same stories they had heard as children, keeping their oral story-telling tradition alive. Fondly known as Queen or Ouma, Katrina lives in Rosedale, outside Upington in South Africa’s Northern Cape province. Trok championed the project, getting behind the idea after encouraging Ouma Katrina to attend a My Language, My Heritage writing workshop hosted in the Northern Cape, and then getting to know her on a personal level. The book is available to purchase online from Book Circle Capital.

Purvi Shah for StoryWeaver: Our editors are committed to creating inclusive books that represent our readers. From commissioning writers who work in their mother tongue, to developing a gender and diversity guide with UNICEF, to making sure our books don’t leave anyone behind. This guide should be made available online soon.

StoryWeaver has catalyzed the creation of quality reading materials for children in indigenous languages that are largely ignored by mainstream publishers. Our innovative model has as its core a large repository of high -quality, openly licensed storybooks from publishers, such as Pratham Books, Book Dash, Room to Read and others, which can be read online, offline or printed and used. Users can also translate the original content into new languages and this has led to a huge amplification of books for children especially in minority and indigenous languages.

The model is predicated on the fact that there is a huge shortage of books in mother tongue languages for children and by empowering local actors to participate in the process of translation of original content, the book gap can be narrowed. In our quest to reach every child, in their mother tongue we did something very unusual for a publisher, we open sourced our books under the Creative Commons Attribution license. The idea behind this was not only to make our books available to all children for free but also to allow them to be translated into languages that we did not have expertise in, or to be versioned into new forms such as Braille books, audio books or audio visual books.

This action exponentially expanded our impact. It has been extremely heartening for us to see our mission come to life when we see hundreds of books being published in indigenous languages like Gondi, Kora, Pawari, Korku, Santali, Surjapuri and many more, from India and around the world. In most of these languages, books are either scarce or non-existent.

Some examples:

Storybooks in Chocholteco (an indigenous language from Mexico) on the platform are some of the first written records of the language in a decade. These storybooks have been translated by the language collectives and experts from Oaxaca, Mexico who are working to revitalise the language - they have created more than 300 storybooks on StoryWeaver in 15 indigenous languages like Mixe, Triqui, Chatino.
Suchana, an NGO in Birbhum district of West Bengal, India has been promoting learning among tribal children through their mother tongues in the early years. Both Santali and Kora have a rich oral tradition but no children’s literature. The collaboration with StoryWeaver allowed them to translate 105 books in Santali and a 100 in Kora within two years. 10,000 copies of 20 titles have been printed and distributed to government schools, pre-schools and other organizations in the region.
Surjapuri is a minor language spoken in pockets of Bihar, West Bengal, Assam in India and Bangladesh by 1.2 million people. Unfortunately, there are no books in this language and a real possibility of the language being lost as most people speak Hindi. A total of 100 books developed by the Azad India Foundation are now being used in the 75 learning centers run by the organization.
Toto is an oral language with no script and spoken only in a village called Totopara in Alipurdur in West Bengal, India. Under a project called the Study and Research of Indigenous and Endangered languages of India of the Jadavpur University, efforts were made to create a storybook on StoryWeaver to document the language.

StoryWeaver has also developed a translation sprint workshop model that has been used extensively in many countries to translate books into new languages. It includes a peer-to-peer review system that aids the quality checking of books that are created. Translation partners and individual language champions are also identified and upskilled through sustained community engagement.

Source: YouTube

Dorcas Wepukhulu for African Storybook: Currently, ASb has over 3,000 unique openly licensed storybooks and over 7,000 translations representing 200 African languages. The storybooks are published in five broad levels to cater for different reading abilities. Quality assurance is built into our storybook development and publishing process, especially for local languages where we don’t have internal capacity. We take into consideration what the target audience, such as a Ministry of Education, needs and considers appropriate, and simultaneously keep in mind global perspectives. It is a give and take process because we package specific content in a way that is generally acceptable and meaningful. This means, that we help participating writers to shift their mind-set, where necessary. Quality is also about how we present the language, content, characters and images to achieve what the story conveys, being mindful of children’s rights and emotions. Quality is not only about content, but also about effective, context-specific use of the books to maximise their potential and to achieve the desired change. We insert the ‘ASb approved’ label on the front of quality assured storybooks and showcase these on the landing page with a little ‘i’ explaining what this means. Only quality assured storybooks can be translated or adapted.

For children’s literacy material to be equitable and inclusive, it must be appropriate for the child’s context and age, with images that make sense to the child and support the meaning of the written text, it must also be available, accessible and affordable. With technology and open licensing, ASb aims to get storybooks to every child learning to read, in a language that is familiar to them; with content that speaks to their interests, and experience. Anyone with some internet connectivity, can access the website and download storybooks to read, download to print as PDF, or in bulk, or as an EPUB file. With a smartphone or tablet, one can also download the ASb Reader App from Google Play to create their own library on the device for reading offline. Where more resources are available, educators can combine digital and print to give children the experience of both.

Children with disabilities can read over 200 ASb storybooks in eBraille and/or in Kenya, Rwanda or Malawi sign language, made possible by our partner, eKitabu. Children with visual impairment can also access ASb audio storybooks from our other partner, Storybooks Canada and via Book Share for anyone with a reading or perceptual disability, a visual impairment, or a physical disability that affects their ability to read printed works.

Visit the StoryBooks Canada website to hear this story, Goat, Dog, and Cow read by Abenezer Chane in Amharic. The story is also available in many other languages that can be selected via the change language drop down menu.

This is an illustration of the African Storybook picture book, Goat, Dog, and Cow as it appears on the Storybooks Canada website. The menu on the right allows users to change the text and audio language the story is available in.

Julia Norrish at Book Dash: In terms of quality and equitable access to resources for all, the main thing for Book Dash is that the resources are of a high quality: the illustrations are beautiful, the story is well crafted and it's appropriate for the child’s age and context. They can see something in the characters and the environment that they can relate to, even if it's not a representation of their exact reality, and the stories, vocabulary, style and complexity of language, are not alienating to the child. The language also needs to be accessible, a language that they are familiar with; ideally home language when you're dealing with very young children, but exposure to common languages like English does become increasingly more important as the child gets older. Wordless books are also available so anyone with a certain level of visual literacy can access the pictures, but there's no formal text literacy required. Children and low-literate adults alike can access and tell the stories and still develop critical, emergent literacy skills.

Having physical, if not digital, versions of the books in their homes, whether that is because the device is in the home and the books are accessible on the device, or the physical books are in the home is important. We believe that having easy access to an abundance of books is what's going to lead to a change and positive reading behaviour for children, because a child should be able to choose what they want to read. That's what will nurture and trigger a love for reading.

Noluthando Ncube for the Zenex Foundation’s Ulwazi Lwethu project: The Ulwazi Lwethu Project is built on the ethos of accessibility, inclusivity, and equity. The project has made tremendous strides in creating and supporting capacity within the literacy development space. Writing for children is a specialized skill and writing for children in an African language is an even more specialized skill because there hasn’t been a lot of support in this space. With this project, we found either people who are mother tongue speakers, but not writers, or people who are mother tongue writers, but not for children. So, we saw this as professional development opportunity and invested in mentoring and training a cohort of writers and illustrators who could tackle subjects like technology, what is the internet, internet safety, and the stories behind our public holidays, amongst others, that hadn’t previously been available in all the South African languages. These stories were originated in one of the nine South African languages (other than English or Afrikaans), and then cross-versioned nine times, so that each illustrated story is available in its original language, as well as eight other versions.

For the books, we wanted South African stories that work as windows, that can give children knowledge and information about a world outside of their own, but we also wanted stories that could act as mirrors, so that the children would see themselves within the books.

The books were created in partnership with Room to Read, the Molteno Institute of Language and Literacy, the Nelson Mandela Institute at the University of Fort Hare, and African Storybook. Each book will credit the writer and the illustrator, responsible for creating the story, and because of the variations within individual language groups and various dialects, the books will also state where in South Africa the author comes from. The books are currently going through a quality assurance process with the University of Pretoria and will be available in March 2023. Phase two of the project will see the development of learning and teaching support materials that include teacher and parent guides.

We are committed to open resources in children's education and as such, the Ulwazi Lwethu leisure readers have been published under a CC-BY licence. However, the graded readers which were developed for classroom use, will be published under a CC BY-ND or No Derivatives licence which means they may not be modified as great care was taken to make them decodable and aligned to South Africa’s CAPS (Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement) curriculum.

Leanne Rencken Wed, 11/16/2022 - 12:29

Let’s talk about resilience and sustainability: Early literacy Q&A part 2 of 3

Leanne Rencken — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 10:11:48 +0000

Let’s talk about resilience and sustainability: Early literacy Q&A part 2 of 3

As noted in the first part of this series, we have divided this piece into three parts.

Our Q&A participants

Note: Part three will be released next week. Some of the answers have been edited for length.

In Part 2 of our Q&A we asked:

Given the upheaval experienced throughout COVID-19 and subsequently, what are you doing in 2022 to build more resilience for your organization and the learning you’re providing as well as for the learners who are embarking on their early literacy journey? With so many learners ‘lost’ to formal education when schools were shut, what are you doing to bring them back, or to ensure that early literacy learning reaches them…?

Nkem Osuigwe for AfLIA: Libraries learned various things from COVID-19. African libraries are beginning to understand the importance of offering information services even when their doors are closed. Learning must go on and education cannot wait. Librarians are beginning to latch on to the fact that libraries do not offer ‘formal structured’ avenues and spaces for learning. One can always catch up anytime as there are no promotion exams from one class to the other, so to speak. AfLIA, with the assistance of NBA, developed and ran a course on Early Literacy development to help African public and community librarians learn about services for children’s literacy. This was essential to close any gaps left by formal education institutions due to COVID-19 and remains an important tool as libraries open up again. This course has made more libraries step up in providing services that help children develop phonemic awareness and learn how to read.

A detailed report providing a summary of the findings from the course pilot can be found here.

Dunstanette Davies: COVID-19 badly struck our education system in Sierra Leone. Schools and colleges were closed. However, during the upheaval the library never shut its doors to the public. In fact, statistics show that the number of users and the number of books loaned out increased compared to the year before the pandemic. It was during this period that parents especially valued the library space and trusted us as a reliable partner in education. The library made several adjustments to meet the growing needs of its patrons. COVID-19 opened the library to unlimited possibilities. Not only did we set up mobile library systems to reach children who could not make the trip to our libraries, we also set up WhatsApp reading groups where selected books were read and discussed. The library was in constant communication with parents and caregivers, promoting our facility and encouraging them to use it. As we progress, we have not relented in our endeavours to ensure that early learners are being well catered for at school, at home, and within our libraries. Our 25 libraries across the country engage in the following: engagement with parents and children, commemorating national and international days, reading promotion, children’s activities including ‘story hour’, holiday reading programs, staff training and skills development, welcoming daycare centers into our children’s corners, marketing our services using various media, engaging stakeholders, and partners, and acquiring relevant books and resources.

Lorato Trok: Our organisation, Puku Children's Literature Foundation was affected tremendously by COVID-19 and even before then. We have held onto hope and we’re still steering our organization through the hardships. We have continued to review books that parents, teachers, and learners can access on our website. Our reviews can lead children and caregivers to books that are fun, and available via the publishers we link to on our website – we can only bring learners back to reading through books that are enjoyable.

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Lorato Trok (right) is pictured here at the recently held Gothenburg Book Fair in conversation with Professor Diphete Bopape (center), psychologist, teacher, author, editor and publisher, talking about writing for teenagers. Image source: Instagram

Purvi Shah for StoryWeaver: A 2021 study conducted by Azim Premji University in India found that due to COVID-19 related school closures, on average, year to year, 92% of children lost at least one language skill, for example reading familiar words, or writing simple sentences based on a picture, while 82% lost one mathematical skill, like identifying numbers or describing shapes. At StoryWeaver we took this time to pause, reflect and create programmes that leverage the power of stories to help teachers and parents bridge this gap. We created a suite of programmes for children from preschool through Grade 5 that include an early childhood, reading, foundational literacy, and a soon to be launched STEM literacy programme. Each of these is linked to learning outcomes and scaffolded with activities, worksheets, audio visual resources, and training videos, making it easier for any teacher anywhere to adopt. Stories are at the heart of all of this, ensuring that children stay connected, learn and heal. The programmes can be deployed in multiple ways while keeping in mind the child’s context, and whether they are online or offline, at home or in the classroom.

We have observed that in some regions, digital adoption has escalated because of the pandemic and the need for quickly adapting to remote learning. We believe that blended learning models, offline and online, are here to stay. Technology and openly-licensed content have the power to give children uninterrupted access to the resources they need to continue their reading and learning journeys, and StoryWeaver is committed to making this a reality, by building a strong, vibrant culture of reading.

Dorcas Wepukhulu for African Storybook: Essential to building more resilience for the ASb initiative and the lessons we are providing, is our strategy of collaborating with a wide range of partners involved in children’s literacy. These partners include education ministries, literacy development initiatives, international literacy partners, and individual literacy champions who work within their local communities.

For children from economically poor communities, attending school is not enough for them to recover what they lost during the COVID-19 pandemic, and so our champions’ strategy extends beyond formal school set-ups. For example, some champions work with under-represented groups such as girls and children in refugee camps, or with under-represented nomadic pastoralist communities who are constantly on the move.

Post COVID-19 we are expanding our strategy to work with more libraries and schools in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa like Kenya, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Zambia, and Ethiopia, to build the capacity of librarians and teachers and to create awareness among parents. The more educators and parents who are aware of the freely available ASb resources, the more they will access and use them independently to make up for lost literacy time.

African Storybook champion, Dr John Ng’asike is pictured here reading the African Storybook picture book, Muurui with children at the Locher Esekon Early Childhood Development Centre in Turkana County, Kenya. The Ng’aturkana language book, pictured on the right, can be found here on the African Storybook website. Image source: African Storybook website

Julia Norrish at Book Dash: Book Dash's approach of focusing on young children has always been informed by the understanding that development happens during the first five years at an extremely fast rate that is not repeated again later in life, and that it's the highest impact space for intervention. Therefore we are always thinking about how to achieve the greatest impact within the smallest amount of time. From the beginning we were set up to work with and reach young children in all sorts of formats, and not only in the formal learning environment. That allowed us, throughout COVID-19, to relatively easily reach children and get books into their homes because we weren't reliant on the school as a channel. We reach children primarily through literacy promotion projects, like Nal'ibali or Word Works, Literacy Association of South Africa (Litasa) or Early Childhood Development (ECD) projects and networks or training organizations. Our partners – a list of which can be found on our website – were also able to deliver books directly to the home, which further consolidated our approach to turning the home into a space of literacy, reading and learning.

We have and continue to develop resources for working with parents and educating them on how and why they should read with their child as it allows the many hours that a child spends at home to also be opportunities for learning. It will help with the learning losses that children have experienced during COVID-19. It’s always been part of our vision that every child should own a hundred books by the age of five, so we print and distribute enough books for each child to take books home to own. Because these books are individual resources rather than communal resources, we didn’t have to change anything to make sure there were enough physical books to go around during the pandemic.

Book Dash books are available globally through various distribution partners like The Asia Foundation’s Let’s Read initiative. The book pictured is called Shhhhh! and was created in English, in South Africa. It is now available in many different languages, including nine on this website alone, including Burmese (pictured), Lao and Kachin. Image source: Let's Read.

We are working actively with over 130 content partners, who use, adapt, share, print, and redistribute the Book Dash books and content and get them to families and children. When we talk to our partners, we have added a lot more emphasis about how to use our books, how to mediate them, and how to distribute the books to children in meaningful ways. Around the world we have content partners in Brazil, in Australia, in Papua New Guinea, in Laos, in remote parts of Italy, and in North America. We work with big hitters like the Global Digital Library, Story Weaver and World Reader, as well as small, localized partners. Going forward we will be actively focusing on tracking the reach of our books through our partnerships, so we can tell the story more clearly of how many children around the globe are interacting with and benefiting from the open license nature, and quality of the Book Dash books that we are producing. During COVID-19 our website users increased tenfold and haven't decreased since. So the online space that carries our free high quality resources has become relatively more important for us too.

Leanne Rencken Thu, 11/10/2022 - 12:11

What does transforming literacy spaces mean to you? Early literacy Q&A part 1 of 3

Leanne Rencken — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 14:13:22 +0000

What does transforming literacy spaces mean to you? Early literacy Q&A part 1 of 3

Although these questions were asked and answered independently, in reading the submissions, it’s incredible to see the relationships that exist between the organizations and the respondents, the influence they’ve had on one another, and the supportive nature of the work they do.

Our Q&A participants

Note: we have divided this piece into three parts. The second and third parts will be released in the next two weeks. Some of the answers have been edited for length.

Part 1
In your line of work or within your organization what ‘space’ does early literacy learning occupy, and where does learning happen?

_{^{*Space can refer to geographical location, whether it’s online or offline learning, libraries, or schools or at home.}}

Nkem Osuigwe for AfLIA: AfLIA believes that libraries hold great promise as ‘open’ spaces for learning where everyone within the community is welcome irrespective of gender, affiliation, status or creed. This is important for Africa as it holds the unenviable record as the continent with highest number of out of school children. From East to West, Central, North and Southern Africa, public and community libraries are providing spaces for early literacy development. Their services fill the gap for many families and schools that cannot afford supplementary reading materials for children. Beyond that, libraries welcome children to literacy-rich environments that make learning to read easier. This is critical as learning to read is the basis for academic achievement all through life.

Dunstanette Davies pictured shaking hands with President of Sierra Leone, his excellency Dr Julius Maada Bio at State House in Freetown: ‘As a proud librarian, I engaged him on the role librarians and libraries play in education and development of the Nation’s children’. Image source: Facebook

Dunstanette Davies: In my opinion, I feel some parents believe they should send their children to school as early as possible to gain an early learning experience. Unfortunately, in Sierra Leone schools do not enroll children until they are three years old and above, but learning starts much earlier than that. The daycare centers play a role but are mainly concerned with the physical needs of the child and make less educational provisions. The home, which should be a space for learning, is generally overlooked perhaps because there is no time, knowledge, and interest within the family. This leaves the library with a huge responsibility when it comes to early learning. Now the library’s doors are open to very young children, parents, and caregivers, as well as interested partners to promote, provide, and advocate for early learning.

Purvi Shah for Story Weaver: Pratham Books is a not for profit children’s book publisher with a mission to see a book in every child’s hand. Early literacy is at the heart of our work. We know that reading is powerful. It shapes our imagination and equips children with tools for social and emotional learning. The journey from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’ can be achieved by showing early readers that reading is a pleasurable activity. At the core of it, this means providing contextual books, visually rich and more importantly in their mother tongue. Through our award-winning open source digital platform StoryWeaver we make these stories accessible to parents and teachers in over 300 languages, for free.

It is our belief that every child has the #RightToRead an endless stream of stories. This may happen via our wordless books that invite children to pick up a book for the first time, or as they progress, the storycards that are read aloud in angandwadis (preschool centres). They might gravitate towards our audio-video books that aid language acquisition, or our levelled storybooks, created so that every page offers a joyful reading experience. We also deliver stories via WhatsApp, enabling children to huddle over a device and share them, alternatively bigger groups of children can improve their vocabulary and comprehension while enjoying stories told by their teacher or a librarian, using a projector in the classroom or library.

Dorcas Wepukhulu for ASb: The ASb’s vision of open access to picture storybooks in the languages of Africa, for children’s learning, enjoyment and imagination, offers opportunities for everyone who supports children’s literacy to innovate so that no child is excluded. We have increasingly become aware that literacy learning is not limited to the physical environment, and technology plays a major role in making this happen. Literacy learning can and does take place in schools, libraries, homes, and anywhere else children may be due to prevailing circumstances. COVID-19 has made this clear.

Innovation is about reconsidering classroom and library interactions and supporting teachers and librarians to embrace technology to maximize their potential as educators. With our support, they can use our storybooks, tools and guides in diverse ways to entrench reading and writing with children in varying contexts.

The ASb guides, which can be found on the website, help teachers, librarians, parents and caregivers with story selection and effective use of resources. Our website and Story Maker Android App are used to translate and adapt storybooks into languages and levels as needed. Teachers and librarians can also give a voice to children by encouraging them to digitize their own stories into picture books that represent their own experiences.

Julia Norrish at Book Dash: For Book Dash, learning and literacy happens in several spaces. But the one we are primarily interested in is reading in the home with caregivers, siblings, family, friends, neighbors, and other children. We use networks of early childhood development and literacy projects, as well as healthcare touchpoints, as mediation spaces where we can distribute books that will ultimately be given to the child to take home and own forever. By sending books into their homes, we hope to create opportunities for literacy and learning to take place, and for families to benefit from the joy of reading together. With resources in hand, the home can become a space of learning and literacy, storytelling, healing and safety, and growth and development. While public spaces are very critical, one should not be reliant on a library or a center of learning. Book Dash believes one should have agency in the home space to actively exercise and practice positive family literacy practices.

Noluthando Ncube for the Zenex Foundation’s Ulwazi Lwethu project: The situation in South Africa is that there is very little material designed for early learning in African mother-tongue languages. Where this material does exist, a lot of it hasn’t been developed in African languages, but rather translated from material that was produced in English. The Ulwazi Lwethu project was therefore established to meet two needs: firstly, to create African language materials, and secondly to support mother tongue literacy. The project has developed original stories in nine indigenous South African languages, those stories were then cross-versioned into the other languages as well. Ultimately, this means we have developed over 700 graded readers and made them available for classroom use in the foundation phase, where early literacy learning can now happen in mother tongue.

Read part two in this series.

Leanne Rencken Tue, 11/01/2022 - 16:13

In conversation with Akoss Ofori-Mensah

Leanne Rencken — Fri, 26 Aug 2022 08:37:38 +0000

In conversation with Akoss Ofori-Mensah

The founder and managing director of Sub-Saharan Publishers, Akoss Ofori-Mensah is a force to be reckoned with in the publishing industry. As part of our ‘in conversation with’ series, we chat to Akoss from her home in Accra, Ghana, about the current state of publishing in Africa, the importance of sharing African stories with the rest of the world, the impact of COVID-19 on the industry, and, in her opinion, how much African creatives have lost with the diminution of the Zimbabwe International Book Fair. (ZIBF)

As noted on her LinkedIn profile, Akoss has ‘proved African published books can and do travel!’ She has done this over many years in the industry as a publisher, and while serving the Ghana Book Publishers Association in various roles, including president. She has also been a member of the African Publishers Network (APNET), the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Executive Committee, and sits on the African Books Collective's Council of Management, as well as on the Africa Publishing Innovation Fund (APIF) Committee.

Leanne Rencken (LR) for the Early Literacy Resource Network: Cognizant of the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on early literacy and learning in general, can you provide some insight into the current state of the book and publishing industry on the continent and in the market that Sub-Saharan Publishers (SSP) serves?

Akoss Ofori-Mensah (AOM): Organizations like Worldreader were involved with the provision of readers on tablets for children in Ghana long before the pandemic hit, and SSP has 15 titles with them. The Ghana Book Development Council, often in concert with the Ghana Library Authority supplies readers to schools and since the COVID-19 related lockdowns, has run reading programmes. Although other organizations were doing similar work, children in public schools were still affected because they do not have phones or tablets from which they can read.

Despite the technology, I think physical books will hold sway for a long time to come; and in places like Africa, where the power supply is unreliable, children are better off with physical books.

In the book business, physical meetings help a lot; the way a book is presented to a customer determines their interest in the book. Thus, book fairs are extremely important in exposing the book to the greater world. The Frankfurt and London Book Fairs and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair are crucial to the book trade, but they were all cancelled during the COVID-19 lockdowns and so international marketing was stalled, and business has been poor.

In 2019, at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in collaboration with the Association of Italian Publishers and the International Publishers Association (IPA), Sub-Saharan Publishers won the Bologna Prize for the best children’s publishers of the year (Africa) in recognition for ‘specializing in books that deal with environmental themes’. The books pictured above are available on the Sub-Saharan Publishers’ website as well as the African Books Collective* website.

On the African continent, we are still not on our feet since the collapse of ZIBF in the mid 2000s. ZIBF was a vibrant fair that drew participants from all over the world. I sold many of the rights for the Meshack Asare novel, Sosu’s Call there. The Cape Town International Book Fair took over from ZIBF, and in 2006 I sold ten titles to Rainbird Publishers. Unfortunately, it subsequently also had a nosedive.

Without a bustling African book fair, Frankfurt and Bologna provided crucial alternatives. It was at these two fairs that the rights for Sosu’s Call were sold to the USA, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Brazil, the UK, Denmark, Mongolia, and Taiwan. At the same time, courtesy of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the late Viviana Quiñones’ work with La Joie par les Livres (joy through books), Francophone West Africa got a French edition of Sosu’s Call.

LR: How do we get books into children’s hands? Especially mother-tongue resources. Do you think publishers / government agencies can do more to partner with libraries?

AOM: In Africa, we have a challenge in that we do not speak the same language in many communities. The East Africans are lucky because they adopted Kiswahili as a regional/official language. In other parts of Africa, things are very different. For example, in Ghana, we have many languages like Ewe, Nzima, Ga, Dagbani, Kassem, and Akan, and there are at least four varieties of Akan, each with its own orthography. In Nigeria, they have Yoruba, Ibo, Hausa and many other smaller language groups. South Africa is perhaps the only African country that has seriously developed some of its languages such as Ndebele, Zulu, Xhosa, Swati and Sesotho. In this regard I salute the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA) for the work they have done in providing readers in the various South African languages, especially for children!

The European missionaries who brought Western education to the Gold Coast studied the languages of the people among whom they settled and developed the orthography and books in languages like Ga, Asante Twi, Akwapim Twi and Fanti Twi. However, it appears at some point in the development of Ghana, literacy in English was emphasized to the disadvantage of local languages. Thus, most publishers do not publish books in mother tongue.

Development partners at times buy readers in local languages for disadvantaged communities. An example is the Fati series which we published in Dagaare for UNICEF/USAID for children in northern Ghana. We have also done a book on environmental cleanliness in Dagbani for the Environmental Protection Agency in Ghana. And two of our picture books by Meshack Asare, Kwajo and the Brassman’s Secret, and Meliga’s Day have been translated and published in Ewe and Kassem respectively. However, the crux of the matter is that the colonial languages still hold sway as the powers that be send their children to private schools to learn English and French; and all official transactions are done in English. Thus, not much attention is paid to the teaching and development of readers in local languages. Teachers should be trained to learn at least one local language in addition to their own, so that they are able to teach it.

LR: Does technology and connectivity offer any hope to the publishing industry? Would accessibility to online readers and a better internet infrastructure make a lasting difference? Would publishers benefit from training in the creation of ebooks?

AOM: Internet connectivity is often unreliable. Often there are power cuts and students cannot charge their phones; neither can they read physical books at night. And, unlike the Western world, it’s not that easy for every child to have access to a computer or a tablet. It’s quite expensive for the Ministry of Education to get these things for all the children in the country. Available electricity is also vital for actual publishing work as it is needed for designing and typesetting. However, I appreciate the fact that through the internet I have managed to keep in touch with friends and customers to some extent. Because we have a website and we’ve been going to book fairs over the years, a lot of our books have travelled to other countries. Just this week I sold rights for one of the books, Gizo-Gizo! A tale from the Zongo Lagoon, to a Japanese publishing company who discovered the children’s story via our website and will be translating it into Japanese.

LR: For African publishers, textbook production is their bread and butter; can we do more to produce books related to the idea of reading for pleasure, and educating children on the joy inherent in leisure reading?

AOM: Mostly, it is the proceeds from textbooks that are used to develop readers and that is one of the reasons why a lot of publishers produce textbooks. Once a textbook is selected by the Ministry, the publisher can be sure of a bulk purchase which will fetch some funds which can be used to produce other books, like readers. I have done this a few times in my publishing house. I have published a lot of children’s books, which only became available because I had previously done a textbook for the Ministry.

However, in Ghana the production of textbooks is fraught with challenges, and the creation of textbooks for primary schools has been in limbo since 2019. It is only now in 2022 that contracts have been issued; it takes forever for the Ministry to assess and select the books deemed appropriate for schools. With all their resources absorbed by textbooks, publishers find it difficult to do readers. Right now, I’m completely broke! We’ve done the textbooks for the Ministry, but it looks as if it’s going to take a long time before we get paid.

LR: As a publisher, you have a good idea of what it takes to create books for children. Are we doing enough to develop the skills needed to produce children’s books: writing, illustrating, translating, editing, designing? Are we doing enough to inspire young people to pursue these skills as career options?

AOM: A great number of publishers come into the profession without ever having been to a publishing school, myself included. However, more on-the-job training could be provided. That is one of the things I miss about the ZIBF; they used to run workshops for editors, illustrators, booksellers, and designers. I also remember that when donors set up APNET they gave every national publishers association a computer and many training workshops were held to train African publishers in these skills. The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has a Publishing Studies department in Kumasi, Ghana, and there’s something similar in South Africa. I think at least one university in each African country should have a training centre where young aspiring publishers can learn the trade. Alternatively, for those who can afford it, Oxford Brooks University in the UK offers courses in publishing.

LR: The World Bank initiative, Read@Home, is focusing on print rather than digital access because they understand that internet, technology, and devices are not readily available in many homes, particularly in rural areas. Do you agree with that strategy?

AOM: Yes, I support the Read@home programme and I believe the printed book will be with us for many years to come. Aside from internet connectivity, which is not reliable, having the book in hand gives the reader a positive feeling. One can read as and when he or she feels like it, and they are not conditioned by the availability of the internet.

LR: NBA is collaborating on creating learning materials for designers on using InDesign and other DTP software to create storybooks for printing. What has been your experience in Ghana and elsewhere in Africa on the skills level of professional designers?

AOM: I have worked with one designer for many years, Kwabena Agyepong; he was trained at KNUST, and he is excellent. Some of the covers he has designed include the Meshack Asare books Tawia goes to Sea, The Magic Goat, Noma’s Sand and The Canoe’s Story among others.

The cover of the Meshack Asare children’s book, Tawia Goes to Sea.

There are people in the industry with an interest in art who learn design and illustration on the job, but if they could afford it, cost and timewise, it would be better for them do a complete course at a university so they can handle the job better. A short course would also work.

LR: What do you make of the grant winners for the IPA’s Africa Publishing Innovation Fund Awards - 2022?

AOM: The indefatigable IPA President, Bodour Al Quasimi, deserves a gold medal and great commendation for what she has done to revive publishing and reading in Africa. Abandoned libraries have been refurbished and stocked with new books; reading programmes are being supported; and innovative ways of providing reading materials, such as audiobooks, for both children and adults, have been put into place. The president had a fund set up and people could present their projects and apply, and if they qualified the IPA gave them support. She did not discriminate; projects from all over Africa were supported. I haven’t seen something like that in my entire publishing career. She has done tremendous work! May God richly bless her.

An example of her work is the support the fund gave for the establishment of a learning resource centre in Paga, in the upper east region of Ghana. This is one of the impoverished regions; and the girls there run down south to become head porters in the markets of Kumasi and Accra. Their reason for running is to escape from being forcibly married to men old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers. A young woman, Alira Bushiratu, has set up a learning resource centre, called Learners Girls Foundation with an APIF grant, as an alternative for girls from that region to seek education and computer skills. She also allows boys to benefit from the resource centre. In my humble opinion, this project is the best thing that has happened to that region of Ghana.

LR: Are African publishers doing enough to create more accessible books in formats that are targeted towards print-disabled (blind / visually impaired) young readers?

AOM: African publishers are creating works for young children, but they have not paid much attention to physically challenged children. I think that area needs to be addressed.

Meshack Asare’s Sosu’s Call is about a young, disabled Ghanaian boy who saves his village from rising floods. The highly commended book was published in 1997, and has been recognized by UNESCO, winning the first prize for Children’s Literature in the Service of Tolerance in 1999. It was also listed among the Top 12 of Africa’s 100 Best Books for the 20th Century, and IBBY has included it on their Outstanding Books list for 2001 for its depiction of young people with disabilities.

LR: In conclusion, let’s talk about the importance of African publishing to Africa – it’s cultures, literature, and history, beyond the role of publishing textbooks for government.

AOM: As a child, I read European children’s stories, and as I grew up, I got into the publishing business, and I felt that, as Africans, we have stories we can share with the rest of the world. For example, I’ve done two stories from Ethiopia, Mimi Mystery and Taytu Betul, The Sunshine Queen, and I got this story from Burkina Faso, Yennenga: The Dagomba Princess, I’ve even got Fly, Eagle, Fly which I took from South Africa, even though the story is really from Ghana. I’ve also got a story from Uganda, The Blue Marble, written by a young Ugandan woman, and one from Brazil, an African folk tale taken there by the slaves… I think it is our responsibility as publishers to tell our stories; to share our stories with others, just as the Europeans have shared their children’s stories with us. As I mentioned earlier, a story we have published about a Zongo, i.e., a Muslim community in Ghana, is now being published in Japanese. So, there are people out there who are interested in reading African stories, or they want to give them to their children, therefore it’s up to us to develop these stories and share them with the rest of the world.

At home, a lot of the books available in local languages are very old material. When I was going to school, I read stories in my language, Asante Twi, but younger people coming up don’t have that. In fact, if you go to the bookshops, you will hardly see any books in local languages. Right now, I would say that if publishers are not producing books in local languages, it’s simply because they feel they will not be bought.

Even if the Ministry of Education does not ask for books in mother tongue, it is our responsibility as publishers to publish books in our local languages, to keep our cultures alive. The time will come when if we don’t do anything about that, we won’t be able to speak our various languages, or write them. We shall forget them; but it’s our languages that make us who we are, so it is important that we cultivate them.

*The African Books Collective is an African organization that markets African published books in the global north. Based in the UK, they sell SSP books in Europe and the USA.

Leanne Rencken Fri, 08/26/2022 - 10:37

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