books with African characters

[delphinedownunder]

I am a teacher in NZ and i have a new child in my class who is from Zimbabwe. I have been all through our library and the number of books we have that include African characters or even faces is really limited - lots of Maori and Pacific children as you would expect, but African families are just so rare outside of the small number of schools with Somalian refuge children and so are widely available books that include African faces. Today i found a non fiction book about breakfasts around the world that included photos of an African family and the child was so excited. She cried out "These people are just like me, look!" I am desperately looking for some more books I can buy from the UK to read to the class - so far, i have identified the Handa books and the Akimbo books. Any more suggestions?

Its published by Tamarind books HERE and they have a great selection that may appeal.

Could you put in a request to the National Library Service to Schools?

The author of those no 1 ladies detective agency books wrote a couple for kids, they are called precious & the monkey and precious and the mere cat. My dd is 7 and loves them both, they are set in either zim or Tanzania, can't remember which.

www.amazon.co.uk/Precious-Monkeys-Ramotswe-Alexander-McCall/dp/1846972043

A triangle for adora is nice, it's about shapes so can link in with maths for under 8s.

Just want to check delphinedownunder that if you are going to order books in NZ that you know about the book depository and their free delivery service. (Apologies if my 2 suggestions are teaching my grandmother to suck eggs).

Do you know about Letterbox Library? (Sorry if link doesn't work, have been fiddling with it for ages!). They specialise in multicultural books and have little synopses of the books on their website.

I don't know what age you are dealing with but the Lauren St John books in the White Giraffe series are lovely. They are set in South Africa and centre on the African wildlife. www.laurenstjohn.com/book-category/childrens-fiction

AustralEd is a book supply company that supplies books to International Schools/schools that teach IB, so they try to feature books from many cultures. They also put together recommended book lists.