A sweet ode to fatherhood and the special relationships children share with each member of their family, On My Papa's Shoulders reminds us that it's not about where we're going, but rather the people who walk with us along the way.
From the director of Aau's Song, a Star Wars: Visions film from Lucasfilm, and the director of the 2023 NYICFF award-winning The Smeds and the Smoos
Siku has always called the Zambezi River her home. She understands the water - and strangely enough, it seems to understand her, too, bending to her will and coming to her aid in times of need. But things are changing on the river - a great dam is being built, displacing thousands of Shonga people - and things are changing in Siku, too, as her ability to manipulate water grows out of control, and visions of a great serpent pull her further from reality and her loving father, Tongai.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
A CBC Spring 2024 Showcase Selection
No matter where she goes, or how big she grows, Wanjikũ knows her name.
In the lush Kenyan countryside, a young Gikũyũ girl helps her grandmother with daily tasks. Here, as she tends to the cows, carries water, and plays in the fruit trees and sugarcane, she is called Wanjikũ.
On the busy city streets of Nairobi, where she goes to school, she is called by her English name, Catherine. But at home with Wangarĩ, the maid who cooks and cares for her, she is again Wanjikũ.
All grown up in boarding school, Catherine is the leader of her class, surrounded by friends from different cultural backgrounds. But at night, when she gathers with her fellow Gikũyũ sisters to speak her mother tongue, she is Wanjikũ once more.
Gloriously illustrated, alive with the joie de vivre of girlhood, and based on the author's own beloved childhood memories, Wanjikũ, Child of Mine is an ode to the heritage that walks alongside us, and a love song for the sisters we make on the journey.
Bokang Damane is a talented outsider, a dreamer, at his prestigious school. His problems mount after writing an essay - not even a controversial essay - on racial or political issues. Just a short paper on suicide. Really? Talk about drama. Now life is just a slog of unsolvable problems. Problem #1: Not black enough for the black kids and too black for the white kids. Yep, that's what happens when you attend a pompous all boys' school and live in the suburbs. Problem #2: Family finances are a joke - they can't even afford Bokang's initiation as a Xhosa. How can he function without respect, respect that only a Xhosa man commands after the weeks-long initiation ordeal in the countryside? Problem #3: An alcoholic, gambling attorney for a father who expects the world to bend to his will or fist.
Bokang just wants to rap, sketch, and be left alone. Everyone keeps talking about Bokang reaching his true potential, but everyone also keeps getting in the way. So what happens? Boy meets girl - a beautiful girl, Nokwanda. It wouldn't be a story otherwise. But she comes with her own set of issues. Most of all, Napoleon, her hulking on again, off again boyfriend who has been known to assuage his jealousies with a good old-fashioned beat-down.
It's a fight to find the flow - a spark to rise above the raging seas of family strife and school pressure and discover a path, though fraught with danger, into the future.
A Kirkus Reviews Best YA Book of 2022
A USBBY 2023 Outstanding International Book
A 2022 Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner (Graphic Novels & Comics Category)
Honorable mention, 2023 Children's Africana Book Awards2022 VLA Graphic Novel Diversity Award Overfloweth honoreeNominated for the TLA Maverick List All Rise: Resistance and Rebellion in South Africa revives six true stories of resistance by marginalized South Africans against the country's colonial government in the years leading up to Apartheid. In six parts--each of which is illustrated by a different South African artist--All Rise shares the long-forgotten struggles of ordinary, working-class women and men who defended the disempowered during a tumultuous period in South African history. From immigrants and miners to tram workers and washerwomen, the everyday people in these stories bore the brunt of oppression and in some cases risked their lives to bring about positive change for future generations.This graphic anthology breathes new life into a history dominated by icons, and promises to inspire all readers to become everyday activists and allies. The diverse creative team behind All Rise, from an array of races, genders, and backgrounds, is a testament to the multicultural South Africa dreamed of by the heroes in these stories--true stories of grit, compassion, and hope, now being told for the first time in print.
Part of Niki Daly's Lolo series
For Lolo, every day's a new adventure. Whether it's earning gold stars at school or returning a lost ring, she's ready for anything. Follow along with Lolo as she learns lessons about sharing, being brave, and being a good friend.
In these easy-to-read stories, we meet the curious, fun-loving, adventurous Lolo, a girl living in South Africa with her mother and grandmother, Gogo. Woven with heart and humor, and illustrated with charming black-and-white drawings, these stories are perfect for the beginning reader.
In Here Comes Lolo, Lolo gets a gold star at school, longs for a cute floppy hat, finds a missing ring, and helps to rescue a dog, all with her trademark humor and quirky style.
Brittle Paper's Anticipated African Books of 2024
From Short Story Day Africa, eleven writers from Africa and the African diaspora explore the identities that connect us, the obsessions that bewitch us, and the self-delusions that drive us apart.
Passion and apathy, creation and destruction, honesty and deception-the blurred lines between these powerful forces are fundamental to the human condition. In three parts, the writers of Captive investigate these liminal spaces and rail against the boxes in which others seek to confine them, as writers, as Africans, and as humans.
Journey from the fantastical Heaven's Mouth where time stands still, to a London bus where a neurodiverse woman steals love to the songs of Tom Jones . . . flip the page to Ghana to examine a fertility fetish, or a post-apocalyptic Lesotho where sentient AI uses our emotions against us . . . visit the deceptively beautiful islands off the Tanzanian coast, where the ocean is always hungry, and women pay the price. Captive is a riot of imagination, a collision of worlds, and a testament to the shape-shifting nature of the soul.
From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
Book 2 in the City of Kings trilogy, including her multiple award-winning debut novel The Theory of FlightSet in a southern African country that is never named, this powerful tale of human fallibility--told with empathy, generosity, and a light touch--is an excursion into the interiority of the colonizer.
Emil Coetzee, a civil servant in his fifties, is washing blood off his hands when the ceasefire is announced. Like everyone else, he feels unmoored by the end of the conflict. War had given him his sense of purpose, his identity. But why has Emil's life turned out so different from his parents', who spent cheery Friday evenings flapping and flailing the Charleston or dancing the foxtrot? What happened to the Emil who used to wade through the singing elephant grass of the savannah, losing himself in it?
Continuing the interconnected stories she began in her award-winning novel The Theory of Flight, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu explores decades of history through the eyes of one man on his journey from boyhood to manhood, and the changes that befall him through love, loss, and war. With sympathy, complexity, and penetrating insight, The History of Man explores what makes a man, a father, and a nation.
Mercy lives in modern-day Pietermaritzburg, South Africa with her eccentric foster aunts--two elderly sisters so poor, they can only afford one lightbulb. A nasty housing developer is eying their house. And that same house suddenly starts falling apart--just as Aunt Flora starts falling apart. She's forgetting words, names, and even how to behave in public. Mercy tries to keep her head down at school so nobody notices her. But when a classmate frames her for stealing the school's raffle money, Mercy's teachers decide to take a closer look at her home life.
Along comes Mr. Singh, who rents the back cottage of the house on Hodson Road. When he takes Mercy to visit a statue in the middle of the city, she learns that the shy, nervous Mohandas he tells stories about is actually Gandhi, who spent a cold and lonely night in the waiting room of the Pietermaritzburg train station over a hundred years ago. It marked the beginning of his life's quest for truth...and the visit to his statue marks Mercy's realization that she needs--just like Gandhi--to stand up for herself.
Mercy needs a miracle. But to summon that miracle, she has to find her voice and tell the truth--and that truth is neither pure nor simple.
Part of Niki Daly's Lolo series
Hooray Hurrah Hurray for Lolo, the energetic, curious, and fun-loving girl at the center of Niki Daly's series of books for beginning readers. She's thoughtful, funny, and always ready for anything. Whether it's helping to babysit baby Bongi or learning all about the library, she's sure to do it with kindness and humor.
In this collection of easy-to-read stories, we meet Lolo, a girl who lives in South Africa with her mother and grandmother, Gogo. Charmingly illustrated by the author, Hooray for Lolo follows Lolo as she explores her world, and the new adventures each day brings.
In Hooray for Lolo, Lolo she gets angry with her best friend, finds a favorite library book, goes to the hospital, and helps to look after Baby Bongi.