Kirsty's blog

Kalamu Ndogo (Little Scribes) is a new book series written by children for children under the auspices of the Soma Book Café Watoto na Vitabu (Children and Books) storytelling hub and Saturday children’s programme. This is a space for children between the ages of six and 13 to hone their reading and storytelling skills.

Schools may be closed, but children can continue to learn and enjoy reading storybooks during this difficult period. We’ve told you about wonderful places to identify good storybooks in previous blog posts.

In this post, we’re going to tell you about resources for parents and caregivers who want to help their children with learning and reading.

Now that so many of us are locked down and locked in because of COVID-19, it is the time to explore the virtual world of children’s stories – all free to read and all openly licensed. A few great platforms are listed below:

African Storybook

In February we celebrate World Read Aloud Day (5 February) and International Mother Language Day (21 February).

Here are some links to find openly licensed storybooks and reading resources to read aloud in some of the 7,000 living languages:

Meet Akoss Ofori-Mensah of Sub-Saharan Publishers. She is working with Neil Butcher & Associates (NBA) to research the impact of open licensing on publishing business models by sharing books in underserved local Ghanaian languages. Akoss says she agreed to this work because she wants to understand how open licensing works and:

…its benefits to children; especially allowing them to read stories in their own mother tongue.