Today is the Day

Written by Eric Walters

Illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-648-4

32 pp.

Ages 6-9

October, 2015 

That's Mutanu on the cover of Today is the Day, and she is bursting with joy because today really is the day.  It's the day that has been designated as her birthday and those of other orphans since their arrival at the orphanage in Kikima.  Like many children in rural Kenya, Mutanu's birthday was never noted or written down or celebrated.  But everything in her life has changed since she came to live at the orphanage, a real institution created by the Creation of Hope project.  Now that she has been there almost a year, she will be able to partake in the glorious celebration of their births.

Eric Walters and illustrator Eugenie Fernandes take the reader through Mutanu's regular day of chores–sweeping the yard, feeding the orphanage dog Rafiki, a new mother–and acknowledging the birth days of the new puppies and the new baby calf.  New lives at the orphanage–puppies, calves, kittens, kids, and lambs–are joyfully acknowledged by the girl whose new life began when her own grandmother had grown too old and frail to care for her after the child's parents died. But today, her grandmother and the numerous relatives of the children who live at the orphanage come to help the 150 children celebrate.  There are bags with gifts for each child, and party hats, and, most importantly for Mutanu, there is cake, many cakes, and the singing of the birthday song to themselves.  Mutanu's joy is boundless.

From Today is the Day, written by Eric Walters, illustrated by Eugenie Fernandes

Just like the celebration in which all revel, Today is the Day is a celebration itself.  It celebrates the children who deserve to be recognized with a birthday and a birth certificate. It celebrates the Creation of Hope project for the good work it does.  And it celebrates the hope and joy that Eric Walters and Eugenie Fernandes bring forth in their writing and artistic talents respectively.  Today is the Day is to be celebrated in so many ways.

Community Soup

by Alma Fullerton

Pajama Press

978-1-927485-27-9

32 pp.

Ages 4-7

May 15, 2013

Ah, it's soup day, and everyone has something to do.  Jomo, Dalila, Matu and Amundi are collecting beans, a pumpkin, sweet potatoes and corn from their school garden.  The teachers are stirring the pots.  And Kioni? She's like Mary of the lambs but with goats who follow her to school although against the No Goats rule! But goats will be goats and they are soon into the garden.  While the children herd the goats away from their produce, Kioni comes up with a tasty solution that allows the goats to participate in the community soup-making, without coming to any harm.

Alma Fullerton may be known for her award-winning novels in verse such as In the Garage (Red Deer Press, 2006), Walking on Glass (HarperCollins Canada, 2006), Libertad (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2008) and Burn (Dancing Cat Books, 2010) but last year's A Good Trade, also from Pajama Press, heralded her auspicious entry into the club of CanLit picture book authors.  With Community Soup, her newest offering, Alma Fullerton can now add CanLit picture book illustrator to her resumé.

Still putting her story into the joyous rhyme of a favourite nursery tale, Alma Fullerton enhances it with her three-dimensional artwork in mixed media with collages of paper cutouts creating a bounty of textures, teeming with the bold and evocative colours of a Kenyan community.  And the satisfaction of creating a dish cooperatively from the fruits (and vegetables) of their labour and successfully with solving the dilemma of the errant goats is all the greater, for the children and the readers.

But Alma Fullerton doesn't stop there.  In addition to sharing her art and rhyme, she provides the recipe for Pumpkin Vegetable Soup (see below) and donates a portion of her book proceeds to the Creation of Hope Project, delivering further to the cooperative quality of Community Soup. Bon appetit!

The Paper House

by Lois Peterson
Orca Book Publishers
978-1-4598-0051-9
108 pp.
Ages 8-11
2012

Safiyah's ten years of life have been fraught with many hardships and tragedies.  She and her grandmother, Cucu, live in slums of Kibera outside of Nairobi, Kenya.  Her parents have both passed, her mother from AIDS, and now Cucu is ill and coughing up blood.  Fearful of losing the only family she has, and far away from her birth place, where the failure of the crops forced them to Kibera, Safiyah is determined to make improvements to their hut by repairing the holes that let the smoke and cold night air in.  In her daily scavenges of the dump, where she usually excavates those items which she can sell, Safiyah gathers old magazines with their glossy pictures of beautiful women, glamourous homes, fancy cars, and unfamiliar lives, hoping to use the paper to chink the cracks.

After repairing the walls, Safiyah selects magazine pictures to decorate the outside of the hut, using the scissors and paste shared from her friend Pendo's school.  The magazines are coveted by others, including young Chidi who tries to steal the magazines from her in the dump.  Fortunately for Safiyah, the infamous red-hair-dyed gang leader, Blade, comes to her rescue several times, while ensuring his cousin Chidi attends school regularly.  Although Cucu is vehement that Safiyah stay away from Blade a.k.a. Rasul, Safiyah reveals to him her fears for her grandmother's health.

This innocent admission to Rasul and her engagement with Pendo in the decoration of the house walls bring Safiyah to reognizing the efforts she must make in order to enrich her life with others.  As Cucu has reminded her, "Words are easy. Friendship is hard."  By embracing the help of others, without demeaning their efforts, Safiyah gets medical help for her grandmother and creates a work of art on the walls of their hut that brings even more blessings.

Safiyah's story of The Paper House demonstrates that, though the lives of children may be different, everyone has a way to connect with others and can benefit from these connections.  Safiyah learns that not everyone is as poor as they are but this is a lesson she needs to understand to elicit assistance.  Furthermore, although Rasul's family is obviously far wealthier than Safiyah's, the loss of Rasul's sister and the necessity for Chidi to become part of a new family indicate that anyone can experience tragedies and hardships.  With The Paper House, Safiyah makes her own luck, achieving a dream she believed impossible to attain, while endeavouring to improve the lives of others.

While I was not always sympathetic to Safiyah's reactions when she was upset (e.g., chastisizing Pendo for pasting the pictures on wrong when her friend only wanted to help), I cannot imagine the breadth of disappointment, fear, and unhappiness which pervades her responses.  Lois Peterson provides Safiyah with the demeanour of a child who must endure life, not embrace it, and so Saffy's less-than-considerate attitude may be more authentic even if less desirable.

The Paper House is a perfect read for sharing the lives of children in different parts of the world and providing a foundation of empathy upon which the supporting walls of understanding and caring can be built.