We are delighted to launch our first storybook in a series named ‘Kwame’s Adventures’. This particular story is based in Tease, one of our EduSpots communities in the Afram Plains area of the Eastern Region of Ghana. It is entitled ‘Tease and the Missing Science Book’.
The key aim of this project was to enable Ghanaian children to see their communities represented in fiction, creating a series of books with characters and events that they could relate, hoping that this will increase their interest in reading more widely.
Alicia and Elena from our EduLit service group at Sevenoaks School explain how the storybook was created:
‘Throughout “Kwame’s Adventures”, our main character, Kwame the bird, visits communities across Ghana, meeting locals and embracing their culture. In order to be able to do this, we first sent each community a survey to about all the amazing qualities that make their community special and unique, for instance, the Mmoaninko Festival in Abofour. The community also inputted into the story’s narrative at multiple stages in the process, before Fleance Forkuo, a Ghanaian illustrator, created the illustrations.’
In response to the first book in the series, Justina, aged 14, from the Tease community says:
‘It is amazing to have a book written about my community. I find the most interesting point is where Esi cries about losing her science book. It shows us that she is serious about her studies and encourages us young readers to be serious too, in order to reach our aims and goals in life to become reasonable future leaders.’
We would particularly like to thank Ms Anne Durnford, an English Teacher at Sevenoaks School, Stephen Tettegah, part of our EduSpots team, and Alice Nkansa Danquah, the librarian in Tease, for all their efforts that enabled this storybook to become a reality.
We hope that students across Ghana, and indeed the world, will enjoy accessing it online without charge. We will be doing a small print for the Tease community and our network of ‘spots’, before launching our sales strategy.