Beatrice's Dream: Life in an African Slum - Softcover

Williams, Karen Lynn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1847804187 ISBN 13: 9781847804181

Publisher: Frances Lincoln Children's Books, 2013

Synopsis

Beatrice is a thirteen-year-old orphan in Kibera, Nairobi, a Kenyan shantytown built on refuse and rubbish and one of the biggest slums in Africa. In this book she describes her life: her walk to school, the dust that blows between her teeth and the mud she wades through, her teacher's down-to-earth encouragement, her fear of being alone, how safe she feels at school . . . This sensitive account in words and photographs reveals the realities of life for some of the world's most deprived people and offers hope as Beatrice follows her dream to be a nurse.

About this title

About the Author:

Karen Lynn Williams is the author of over a dozen books for children, including Galimoto, a Reading Rainbow Featured Book and one of the New York Times Top Ten Books of the Year. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi, Africa, which is the setting for When Africa Was Home, a Booklist Editors' Choice. She also lived and worked in Haiti, the setting for several books including her highly acclaimed book Circles of Hope. She currently teaches creative writing and travel writing and works as a volunteer with refugee families. She has four children scattered around the world and lives with her husband in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Wendy Stone was raised in New York City, where she trained in photography and graphic design and worked for 13 years as a graphic designer. Her career as a photographer began when she was assigned by UNICEF to photograph their projects around the south-west Pacific. Since then she has travelled to many African countries on assignment for UN agencies, magazines and newspapers. She settled in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1988 with her husband and daughter.

From Booklist:

Education is a chance to escape for Beatrice, a 13-year-old orphan living in Nairobi, Kenya’s Kibera area—one of the largest slums in sub-Saharan Africa. This moving, contemporary photo-essay shows her leaving her shack in her school uniform and then joyful in the rough, crowded classroom, especially when they study her favorite subjects, English and Kiswahili, the two official languages of Kenya. The teacher breaks down traditional gender roles, and Beatrice’s dream is to continue with school and become a nurse. With the immediate first-person narrative, the crisp color photos show the realities of Beatrice’s life—no roads, little clean water and electricity—always focusing on what education means for one determined girl. After school, Beatrice returns to her household chores; then, “if there is enough paraffin to light her family’s small lamp, she reads. An afterword includes the on-the-spot observations of the author and photographer, which capture both the harsh poverty and the hope. Grades 2-5. --Hazel Rochman

About this edition

• Publisher: Frances Lincoln Children's Books
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1847804187
• ISBN 13: 9781847804181
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Stone Wendy