Margy Burns Knight is a children's book author and educator based in Maine. She received the National Education Association's Author Illustrator Human and Civil Rights Award and the Children's Africana Book Award for Africa Is Not a Country. Mark Melnicove is an author, teacher, and director. He is based in Maine. Anne Sibley O'Brien is a children's book illustrator of over thirty-five picture books. A 2014 recipient of the Katahdin Award for lifetime achievement from the Maine Library Association, Anne is dedicated to diversity education and leadership training. She cofounded two projects featuring diverse books: I'm Your Neighbor Books, and the Diverse BookFinder. She lives with her husband on an island in Maine, and is the mother of two grown children and a grandmother of two.
Gr 1-4-The authors narrate the experiences of children at play, at school, and at home, and use realistic illustrations to explore the cultural, environmental, ethnic, and social diversity of the 53 countries that make up the African continent. They explain that in Rwanda, refugee children (many of whom have been orphaned) are making pictures of war, while in Kenya, two children race to school, dreaming of one day becoming professional runners. From vast deserts with camels in the North to lush agricultural lands in Central and Southern Africa, the widely varied terrains are described in a paragraph or two of text. Unfortunately, there are no chapter or subtopic headings to indicate immediately what country is being discussed, and there is no indication of where it is located on the continent, so it's difficult to find it on the map. While the art is lively and colorful, and the book concludes with an alphabetical listing of the countries and facts about them, this offering does have its drawbacks.-Daniel Mungai, Queens Borough Public Library, NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
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