See You Later

In a while, crocodile.
Leave my house, squeaky mouse.
Wear your coat, silly goat.

See You Later is a charming book to introduce young children to idioms and expressions using humour and rhyme.

Winnipegger Kathy Knowles, who founded the Osu Children’s Library Fund in Ghana in the early 1990s, has written more than twenty-five books to help support the eight public libraries and 200 other initiatives in Ghana and in other African countries.

She has teamed up with veteran Ghanian graphic artist and illustrator Edmund Opare whose anthropomorphic reptiles, mammals and jungle animals are splendidly attired in typical human Ghanaian clothes, going about their business of stirring a soup pot on a fire, grinding corn, or relaxing on an easy chair. Opare’s ink and watercolour paintings are full of details to look at, including a ‘No Credit’ sign above a bar, where a billy-goat bartender admonishes an amphibian to “Mind the road, happy toad.” For fun, children can look for a blue bird that appears in each painting.

See You Later would be an excellent purchase as a gift and as a teaching tool. Even more positively, it’s a way to support the Osu Children’s Library Fund which has changed lives in Ghana and elsewhere (http://www.osuchildrenslibraryfund.ca/). See You Later would be a welcome addition to a daycare or kindergarten collection, too. At age four or five, children can learn about the accomplishments of the Osu Library Fund and, in doing so, gain greater appreciation for reading and literacy in their own lives.

Highly Recommended.

Harriet Zaidman is a teacher-librarian in Winnipeg, MB.