African Storybook Guides Preparing to use African Storybooks with children

Choosing storybooks for children
It is important to choose a variety of different storybooks at different levels. Children should be able to experience many different stories and pictures, and a range of words and sentences. As you choose storybooks for children, there are two main questions to ask:
 Which children will read the storybook?
 What is your purpose in choosing this particular storybook?
There are storybooks on the African Storybook website that will give opportunities for the children you have in mind to do the following:
1. Practice reading the words and the pictures on their own.
Stories that help children practice their basic reading skills include the following features: fairly simple language, sentences that are not long, repetition of words and phrases, and only a sentence or a few sentences per page.
2. Talk about their feelings and experiences with reference to what they are reading. These can be everyday experiences (getting ready for school in the morning, playing with friends) or more unusual situations in which children may find themselves but not have
given voice to their feelings (for example, a new baby in the family, or a frightening event.)
3. Think about and talk about the content of what they are reading.
Even very young children can be invited to think and talk about the themes and values that are reflected in storybooks.
4. Write about what they read and read what they write. Stories that describe activities in a particular order can be adapted with different details, or children can focus on different aspects of the pictures. For example, the storybook Cooking (‘I chop the cabbage, I peel the carrots, etc.’) could be re-written using other vegetables. Children could label the different objects in the pictures (for example, ‘peeler,
knife, grater, chopping board’. Children could write a new sentence for each picture.
5. Learn new vocabulary and language from what they read.
Here are some ideas for creating collections of storybooks for specific purposes and links to examples of African Storybooks in English (look for translations and adaptations). We hope this will inspire you to create your own collections for your children.