Image of the Week: Announcing my new picture book: Yaya, Come Here!
© 2019 Durga Yael Bernhard
I'm pleased to announce my first bilingual picture book, Yaya, Come Here! – newly published in English and Amharic by Open Hearts Big Dreams, a non-profit that is creating and publishing early reader books to help increase the literacy rate in Ethiopia. The book is available in my webstore, on Amazon and directly from OHBD as part of their new "Ready Set Go" Africa book series.
This book grew out of my travels to West Africa twenty years ago to study the indigenous dance and music of the region – which I still practice and teach to this day. Leaving my kids for almost a month each time wasn't easy, and I promised I would bring them back stories and pictures they could relate to. Yaya, Come Here! is the result.
The story follows the activities of a very active young boy named Yaya, who lives in a typical village in Guinea, West Africa – giving East African readers a chance to learn about children on the far side of their continent. Yaya's a great kid, based on an actual boy who ran around the compound where I stayed in Nongo, a neighborhood of the capital city Conakry. Yaya explores his environment, gathers firewood for his mother's cooking fire, helps take care of his baby brother, avoids his scolding aunt, pokes at strange caterpillars, and figures out how to make toys from everyday objects. Throughout his village, people call out to Yaya as he runs from place to place with seemingly endless energy. Know any kids like that?
I enjoyed illustrating this book. The details shown are just the kind that are hard to find through research. The whole time I was in Guinea, I collected mundane observations – from roadside weeds to taxicab colors to barber shop signs – for the purpose of a future picture book. It was gratifying to go back through my photos, sketches, and notes and weave them into the final text and illustrations. I even put some people I know in the book – including myself, walking in the market with a case of bottled water (my biggest travel expense) on my head – that's me in the illustration shown above, wearing the orange hat.
For American kids, I hope Yaya, Come Here! will bring alive the sun-baked world of Africa. For Ethiopian kids, I hope it will open a door to the world of reading and literature – including a few words in Susu, one of the native languages of Guinea, listed in the glossary.
Go, Yaya!
