Today’s guest post is written by Bridget Krone. Bridget Krone lives and works in a village called Hilton just outside Pietermaritzburg, in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains in South Africa. Her office looks onto a field where cows graze in the winter and cranes (both crowned and blue) visit in the summer. She has spent most of her working life writing short novels and English language text books for school children in South Africa. Her favorite stories are those that, just when you expect a lesson, sing a song instead. Her debut novel, Small Mercies, was named a Best Middle-Grade Book of 2020 by Kirkus Reviews and featured on the 2021 Outstanding International Books List by the United States Board on Books for Young People. Her second novel, The Cedarville Shop and the Wheelbarrow Swap, was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, a 2024 Skipping Stones Honor Award winner, and a winner of The Next Generation Indie Book Award.

The South African children’s book publishing world is rich with picture books. If you visit a curio shop at the airport, you’ll find a stack of fables and folklore explaining how the zebra got its stripes, or the baboon got its bottom. There’s no doubt that animal fables sell.

But you will have to dig a bit deeper and go to the bookshops to find stories about South African children. When you do, you may notice the way in which so many of them use loving families as a quiet corrective to the tough issues they address. And they are not afraid of those issues: racism, illiteracy, grinding poverty … the list is as long as our problems are diverse. But always there is joy and mischief and courage and, often in the background, the guiding presence of wise and loving families.

I have a pile on my desk in front of me.

Most beloved is The best meal ever! by Sindiwe Magona, beautifully illustrated by Paddy Bouma. It tells the story of a brave big sister who quietly bears the weight of the fact the cupboard is bare as a bone, and she has hungry little siblings to feed. She boils water on the stove and weaves a story of hope about what she will cook, until they all fall asleep. In the morning ,they wake to the wonderful redemption of actual food.  

Two books by Zulaikha Patel deal with the issue of racism and hair. My Coily Crowny Hair celebrates her magnificent curly hair that “grows up towards the sun like a summer sunflower.”  It is a powerful, positive message that she receives from her mother who washes it tenderly, combs it with her fingers and braids it so she looks like a beautiful young queen.

Zulaikha Patel’s latest release Brave like me! deals with the topic again in a more autobiographical way. But this time, when she is laughed at by her classmates, it is her father who picks up the coconut oil spray and styles her extraordinary afro. It is also her father who traces the line of courage down the generations of Zulaika’s mixed race family in order to inspire her.

In Chris Van Wyk’s autobiographical book Ouma Ruby’s Secret, he sensitively tackles the issue of illiteracy in the case of his beloved ouma (grandmother). Again, it is the love of family that sits behind the story like a watermark and makes it redemptive.

No discussion about love and South African children’s picture books would be complete without mention of Niki Daly, author and illustrator, who won the South African Children’s Laureate Award in 2021. A common theme that runs throughout his extensive list of books, is the way in which children are loved by their diverse families: in Not so fast, Songololo a young boy is given the treat of new takkies (trainers) by his grandmother; in the ‘Jamela series’ a spunky young heroine get up to all kinds of joyous mischief and is watched over by a loving family; and, in On My Papa’s Shoulders, a young boy is taken to school in various ways by kind family members, including his very dear and loving father. In a country where violence and hardship often prevail, these stories, ranging from the sublime to the silly, celebrate love–love of quirkiness, love of family, and mostly love of children.