We have raised over R80 000 through our recent crowdfunding campaign to print our new books. Thank you so much to all the incredibly generous supporters who helped us reach this goal! We will be able to print over 4000 copies of the books to distribute free of charge to parents and ECD practitioners who have been trained in book-sharing
About the books
To date, the Mikhulu Trust has published eight wordless picture books including five books for 2-5 year olds (Little Helpers, All’s Well that Ends Well, What a Mix Up, A Girl and Her Dog go Shopping and Hide and Seek) and three books for younger children (Children Like to Play, Babies Like to Play and A Day in my Busy Life).
These books have been very carefully developed to make sure that they provide lots of opportunities to stimulate young brains. For example, the illustrations show an enormous range of facial expressions helping children learn about different emotions. In the books for older kids, the characters are often in situations where they can see things that other characters can’t allowing children to learn about perspectives. The younger children’s books show actions, objects and relationships that are very familiar to babies creating opportunities for them to point and name items and share their interest with their parents.
What is more, the stories are set in South Africa, allowing local children to relate to the characters and environments depicted in the illustrations. This helps children link the stories and actions to their own lives — a core component of book-sharing.
We know that book-sharing has the potential to massively boost children’s language, cognitive and socio-emotional development but in order to take advantage of this, caregivers need to have access to appropriate books to share: books that are relevant to the child’s life, books that are affordable, books that create opportunities for discussion. Thanks to the generosity of our supporters, the Mikhulu Trust will be able to provide hundreds of children with these resources!
