Book Analisys

The title of the book that I choose was
         It Takes a Village by Jane Cowen-Fletcher (Author and Illustrator) 1993

Description: This book is about a little boy named Kokou and his sister Yemi and how they go on a little adventure through the town market while their mother is going to sell her mangoes. This story shows the empowerment of women in a male dominated society.

Summary: This book is based off of an African proverb "It takes a Village". This is the whole basis for the book. When the mother goes off to sell the fruit she asks her daughter for the first time to take care of her little brother. This is a big step for the little girl because in a way this is one of her first steps to becoming a woman. She is very happy and eager to do this for her mother and she wants to impress her by doing a very good job. While taking care of her little brother she looses him and he goes all around the market to all of the other people selling their items. These people look at the little boy and take care of him. She goes around from one to another until finally she finds him. She goes around and thanks all of the people for watching her little brother. When they get back to their mother she tells them that not to worry because "it takes a village".

The characters of the book are outside of the norm that we are used to seeing in children's book these days.
This book is done in a very culturally relative way and it does show how women can be empowered in a culture that is dominated by men. It also never shows a father, which represents how we feel about that culture.
The power in the story is from the little boy. He is running around and gets his older sister very worried for him. Also the power is in the sister because she is now able to be in charge and start to feel like a woman for the first time in her life.
The wisdom in the story comes from all over. This story is about the girl learning the wisdom that it takes a society to raise a child. A family does the raising but little does the little girl know that the society she lives in has a big part in how she was raised and how her brother is being raised.
The behavior in the book is shown in a lot of other children's stories, the little boy running around and causing trouble. The behavior was not punished but shown to be a natural part of the child's growing process and learning process.
The language does not build an image of the story but the illustrations in the story bring it to life.
Jane Cowen-Fletcher wrote and illustrated the book. She is outside of the group that she is representing. She is claiming to know the culture in the book because of the African proverb that is being stated here. She spent two years in the peace corps from 1981-83 in Benin, Africa. This stay gave her the idea to write this book based on their culture.
This book is showing the voices of women and children as empowered people. Indirectly this whole book is about women's power. Women are playing the main role in this book. They have the power and it looks as if the roles are switched. The mother is going out to earn the money for the family. The only voice that you do not see in this book is the father. It does not say if the father is in the picture or not.
This book is very good for a class of young children because even though they look different than we do in this society it still shows that they are the same as us. This book also shows the same values that we try to teach children in our class today. Values like responsibility, family, care, etc.... This is good because the children can see it is all over the world and that life may look different but it is still the same composition that we have here in our society.
The problem in the story was about the little boy being too curious and about how his sister had to fight with that curiosity. The problems were resolved and taken care of because the little girl was shown that not just her family can raise her little brother, other people can help them out as well.
I would highly recommend this book and I actually am going to make sure that I read it to my class this week. This book has a lot of good life lessons for young children on how we need to be responsible for things and make sure that things get done. Even though the little boy was OK, it showed how much care and love the little girl had for her brother by searching non stop for her.
References:
www.childrenslibrary.org
www.google.com
www.janecowenfletcher.com