Foreword

I’m so happy to write this foreword. To help deliver good news. The Sunday Times, in collaboration with the dedicated and phenomenal folk from Book Dash, has decided to publish these four wonderful South African stories for children.

Stories for children are stories of hope. Something we all desperately need. Something our country desperately needs when the terrifying statistic is that eight out of every ten children in South Africa can’t read properly. This is something that the Sunday Times and Book Dash have taken to heart. Book Dash (a registered Public Benefit Organisation) believes that every child should own 100 books by the age of five.

They do this by asking authors, illustrators and others involved in the publishing industry to volunteer to create new, African storybooks that anyone can freely translate, print and distribute. We are so incredibly lucky to be part of this by helping to print and distribute a few of these stories.

There are numerous benefits to reading. It’s not only a way for children and adults to learn invaluable cognitive skills and life lessons, but books are also gateways to freedom, pleasure, rapture, fulfilment, happiness and delight. Children can go on adventures, learn empathy, learn how to understand the world and most importantly, understand themselves in the world and the power and potential they have.

These four stories give that and more: you can be the outcast chicken who wants to fly; the boy who wants to help out his grandfather in the garden; the little girl who does not want to go to sleep; or the hyena who is desperately looking for its lost laugh. Magical, warm stories illustrated with verve and colour.

It’s simple. Children need access to books. They need to read and to be read to. It’s the only way forward for our country. Because everything changes when we read. We can communicate with each other, we can exchange ideas and viewpoints and we can understand each other. Through reading we learn that we have the incredible power to change the world.

Jennifer Platt Sunday Times Books Editor