Where Are You Going, Manyoni?

By Catherine Stock

This book tells the story of a young girl's walk to a rural school in Zimbabwe.  Along her way she passes a bushpig, a giant baobab tree, woodland kingfishers, the kloof (ravine), the krantz (cliff) above the dam, and many other things.  Where Mayoni is going remains a mystery until the end of the book, when we find out that she was hurrying to get to school early, so she will have time to play with her friends before classes start.

This book is really great for a variety of reasons.  First of all, it gives us a view of life from a viewpoint that is very different from the ones that we or those in our class might have.  Stock's rich vocabulary and detailed watercolor illustrations easily show us that Manyoni's journey to school is far different from a bus ride through suburbia.

The second thing I love about this book was that it doesn't try to dumb down the language to make it "easy" for young readers to read.  Even adult readers may not have any idea what a kloof is, but the text and the illustrations give us an opportunity to build our inference skills and make sense of the new vocabulary (in fact, this book was used for an inferring mini lesson in my class).  Most of the book makes perfect sense, even if you don't know the exact definitions of all the words.  But if you are struggling or just dying to know what on earth a "krantz" is, Stock offers a glossary in the back with definitions of all of the words, and another page has descriptions and illustrations of all the animals mentioned in the book.

In addition to being educational, this book is just a fun story to read.  Every illustration gives us a chance to "find Manyoni," in a much more artistic version of "Where's Waldo."  So even if your children aren't interested in all of the facts, it has something to offer all sorts of different readers.