Where We Live: Mapping Neighborhoods of Kids Around the Globe
Where We Live: Mapping Neighborhoods of Kids Around the Globe
Komanyana is a small village in southern Zambia. Like most in the village, Namisha lives in a clay home without electricity. People here go to bed when it’s dark and wake up with the sun.
The village school has bright yellow walls and a community library filled with thousands of children’s books. Namisha goes to class most days, except if there is a hippo sighting and it’s too dangerous for her to walk to school.
When children look at a map or a globe, they often ask, “Where is my home, my neighbourhood?” Where We Live: Mapping Neighborhoods of Kids Around the Globe is much more than an illustrated book of maps of different neighbourhoods from 16 countries. It begins with a single page explanation showing the key features of a map, specifically the compass rose, a legend and a scale bar. These tools enable the reader to connect the written text with the accompanying map. And that begins a marvelous journey around the world from the perspective of the children who live in each neighbourhood.
From large cities, such as Cairo, Egypt, to small villages like Komanyana, Zambia, each place is home to a child’s special neighbourhood. In the “Author’s Notes” at the end of the book, Margriet Ruurs, author of more than thirty children’s books, shares the types of questions she asked each child, their family and their teachers. They included: Where do you live? What is your neighborhood like? How do you get to school? What do you do in your neighbourhood before and after school? Each child’s story, with its accompanying map, allows the reader to visualize the routines of another child living far away. It stimulates awareness about the similarities and differences about things other children encounter in their daily life.
Where We Live: Mapping Neighborhoods of Kids Around the Globe is more than an introduction to geography and maps. It introduces the idea of global thinking and cultural diversity, and it does so by engaging the reader with stories of other ‘real’ children. The format of the book enhances the reader’s interaction with the information. The double-page spread narrates the child’s story about their neighbourhood on the left hand side, and that is accompanied by a captivating map by illustrator Wenjia Tang on the right hand side. The colourful maps add an interactive feature coinciding with the text so that the reader, using the legend specific to the actual neighbourhood, can follow the child’s routines. Inclusion of a “Say It in .!” speech bubble with some phrases in the child’s own language, mention of common foods and cuisine as well as other cultural practices all help the reading audience experience the regular life routines the child encounters. Imagine the reader’s curiosity when they read about Bruno in Antarctica having penguins waddling past his house, or Leaf, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, who lives on a houseboat and rides her bicycle everywhere through the city, or Aimen, in Lahore, Pakistan, whose neighbourhood is part of a long canal where a barber sets up his chair along the canal’s bank to give his customers haircuts.
Children today have access to global information, but Where We Live: Mapping Neighborhoods of Kids Around the Globe offers them the important first steps to becoming an open, curious global citizen. It also gives parents and teachers a guided format to help a child in mapping their own neighborhood.
Janice Foster is a retired teacher and teacher librarian in Winnipeg, Manitoba.