Far away before the world became as it is today, before she was a writer, editor, reviewer, poet author of A Life Stripped of Illusions, and The Fire in Which We Burn, and before Glass Jars Among Trees, Arja Salafranca had little hands and this is what she read …
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Once, not far away, but light years ago it seems, in an age before Killing Time and Electric Book Works, Arthur Attwell had little hands and this is what he read …
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Not far from the mountain, not far from the sea, in a flat and sandy stretch of land shaded by steaming cooling towers, many years before she imagined The Museum of Ordinary Life, A Hundred Silences and The Dream in the Next Body, Gabeba Baderoon had little hands and this is what she read …
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I learnt from an owl, I told it to a king, he gave me a purse of kisses and a Chinese pin, that not far from here at a farmhouse with a stoep, long, long before she was a doyen of SA book editors, a fellow of the African Gender Institute, a poet, an author, and ghost-writer on what is set to become South Africa’s classic book of cricket Bob Woolmer’s Art and Science of Cricket (to be launched next week!), Helen Moffett had little hands and this is what she read … (more…)

In times long past in sunny Paarl, before This Carting Life, Rustum Kozain had little hands and this is what he read …

Rustum’s earliest memory of books and reading:

I have to mention nursery rhymes sung by my mom:

There was once a little rabbit in a family of six;
such a naughty little fellow full of naughty little tricks.
And he would not mind his mother, nor his father nor his aunt.
And I hardly like to tell you that he sometimes said I shan’t.

(The rabbit eventually gets killed by a hunter).
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Welcome to the blog of the Little Hands Trust. The Trust is now supporting an initiative of the Stories Across Africa project, which together with New Africa Books has recently published sixteen beautifully illustrated books for 2 to 6 year old children.

We’re helping to raise funds to get this pan-African set of Little Hands books – which come packaged in a special box – to as many young children as possible. The books were conceptualised for sharing in as many countries and languages as possible, so that children come to learn about and enjoy what they have in common as young citizens of Africa.

Little Hands books are already available in the following languages: Afrikaans, English, French, Kiswahili and Xhosa.

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