Children from Australia to ZimbabweA Photographic Journey around the WorldBy: Maya Ajmera and Anna Rhesa VersolaCelebrate the many faces of children around the world.Vibrant color photographs portray positive images of children that help foster a sense of
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By: Maya Ajmera and Anna Rhesa Versola
Vibrant color photographs portray positive images of children that help foster a sense of global citizenship. With an abundance of information about cultures, languages, and environment, this fascinating journey around the world will inspire both young and old alike. Readers will also discover Xanadu, an ideal imaginary land described and illustrated by elementary school children.
I have had the good fortune to meet children of many countries on four continents-Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa. As you will see when you read Children from Australia to Zimbabwe: A Photographic Journey around the World, some of these children lead very different lives from yours or mine. Some wear traditional clothing woven in bright colors by their mothers. Some live in houses made not from bricks or wood but from mud or grasses. Many speak languages that you and I wouldn’t understand.
But children the world over share many things in common:
Today we truly live in a global village, connected across continents by television, high-speed travel, and the Internet. Your choices and your actions will be felt worldwide, by today’s and tomorrow’s children. You can be a positive or negative force in the world.
I also hope that you will keep in mind one additional similarity that you share with all of the earth’s children. I hope it will help you embrace rather than push away those who look or speak or dress or think differently than you do: All children are gifts of God.
– Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children’s Defense Fund
Part of the proceeds from this book’s sales will be donated to Global Fund for Children, a nonprofit organization committed to advancing the dignity of young people around the world. Visit online.
Read more about Global Fund for Children.
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Extraordinary Girls
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Maya Ajmera, author
Maya Ajmera is the creator and spokesperson for Children from Australia to Zimbabwe: A Photographic Journey Around the World and co-author of the global education guide, Raising Children to Become Caring Contributors to the World. Maya is the founder and executive director of SHAKTI for Children. In the January 1999 issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Maya was named among “A new guard of non-profit leaders…that will shape the charity world in the next century.”
Maya is also the co-author of To Be a Kid and Extraordinary Girls, both brilliantly photographed books that present a picture of global diversity, tolerance, and joy. Maya’s books are published in partnership with SHAKTI for Children, and a portion of the proceeds from the sales of her books go to support community-based educational projects for children around the world. It is the mission of SHAKTI for Children to teach children to value diversity and grow into productive, caring citizens of the world.
Read more about Maya.
Anna Rhesa Versola, author
Anna Rhesa Versola is originally from Manila, the Philippines. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has a master’s degree from Duke University. .
Read more about Anna.
Kirkus Reviews
At first glance, this looks like an ABC book, but the alphabet plays a distant second to a combination gazetteer and cultural geography. Each of 26 countries is covered in a spread that includes a greeting in the appropriate language, a map, and several full-color photographs of children in typical settings and situations; the result is an encounter with the local dress, transportation, and architecture, as well as a glimpse of the work and play of children. Ajmera and Versola offer a gold mine of interesting national nuggets–that Zimbabwe means “stone houses,” that girls and women in Yemen decorate their hands with swirls of henna, that Budapest is really two cities, Buda and Pest, split by the Danube–and include concise regional and ethnic histories, with X standing for the “imaginary” country of Xanadu. A short fact sheet for every country relays one particularly fascinating item: the proportion of children to the population as a whole, giving readers instant understanding of population pyramids, e.g., Russia has 34 million children out of an overall population of 147 million, while Oman has 1 million children in a population of 2 million. A pleasing and hopeful book–sugar-coated as it may be–with a feel-good global outlook.
Publishers Weekly
Designed to make children aware of belonging to an international community, Children from Australia to Zimbabwe: A Photographic Journey Around the World by Maya Ajmera and Anna Rhesa Versola combines lively photographs of children with maps of, and facts about, 26 countries. With admirable economy, the text outlines a child’s daily life in each country, including its unique traditions and history.
Book Links
Another title published in partnership with SHAKTI for Children, this photographic journal alphabetically introduces 25 countries to readers. Beautiful photographs of children at work, play, and worship accompany chatty paragraphs offering facts and tidbits about each country. Younger readers will enjoy Ajmera and John D. Ivanko’s To Be a Kid (Charlesbridge,1999), another photo-essay celebrating the universality of childhood around the world.
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Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-57091-478-2
Ages: 8-11
Page count: 64
8 12 x 11
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