Picture Book #22--It Takes A Village

Title:  It Takes a Village

Author:  Jane Cowen-Fletcher

Illustrator:  Jane Cowen-Fletcher

Grade Level Equivalent:  2.1

Lexile Measure:  390L

Genre:  Children's Literature

Subgenre:  Realistic Fiction/ Literature for a Diverse Society

Theme:  It takes a village to raise a child.

Primary and Secondary Characters:  Yemi and Kokou, the mother, the villagers

Awards:  N/A

Date of Publication:  1994

Publisher:  Scholastic, Inc.

ISBN:  0590465988

It Takes a Village tells the story of Yemi, Kokou, and their mother as they head of to the market of the small African town they live in.  Yemi promises to watch Kokou and take care of him all by herself while their mother works.  Their mother just smiles because she knows no one ever raises a child alone in a village like theirs.  This is a lesson Yemi learns when she stops to buy some peanuts for Kokou and he wanders off. 

This book would be great to have in a classroom because it shows the culture of the African villages students hear about.  The family lives on a compound, something I'm sure not a lot of students will be familiar with.  The family also grows their produce and takes it to the local market to sell.  The women carry the large baskets filled with their product to sell on their heads until they arrive at the market.  This is probably something kids have seen on TV or read in books but maybe didn't know was real.  It is a really good book that can show how people in Africa live and how it is different from how we live here in America.  As for classroom applications, students could list the differences in the African culture that they saw in the book and tell how it is different from the culture we have here.  How does the life of Yemi differ from the lives of children the same age here in the United States?