Read Africa

Read Africa is an outreach initiative of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, African Studies Program that provides African literature to public libraries in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. This program is supported by the U.S. Department of Education Title VI National Resource Centers for Africa in partnership with Brittle Paper, the Children’s Africana Book Award (CABA), and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

This year, all fifteen public library systems in Wisconsin will each receive two copies of ten notable titles which include picture books, short stories, and novels. These books were selected from the 2024 Brittle Paper 100 Notable African Books list from the 2024 Children’s African Book Award winners.

SELECT PICTURE BOOKS

The Big Eyes of the Tiny Girl | Ondjaki |
Carla Dias, illus. | Marissa Moorman, trans.
An award-winning author from Angola tells
the story of a tiny girl with big beautiful eyes
who, one day, discovers she could not cry.

Bottle Tops: The Art of El Anatsui |
Alison Goldberg | Elizabeth Zunon, illus.
A captivating story of a world-renowned
Ghanaian sculptor whose art from bottle tops
tells stories of people, history, and culture.

Egyptian Lullaby | Zeena M. Pliska |
Hatem Aly, illus.
Every night a girl is wrapped in a lullaby sung
by her Auntie Fatima. She sings about Cairo –
its people, river, and beautiful culture.

Flipflopi | Linda Ravin Lodding
& Dipesh Pabari | Michael Machira
Mwangi, illus.
Can you turn a flip flop into a boat? Juma
creatively explores how to use litter on a
Kenyan beach to battle pollution.

The Taste of Home | Aminata Jalloh |
Pervin Özcan, illus.
Home is anywhere you make it. Mariama
visits her family in Sierra Leone, and learns
to accept another place as home.

Explore more titles at the Children’s Africana Book Awards (CABA)

SELECT SHORT STORIES & NOVELS

Bald Dandelions with their Wishes Blown
Clean off | Mona Liban et al.
An anthology of 10 short stories from Ethiopia,
Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, and Somaliland
exploring girlhood, queerness, resistance of
tradition, and more.

How to Make a Space Masquerade | Mazi
Nwonwu
A cocktail of speculative fiction with Igbo
cosmology in 12 tales: from a girl defying
erasure to a space engineer’s robot love child.
These stories redefine human connection.

The Incredible Dreams of Garba
Dakaskus | Umar Abubakar Sidi
A Nigerian poet turns to fiction in this tale of
mysticism and existential quests where the
protagonist journeys to find a magical book said
to hold secrets.

Love Marry Kill | Zukiswa Wanner
A gripping fictional tale of love, betrayal, and
consequences. Two Johannesburg couples,
bound by secrets and heartbreak, find their lives
intertwined in unexpected ways.

A Mouth Full of Salt | Reem Gaafar
Winner of the 2023 Island Manuscript Prize. A
boy’s mysterious drowning in the Nile begins a
series of calamities in a small Sudanese village,
igniting whispers of sorcery.

Explore more titles at Brittle Paper.