Tag Tami Charles

My Day with the Panye

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My Day with the Panye
Tami Charles and Sara Palacios
Walker Books

Fallon lives with her family in the hills of Port-au-Prince where we meet them on a market day when her Manman has invited her elder daughter to accompany her to the market. The girl narrates what happens, talking especially about her desire to be able to carry the panye on her head (a kind of rite of passage) as her Manman does.

Her first attempt is a failure but Manman quotes her own manman,: ” ‘Pitit, pitit, zwazo fe nich li’ Little by little the bird builds its nest. Not everything is learned fast. “

Desperate to learn the skill, Fallon envies Manman’s grace as she moves with a sway of her hips, panye perfectly balanced, through Sara Palacios’ busy, richly coloured Haitian landscape

and into the bustling market also awash with its vibrant colours and patterns

including those of mothers and daughters ‘Their feet are graceful. Their panyes are still, even as the wind swirls through the city.’ (I love the author’s lyrical language)

After the purchases are complete and the two are ready to begin their journey home, Fallon begs to be allowed to carry the panye. Finally her mother agrees, assisting with the balancing; but the full basket is very heavy and down it crashes sending vegetables flying all around.
Now it’s Manman’s turn to do the urging when Fallon wants to give up, and with the reloaded panye, slowly, slowly … success! Feeling like a queen she makes her way back home. “The panye means we are graceful when the load is heavy. We are strong, even when the earth is not. We are family, fed from love.”

There is so much to enjoy about this book in both words and pictures (look out for the antics of the dog): the warmth of the mother/daughter relationship especially the encouraging of perseverance when learning something new.

The author ends with a note explaining the tradition of panye carrying and telling us that Haiti is her husband’s homeland and why she wrote the story.

All Because You Matter

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All Because You Matter
Tami Charles and Bryan Collier
Orchard Books (Scholastic)

This wonderful, empowering celebration of young Black lives is for everyone, not just those with black or brown skin. Herein author Tami Charles’ lyrical prose poem, an ode to a ‘dear child’ spoken by a parent reads like a love letter to said infant whom we watch in Bryan Collier’s sequence of tender, mixed media portraits, grow from new born infant, to toddler taking his first steps, to story sharer,

to school child, mocked on occasion by cruel classmates.

The author uses ‘matter’ as both verb – ‘The words and pictures / coming together like / sweet jam on toast / … sun in blue sky … / all because you matter.’ And as noun: ‘But in galaxies far away, / it may seem that / light does not always reach / lonely planets, / covered moons, / stars unseen, / as if matter no longer exists.’

Ancestors are recalled – queens, chiefs, legends – but the focal point is always the child being addressed. Yet, this book reassures all youngsters that no matter what, they are loved and cherished ‘strength, power, and beauty lie within you’.

Affirming, awe-inspiring, and acknowledging and remembering those victimised by racial violence – teenager Trayvon (Martin), 12 year old Tamir (Rice) and young man Philando (Castile),

as well as for me, the not mentioned young Damilola Taylor who lost his life in the UK twenty years ago to the day as I write, when just short of eleven years old. What we have here is a great starting point for a conversation that puts forward the notion that Black Lives Matter, indeed, All Lives Matter at all times in their homes, in their community, in the entire universe.

Everyone is an amazing individual; everyone has something to offer whoever and wherever they are; but it starts with children … Parents know that, we teachers know that; it’s up to us to make sure youngsters know that. One way so to do is to share this book at home and in classrooms.