#28-Sélavi

Sélavi, That is Life: A Haitian Story of Hope

Written and Illustrated by Youme Landowne

Cinco Puntos Press, 2004

29 Pages

Multicultural (Haiti)

      This is the true story of Sélavi, a Haitian boy. Sélavi's parents were shot and killed and Sélavi was left on his own to take care of himself. While Sélavi was walking around the capitol city one day he meet a boy name TiFré. TiFré takes Sélavi to a banyan tree which is where other orphans stay. All these children gather what food they can during the day and come back together at night and share the food. One day, After Sélavi has been living with these children for a while, a man with a gun stops Sélavi in the street and tells him he is a theif. Sélavi runs back to the tree and finds more men with guns. Sélavi runs away and into a chruch were the preacher is talking about working together to make a change. Sélavi tells the people about his friends and how they need help and the people agree to build a house for the orphans. After the house is built the children are provided for and are educated. They paint murals to educate people about the children who live on the streets but the murals are painted over and the house is burnt down. The children and adults come together and form a radio station where the children can be heard and not have their message painted over. The children and adults rebuild the home and the children continue to broadcast on their radio station everyday. The name of the Children's home is Lafanmi Sélavi, which means "the family is life" or "Sélavi's family". 

     Landowne uses watercolor to create the unique illustrations in this book. The illustrations in the book are very colorful. She uses lots of different hues to help protray what is going on in the book. The one thing that really caught my eye is how she made the men with guns look. They all have green uniforms and all of them are wearing sunglasses. All the sunglasses have some sort of design in white on the lenses. This gives the impression that the sunglasses are the mirrored type which do not allow you to see the wearer's eyes. This gives the reader a good idea of just how scary these men would be to a young child.

     This book would be good for older children. It would be a great book to discuss how in some countries of the world children don't have mothers and fathers and they have to find food and shelter on their own. It would be a great way to bring up how there are countries known as “Third World Countries”. The teacher could then talk about how the conditions in these countries are very poor and that sometimes children are not taken care of. This would also be a good book to do a writing activity with students. The students could write about how they would feel if something happened to their family and they were left alone in the streets. This is a great book to discuss the cruelties of the world and how we need to all work together and help make the world a better place to live in.