The Baobab Prize, an African Literary Award, has changed its name to The Golden Baobab Prize. Along with the name-change comes a vibrant new website to foster increased information-sharing and encourage the production of quality African stories to be enjoyed by young readers around the world. I guarantee you that once you click on the Golden Baobab Prize website you will be inspired to seek out some African children’s literature!

Established in 2008 by Ghanaian Deborah Ahenkorah and Senegalese-born Rama Shagaya, the Golden Baobab prize encourages the writing of African literature for children and young adults by recognizing gifted authors of the genre. It invites entries of unpublished short stories written by African citizens irrespective of age, race, or country of origin. The prize offers a monetary award to its winners and connects outstanding stories with an array of African and international publishers.

How did the prize get started? Co-founder Deborah Ahenkorah replies:

I started dreaming about this prize as a college student when through various experiences, the tremendous lack of good quality African children’s literature dawned on me. A continent so large and richly diverse has tons of wonderful stories to share with young people everywhere: where were these stories?

In the summer of my second year of college, with no experience, no money and only a vision, I corralled myself in an internet café and worked on a concept that would incentivize African writers to create wonderful tales for children all over the world. Eventually (and delightfully!) The Golden Baobab Prize was born!

Today, the prize is run by a passionate volunteer team from all over the world and is sponsored by the Global Fund for Children and the African Library Project. As we enter our third year, we’re hoping to enter into even more fruitful partnerships that will bring us closer to our goal: that of ensuring stellar African children’s stories are in bookstores all over the world in the years to come.

This past November in Accra, Ghana, the 2010 winners of the Golden Baobab Prize were announced:

Best Story for ages 12 – 15 years was awarded to Lauri Kubuitsile of Botswana for Mechanic’s Son. This is the second time Kubuitsile has won the Golden Baobab Prize: in 2008/2009 her story Lorato and her Wire Car won Best Work of Fiction for readers aged 8 – 11 years.

Best Story for ages 9 – 11 years was awarded to Mirirai Moyo of Zimbabwe for Diki, the Little Earthworm

Golden Baobab Rising Writer Award (given to writer 18 years or younger who shows exceptional literary promise for his/her age) was awarded to Ahmed Farah of Kenya for his story Letters from the Flames

To read more about the winning authors and their stories, click here.

Note: images taken from The Golden Baobab Prize website

Following on from Monday’s post, here are some of our highlights from Day 2 of the Bologna Book Fair.

We started out with a children’s theatre production inspired by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and performed by students from Bratislava’s Academy of Fine Arts – great fun!

The JES: Join – Enjoy – Share session for the International Meeting of Children’s Librarians. They had two very interesting speakers lined up: Ruba Totah from the Tamer Institute in Ramallah, Palestine, which won the 2009 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, talking about their many projects, linking to community and school libraries;

and famous Brazilian author Ana Maria Machado, winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2000, who gave a very thought-provoking paper about the lamentably small number of foreign-language books translated into English…

“African Books for Children”, a roundtable session chaired by Viviana Quiñones of the French Centre national de la littérature pour la jeunesse – La Joie par les livres with Phocas Ekouedjin of Afrilivres (Association of African Francophone Publishers) and Tainie Mundondo of Apnet (African Publishers Network), as well as publishers from Benin, Senegal, Tanzania, Cameroon, Mauritius and Rwanda. They discussed the publishing and distribution of African children’s books and profiled recent children’s books published in Africa.

A presentation of the 20-year-old journal Takam Tikou in its new online format. Takam Tikou, published by the Centre national de la littérature pour la jeunesse – La Joie par les livres, focuses on children’s books and reading in Africa, the Arab world, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean. If you read French, there is a fabulous wealth of material and resources available – definitely well worth exploring.

The announcement of the Astrid Lingren Award – see Corinne’s post. It was very exciting and we really felt we had a stake in it this year, with PaperTigers being a nominating body. The visual presentation of winner Kitty Crowther’s books made me want to read all of them – and also ask myself why I’d never come across her work – well, it turns out only one of her books has been translated into English. What was it that Ana Maria Machado was saying earlier that morning?

Seeing a proof of Allen Say’s new book, The Boy in the Garden - it’s going to be another gorgeous book. Thank you for showing it to us, Christine!

And you can see more photos from Day 2 here…