A desire to show that Black people have made valuable contributions to the world and history, prompted Kandace Chimbiri to pen a children’s book.
“There is a sad lack of diversity in children’s books today,” Kandace said. I find that I struggle to find good-quality, accurate books about Black history for my god-children. Outside of ‘slavery’ or the heroic civil rights personalities, there is very little available. I’d long been interested in early African history (i.e. before slavery and colonialism) and I wanted to impart that to the children.”
Along with helping children to see positive role models, Kandace wanted them to know the richness of their history.
“I wanted them to know that Black history is more than just slavery,” she said. I wanted them to realise that Black people do not enter world history as slaves but in fact have a long history before that which includes kingdoms and empires and contributions to world history.”
Kandace, who grew up in Barbados and currently lives in England, has been drawn to classical eras of African history. After spending more than a year researching, in 2009 she set up her own pubishing house, Golden Destiny Limited to specialise in non-fiction books for children.
“I decided to set up my own publishing house although I had no idea about publishing,” she admits. “I knew about history, having given talks and appeared in a few documentaries but I knew absolutely nothing about publishing.”
This task was such a labour of love for Kandace who worked long hours at her day job as a secretary at a London-based United States finance firm.
“I feel that doing a book for children carries even more responsibility than a book for adults,” she said. “I had to make sure that everything was correct. Scholars and knowledgeable readers will question facts especially if they challenge current beliefs. There is still a widespread perception that African societies only had writing from contact with the Arabs and Europeans. In fact nothing could be further from the truth.”
What she eventually produced was an activity book format called Step Back in Time to Ancient Kush.
“Even with the Internet, DVDs, video games and TV, I find that children today still enjoy the simple pleasures of drawing, colouring in and puzzle-based activities,” she said. “So I concentrated on word-based puzzles to aid literacy as well as drawing and colouring to encourage creativity. Some children’s psychologists believe that activity books encourage concentration and problem-solving which in turn aids with brain development, so I aimed at creating slightly challenging puzzles to accompany the information I wanted the children to learn.
“I wanted to create an activity book that would reveal the architecture, dress, arts, trade and religion of the ancient Kushites in a fun and interactive manner.”
Kandace admits that the book, while targeted to children ages seven and up, is designed to be used by the child and their parent, guardian or teacher.
“I often have adults of all ages buying the book for themselves. They say ‘I never learnt this history and I want it for myself!’,” she revealed. According to Kandace, the book has garnered some positive feedback from parents and children.
“That makes me feel really happy – it was a big step doing a first project like this, I did not know how people would respond especially as, unfortunately, not many people know about this ancient civilisation,” she said.
