Happy Birthday, Jamela!

The illustrations on each page of this new Jamela story are wonderfully expressive and tell the tale as clearly as the text. It’s the way the feelings of the characters are so well conveyed by them that particularly draws one in. Jamela goes shopping before her birthday and looks for shoes to go with her new dress. Unfortunately, the party shoes she really wants won’t do for school as well (Mum is being Practical). Jamela has a sparkling idea, literally – she glues glittery beads onto her new black school shoes to turn them into appropriate party shoes. Job done. The look on her face at Mum’s reaction to this perfectly captures her puzzlement mingled with disappointment. Children will relate to the familiar event of buying new shoes and the range of emotions Jamela and her mother go through in the process; these are so well expressed in both pictures and text. The few Xhosa words in the text (the story is set in a South African town) are explained in a glossary at the back.