Off to Market

Wonderfully vibrant pictures and rhyming couplets help make this book a winner!  The author’s experience of travelling in an African minibus in Uganda is the basis for the story, and at each stop, we see people in great numbers with all sorts of baskets full of produce and even live animals climbing on the minibus to get to market.  There always seems to be room for one more, but when the bus refuses to climb a hill because it is too full, it is young Keb who convinces the occupants to climb out while he helps push the bus up the incline.  He becomes the hero of the hour, and when he is asked what he most would like from the teeming market, he chooses a young goat.  The pictures, full of black outlines and strong colours have ample detail and joie de vivre and the busy-ness of life in Africa, wild animals and landscape included.  It’s a beautiful book with the added interest of showing us a part of the world very different from ours.