Youme.  Sélavi, That Is Life:  A Haitian Story of Hope.  Cinco Puntos Press, 2004.  40 pages.  Age 4 to 9.

“Not so long ago and not so far away, people with guns could take a family, burn a house and disappear, leaving a small child alone in the world.”

So begins Sélavi, That Is Life, a story of street children in Port-au-Prince that spans the 1980s and 1990s.  The children in the story find ways to look out for each other and share what little they have, but they live in constant fear of the “people with guns” (a suitable way to explain a military presence without getting into politics).

One day the children are chased away and threatened by soldiers, and Sélavi escapes to a church, where he asks the congregants to help his friends.  They join together to build an orphanage, Lafanmi Sélavi, which opened in 1986 and housed about 500 children.  After it was completed, those involved tried to help others by painting murals with messages like, “If children are sleeping on the streets, what are we doing for them?”

The military continued to pose a threat, whiting out their murals, and eventually destroying Lafanmi Sélavi.  The orphanage was later rebuilt, and the children also started a radio station, Radyo Timoun, in 1994.  The radio station was important to those young activists, because their words were written “in the air where they cannot be painted out.”

This gently told story is followed by factual endnotes and a supplemental essay by Edwidge Danticat.  There are no dates in the story proper, and key figures like Jean-Bertrand Aristide are unnamed.  The only thing that matters is the children—they are the ones who are given names, backstories, and credit for their social impact.  But the book’s back matter is important for the adults who share this book with children, so they can fill in details as appropriate.  Danticat’s essay certainly informed this review.

The watercolor illustrations are very well suited to the story.  I especially like how thoughts, memories, and even radio waves are much more abstract than the “here and now” (or is it “then and there”?) images.  Ideas and actualities often share the same page in this story, so the contrast in style helps to make that distinction.  The black and white photographs that accompany the back matter help drive home a message to young readers that this is a real story about real people.

Nonfiction Monday is at Lost between the Pages today.

[ Posted in » Book Review Channel :: Nonfiction Reviews ]