“Based on his own experiences as a first-generation Ghanaian American growing up in New York City, chef and author Adjepong’s debut picture book beautifully captures Kofi’s complicated feelings of in-betweenness, seeing himself as not quite American enough and not quite Ghanaian enough, even as he tries to connect to his family’s history. A recipe for jollof rice, the dish Kofi proudly shares with his class, is included at the end.” —BCCB, starred review
Inspired by acclaimed chef Eric Adjepong’s own childhood, Sankofa is the powerful story of a young boy’s culinary journey 400 years into the past to reconnect with his African roots and find his own place in America. This thoughtful picture book also includes a recipe for jollof rice.
“Adjepong has crafted a delectable story that blends food history and Ghanaian culture. A celebration of food and culture that reminds youngsters to look back as they move forward.” —Kirkus Reviews
What if home was a place you’ve never been? For Kofi, a first-generation Ghanaian American boy, home is a country called Ghana. But it’s a place he’s never been. When tasked to bring a dish that best represents his family’s culture to school for a potluck lunch, Kofi is torn. With the help of his Nanabarima (grandfather), Kofi learns the hardship and resilience his family has endured—and how food has always been an integral part their story and culture. Sankofa is a reminder that food can transport you to a place called home—even if you’ve never been.
Where Maine Reads will be out at the end of 2023. Photos by Buddy Doyle. This book will include portraits and personal essays that explore special places Mainers like to read.Stay tuned for more details!
When my granddaugter,Penney, was four she pointed to a photograph pinned to my fridge and said: “Look! It’s a person in a wheelchair just like my friend.”
I spend a lot of time with Penney – she and her sister and parents live 5 minutes away – and I’d never heard from her or anyone else about someone in their lives who used a wheelchair. So I asked her which friend she was talking about.
“My friend in my book, Skinnamarink!”
We went over to the living room and pushed through the piles of children’s books we keep there. Penney pulled out Skinnamarink and we started reading.
“Skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky doo, I love you!” Penney sang with me.
As we read and sang the song again Penney pointed out the little girl in the wheelchair who was dancing with her friends throughout the book.
For me, the beauty of reading to my grandchildren is moments exactly like this. Penney has friends on pages, friends who live worlds away from us in central Maine, friends of all backgrounds and body types. Books—and especially when she has an adult to help her read them over and over again—broaden her world, her sense of empathy, and her sense of self.
I will introduce, demonstrate and guide students through the application of Visual Learning Strategies. Inspired by the three-question visual thinking strategies protocol, this approach to discussion-based teaching and learning encompasses all four domains of language acquisition while serving as an effective tool across various subjects within the curriculum.
During the Visual Learning Strategies workshop, I will talk about my nonfiction illustrated books that explore the significance of walls, immigrant stories, welcoming traditions and the the daily lives of children. I am thrilled to introduce Who Needs aStatue? my newest book that will be published in 2024.I am available to conduct up to four one-hour workshops per day, with a capacity of 30 students or one full class per workshop. I will also offer a teacher’s workshop before or after the school day.
Image caption,A statue of Hachiko has stood outside Shibuya station in Tokyo since 1948
By Nicholas Yong
BBC News, Singapore
The Chinese tagline on the movie poster says it all: “I will wait for you, no matter how long it takes.”
It tells the true story of Hachiko, the faithful dog that continued to wait for its master at a train station in Japan long after his death.
The cream white Akita Inu, born 100 years ago, has been memorialised in everything from books to movies to the cult science fiction sitcom Futurama. And the Chinese iteration – the third after a Japanese version in 1987, and the Richard Gere-starrer in 2009 – is a hit at the box office.
There have been tales of other devoted hounds such as Greyfriars Bobby, but none with the global impact of Hachiko.
A bronze statue of him has stood outside Shibuya Station in Tokyo, where he waited in vain for a decade, since 1948. The statue was first erected in 1934 before being recycled for the war effort during World War Two. Japanese schoolchildren are taught the story of Chuken Hachiko – or loyal dog Hachiko – as an example of devotion and fidelity.
Hachiko represents the “ideal Japanese citizen” with his “unquestioning devotion”, says Professor Christine Yano of the University of Hawaii – “loyal, reliable, obedient to a master, understanding, without relying upon rationality, their place in the larger scheme of things”.
The story of Hachiko
Hachiko was born in November 1923 in the city of Odate in Akita prefecture, the original home of Akitas.
A large-sized Japanese dog, the Akita is one of the country’s oldest and most popular breeds. Designated by the Japanese government as a national icon in 1931, they were once trained to hunt animals like wild boar and elk.
“Akita dogs are calm, sincere, intelligent, and brave [and] obedient to their masters,” said Eietsu Sakuraba, author of an English language children’s book about Hachiko. “On the other hand, it also has a stubborn personality and is wary of anyone other than its master.”
The year Hachiko was born, Hidesaburo Ueno, a renowned agricultural professor and a dog lover, asked a student to find him an Akita puppy.
Image caption,Hachiko became nationally known in Japan after a newspaper article in 1932
After a gruelling train journey, the puppy arrived at the Ueno residence in Shibuya district on 15 January 1924, where it was initially thought dead. According to Hachiko’s biographer, Prof Mayumi Itoh, Ueno and his wife Yae nursed him back to health over the next six months.
Ueno named him Hachi, or eight in Japanese. Ko is an honorific bestowed by Ueno’s students.
The long wait
Ueno took a train to work several times a week. He was accompanied to Shibuya station by his three dogs, including Hachiko. The trio would then wait there for his return in the evening.
On 21 May 1925, Ueno, then 53, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Hachiko had been with him for just 16 months.
“While people were attending the wake, Hachi smelled Dr Ueno from the house and went inside the living room. He crawled under the coffin and refused to move,” writes Prof Itoh.
Hachiko spent the next few months with different families outside Shibuya but eventually, in the summer of 1925, he ended up with Ueno’s gardener Kikusaburo Kobayashi.
Having returned to the area where his late master lived, Hachiko soon resumed his daily commute to the station, rain or shine.
“In the evening, Hachi stood on four legs at the ticket gate and looked at each passenger as if he were looking for someone,” writes Prof Itoh. Station employees initially saw him as a nuisance. Yakitori vendors would pour water on him and little boys bullied and hit him.
However, he gained nationwide fame after Japanese daily Tokyo Asahi Shimbun wrote about him in October 1932.
The station received donations of food for Hachiko each day, while visitors came from far and wide to see him. Poems and haikus were written about him. A fundraising event in 1934 to make a statue of him reportedly drew a crowd of 3,000.
Hachiko’s eventual death on 8 March 1935 made the front page of many newspapers. At his funeral, Buddhist monks offered prayers for him and dignitaries read eulogies. Thousands visited his statue in the following days.
Image caption,Hachiko’s statue is a popular spot and often a place for political protests
In impoverished post-war Japan, a fundraising drive for a new statue of Hachiko even managed to raise 800,000 yen, an enormous sum at the time, worth about 4bn yen (£22m; $28m) today.
“In retrospect, I feel that he knew that Dr Ueno would not come back, but he kept waiting – Hachiko taught us the value of keeping faith in someone,” wrote Takeshi Okamoto in a newspaper article in 1982. As a high school student, he had seen Hachiko at the station daily.
Remembering Hachiko
Every year on 8 April, a memorial service for Hachiko is held outside Shibuya Station. His statue is often decorated with scarves, Santa hats and, most recently, a surgical mask.
His mount is on display at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. Some of his remains are interred at the Aoyama Cemetery, alongside Ueno and Yae. Statues of him have also been cast in Odate, Ueno’s hometown Hisai, the University of Tokyo and Rhode Island, the American setting for the 2009 movie.
Odate also has a series of events lined up this year for his 100th birthday.
Will the world’s most loyal dog still be celebrated a century from now? Prof Yano says yes because she believes the “heroism of Hachiko” is not defined by any particular period – rather it is timeless.
Mr Sakuraba is equally optimistic. “Even 100 years from now, this unconditional, devoted love will remain unchanged, and the story of Hachiko will live on forever.”
Hachiko: The world’s most loyal dog turns 100
Published3 days ago
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Image caption,A statue of Hachiko has stood outside Shibuya station in Tokyo since 1948
By Nicholas Yong
BBC News, Singapore
The Chinese tagline on the movie poster says it all: “I will wait for you, no matter how long it takes.”
It tells the true story of Hachiko, the faithful dog that continued to wait for its master at a train station in Japan long after his death.
The cream white Akita Inu, born 100 years ago, has been memorialised in everything from books to movies to the cult science fiction sitcom Futurama. And the Chinese iteration – the third after a Japanese version in 1987, and the Richard Gere-starrer in 2009 – is a hit at the box office.
There have been tales of other devoted hounds such as Greyfriars Bobby, but none with the global impact of Hachiko.
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A bronze statue of him has stood outside Shibuya Station in Tokyo, where he waited in vain for a decade, since 1948. The statue was first erected in 1934 before being recycled for the war effort during World War Two. Japanese schoolchildren are taught the story of Chuken Hachiko – or loyal dog Hachiko – as an example of devotion and fidelity.
Hachiko represents the “ideal Japanese citizen” with his “unquestioning devotion”, says Professor Christine Yano of the University of Hawaii – “loyal, reliable, obedient to a master, understanding, without relying upon rationality, their place in the larger scheme of things”.
The story of Hachiko
Hachiko was born in November 1923 in the city of Odate in Akita prefecture, the original home of Akitas.
A large-sized Japanese dog, the Akita is one of the country’s oldest and most popular breeds. Designated by the Japanese government as a national icon in 1931, they were once trained to hunt animals like wild boar and elk.
“Akita dogs are calm, sincere, intelligent, and brave [and] obedient to their masters,” said Eietsu Sakuraba, author of an English language children’s book about Hachiko. “On the other hand, it also has a stubborn personality and is wary of anyone other than its master.”
The year Hachiko was born, Hidesaburo Ueno, a renowned agricultural professor and a dog lover, asked a student to find him an Akita puppy.
Image caption,Hachiko became nationally known in Japan after a newspaper article in 1932
After a gruelling train journey, the puppy arrived at the Ueno residence in Shibuya district on 15 January 1924, where it was initially thought dead. According to Hachiko’s biographer, Prof Mayumi Itoh, Ueno and his wife Yae nursed him back to health over the next six months.
Ueno named him Hachi, or eight in Japanese. Ko is an honorific bestowed by Ueno’s students.
The long wait
Ueno took a train to work several times a week. He was accompanied to Shibuya station by his three dogs, including Hachiko. The trio would then wait there for his return in the evening.
On 21 May 1925, Ueno, then 53, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Hachiko had been with him for just 16 months.
“While people were attending the wake, Hachi smelled Dr Ueno from the house and went inside the living room. He crawled under the coffin and refused to move,” writes Prof Itoh.
Hachiko spent the next few months with different families outside Shibuya but eventually, in the summer of 1925, he ended up with Ueno’s gardener Kikusaburo Kobayashi.
Having returned to the area where his late master lived, Hachiko soon resumed his daily commute to the station, rain or shine.
“In the evening, Hachi stood on four legs at the ticket gate and looked at each passenger as if he were looking for someone,” writes Prof Itoh. Station employees initially saw him as a nuisance. Yakitori vendors would pour water on him and little boys bullied and hit him.
However, he gained nationwide fame after Japanese daily Tokyo Asahi Shimbun wrote about him in October 1932.
The station received donations of food for Hachiko each day, while visitors came from far and wide to see him. Poems and haikus were written about him. A fundraising event in 1934 to make a statue of him reportedly drew a crowd of 3,000.
Hachiko’s eventual death on 8 March 1935 made the front page of many newspapers. At his funeral, Buddhist monks offered prayers for him and dignitaries read eulogies. Thousands visited his statue in the following days.
Image caption,Hachiko’s statue is a popular spot and often a place for political protests
In impoverished post-war Japan, a fundraising drive for a new statue of Hachiko even managed to raise 800,000 yen, an enormous sum at the time, worth about 4bn yen (£22m; $28m) today.
“In retrospect, I feel that he knew that Dr Ueno would not come back, but he kept waiting – Hachiko taught us the value of keeping faith in someone,” wrote Takeshi Okamoto in a newspaper article in 1982. As a high school student, he had seen Hachiko at the station daily.
Remembering Hachiko
Every year on 8 April, a memorial service for Hachiko is held outside Shibuya Station. His statue is often decorated with scarves, Santa hats and, most recently, a surgical mask.
His mount is on display at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo. Some of his remains are interred at the Aoyama Cemetery, alongside Ueno and Yae. Statues of him have also been cast in Odate, Ueno’s hometown Hisai, the University of Tokyo and Rhode Island, the American setting for the 2009 movie.
Odate also has a series of events lined up this year for his 100th birthday.
Will the world’s most loyal dog still be celebrated a century from now? Prof Yano says yes because she believes the “heroism of Hachiko” is not defined by any particular period – rather it is timeless.
Mr Sakuraba is equally optimistic. “Even 100 years from now, this unconditional, devoted love will remain unchanged, and the story of Hachiko will live on forever.”
One of the mysterious boats painted in an Australian cave several hundred years ago Darrell Lewis / Flinders University
Some 50 years ago, two strange paintings were found inside a cave in northern Australia. They are likely hundreds of years old, and they depict a pair of boats with unfamiliar features that have baffled experts ever since their discovery.
Now, in a study published in the journal Historical Archaeology, researchers may have finally identified the images, shedding light on Indigenous stories that have long been erased.
While paintings depicting Indonesian fishing boats—and eventually European ships—have been found nearby, the two mystery boats are different: The researchers say that the vessels are “fighting craft” from the Moluccas, a group of Indonesian islands directly north of Australia.
The prow of a Moluccan boat National Museum of World Cultures / Flinders University
“These motifs support existing ideas that sporadic or accidental voyages from Indonesia to the Australian coastline took place before or alongside regular trepang [Indonesian for ‘sea cucumber’] fishing visits,” says study lead author Mick de Ruyter, a maritime archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia, in a statement from the university.
The exact circumstances under which Aboriginal populations encountered the Moluccan boats is uncertain. Still, the researchers write that the presence of fighting craft “implies instances of physical violence or at least a projection of power.” Conflict may have brewed between the two groups, perhaps related to trade, head-hunting or slavery.
Sue O’Connor, an archaeologist at Australian National University who was not involved in the study, suggests another possibility: that Aboriginal groups may have visited the Moluccas. “Either this demonstrates that we’ve had that craft visiting the Arnhem Land [a region in northern Australia] shores or people from Arnhem Land [had been] going to them in the Moluccan region and seeing crafts there and coming back and painting them,” she tells Lillian Rangiah of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
The researchers were also stunned by the level of detail captured in the paintings. Such precision indicates that the Indigenous artists spent a substantial amount of time with these ships, rather than simply getting “a fleeting view from the shoreline,” study co-author Daryl Wesley, an archaeologist at Flinders University, tells the ABC. “They’ve gotten so many things correct about the paddles, the prowl boards, all the pennants and everything in decorative details of the ship.”
Based on certain features, such as the oars and pennants, researchers concluded that these boats likely weren’t fishing vessels. Darrell Lewis / Flinders University
Reports from Dutch colonists reveal that by the 17th century, groups from the Moluccas were sailing “regularly” to Australia, per the university’s statement.
Paul Tacon, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia, was not involved with the study, but he is working with Wesley and a larger team to study how Aboriginal groups recorded their interactions with foreign travelers. He tells Jennifer Nalewicki of Live Science that the new study offers promising insights.
“This rigorous research convincingly shows evidence of contact between Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land, Australia, and mariners from Moluccan islands hundreds of years ago,” he adds.
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