Books As Friends
See all blog posts
Connections with Children at the Amiko Youth Program
By Terry Farish, Connections Facilitator and former Connections Program Manager (2008-2013 & 2017-2019)
After school, children from many parts of Manchester gather with a lot of joy and laughing at the Amiko Youth Center. It’s a vibrant place. There’s a gym, coaching on a sport a kid loves, one-on-one tutoring sessions, dinner, read alouds, gardening, music, art of all kinds. In this mix came another program. It arose from a partnership between Amiko staff, Courtney Perron, Director, and Jaime Pendleton, Assistant Director, and Mary Nolin, Director of the Connections program at New Hampshire Humanities. The Connections program features stellar picture books as the core of a book-engagement program. Together, they had a vision to bring Connections to Amiko to support literacy, understanding about the world’s people, and more – a lifelong love of reading. Pendleton said the partnership kicked off with “a wonderful multigenerational program between children, their parents, and grandparents, and a Connections facilitator.”
.jpg)
The partnership grew to adding regular Connections story programs with “Amikos,” as the staff calls the children. When I came as a Connections facilitator, so many stars aligned with the twelve children in my group. The Amikos were multilingual learners and the books were in the young readers’ second, third, or fourth language. Children spoke Swahili, Créole, Arabic, French, Lingala, English and more. The book Thank You, Omu invited them all to be part of the telling. The author is Nigerian-born Oge Mora and this story, illustrated with collages, is about Mora’s own grandmother cooking her stew, the scent of which beckoned neighbors passing by her kitchen. Mora wrote, “Everyone had a seat at my grandmother’s table” just like they do when people pop in on Omu in the book. Kids were superb at predicting what would happen at the next “knock, knock, knock” at her door. They told their own memories of what their families would put in the pot and created their own collages of food to tell their family’s story. One boy, Nye, reflected after reading Thank you, Omu, “This book was my favorite because it showed how kindness can help you do something, can help you make new friends, and that people do care about you. It shows you a friend.”
.jpg)
We read more books about community and cultures. My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero and Zeke Peña captures an afternoon of joy for a father and daughter in their beloved city. Someone Builds the Dream by Lisa Wheeler and Loren Long is about the community of skilled people behind the buildings we live in or the bridges we cross. The children planned what they would build if they could build a dream. They designed houses, and one child imagined a homeless shelter and all the bricks it would take to build a shelter big enough for the people who need a home.
.jpg)
The series ended with Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings by Francie Latour and Ken Daley. The book honors many colors of Haiti in the eyes of a painter. “To paint Haiti,” Latour writes, “takes the darkest colors and the brightest ones, and all the colors in between.” In this way, she depicts for children not only the bright beauty of the country but also the dark sorrows of its violence.
Three of the children, Delephin, Josephine, and AndreAnna, are from Haiti. They were excited to read a story about Haiti and see Daley’s vibrant illustrations. We were able to find an edition of the book in Creole through the nonprofit organization I’m Your Neighbor Books, and each of the children from Haiti wanted the translation in Creole to bring home to their families. Delephin said, “I liked this book because this is the language my mom speaks.” New Hampshire Humanities has given these children and their families a beautiful, honest, and affirming book created by a Haitian American writer who loves her home country and shares that love of a home even in the country’s harsh times. After reading Auntie Luce, Pendleton said, “Students ran up to me to share that the book was about Haiti and that they’d gotten the book in their language. The simple act of bringing copies of the book in Haitian Creole meant the world to our Haitian-American students.”
New Hampshire Humanities’ Connections program provides copies of each of the books we read in the series to the young readers. Pendleton says Connections is good because kids go deep into the story and engage with it. Kids remember the books like friends. In that way, they can share them with brothers and sisters, friends and neighbors, grandmothers and grandfathers. “Where do you keep the books?” I asked. They had many places, including under their beds, close by. These kids are building home libraries. They like building a library for the Amiko Program, too, and return to the books to read again and again. “The Connections program continues to set the stage for student success,” Pendleton said. These kids are readers.
Students drew portraits after reading about a child who sits for a portrait by her aunt in Auntie Luce’s Talking Paintings. At the Amiko Youth Program, one child drew a portrait of her mom.
