Black History Month: The Bite of the Mango and Chanda's Secrets

February is Black History Month in Canada and the U.S. (in the U.K., it's in October), so today's blog post features two of our most popular books with African content.

Mariatu Kamara's powerful memoir The Bite of the Mango won the respected Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children's Non-Fiction last year, and continues to receive awards nominations and praise. So far, the foreign rights have been sold for Australia/New Zealand (Allen & Unwin), the UK (Bloomsbury), Germany (Droemer Knaur), Holland (De Fontein), Italy (Sperling & Kupfer), Spain (Intermon Oxfam), French North America (La courte échelle), Portuguese Brazil (Editora Planeta), Slovenia (Zaloba Alica), and Korea (BookInMyLife). We're thrilled to see Mariatu's story travel around the world in so many different languages.

Here's Mariatu on a trip home to Sierra Leone:


From previous blog posts, you'll remember that author Allan Stratton has been on-site in sub-Saharan Africa to watch as his novel, Chanda's Secrets, is transformed into a movie. He's recently updated his blog with the story of how his book got turned into a movie, more pictures of the actors on set, and a funny story about movie extras.

We'll leave you with this book trailer:


For Black History events, check a local newspaper or search online. (NOW Magazine has a good list of events in Toronto.)