A GIRL WHO grows wings; an old, empty house; a small king on a small pony; a day when something is going to happen: all four of these situations are ripe with possibility. The girl with wings opens her window. She takes a deep breath. And...What happens next?
That is the question we posed to 6th graders at Micklefield School in Capetown, South Africa and St. Mary's Elementary School in Halifax, Canada. These students were part of the pilot IBBY Canada/ South Africa twinning project. Together the two classrooms wrote endings to four story starters provided by well-known children's authors. Canadian and South African children got to know each other through the shared experience of completing a story. What better way to honour IBBY founder Jella Lepman's belief in the importance of "building a bridge of children's books."
The story starters were written by Canadian authors Marie Louise Gay and Giles Tibo, and South African authors Lesley Beake and Jay Heale. They were each only a few paragraphs long, and they were each tantalizingly incomplete.
After sharing a few e-mails to get to know each other, the two classrooms dove in. They broke off into pairs containing one student from each country. Each pair chose one South African starter and one Canadian one. Then each student finished both stories, and shared them via e-mail with their counterparts across the Atlantic.
"It was fun to see how different they were!" the kids from Micklefield School write.
Would you like to be a part of the IBBY Canada Twinning Project? We hope many Canadian and South African classrooms will be interested in completing their stories for us.
Please note that the Canadian school year runs from September to June. Canadian schools are not open during July and August and will have short breaks in December and March. South African schools run from January to December and will have shorter breaks beginning in March, June and September with a longer break from December to mid January.
If you'd like to make the commitment to complete the project, write to us at twinning@ibby-canada.org. Please let us know:
- your name
- the name of your school
- your school's address
- your phone and fax number
- your e-mail address
- the number of children in your class
- when (during what month/months of the school year) you would like to complete this project
- something about yourself
And if you know a teacher who might like to participate, please let them know about us!
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