23818: (pub)Hermantin:Picture book tells Haitian tale of survival (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Sat, Nov. 13, 2004


KID'S BOOKS
Picture book tells Haitian tale of survival

By SUE CORBETT
scorbett@herald.com

Truth is not only stranger than fiction; it can be a whole lot scarier. A
children's picture book that begins, ''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,'' is all the more horrific because it's
based on the lives of real Haitian children.

Selavi: A Haitian Story of Hope (Cinco Punto Press, $17.95, ages 6 and up)
written and illustrated by Youme Landowne is, at once, one of the saddest
and the most uplifting books I have ever read.

It tells the story of a boy nicknamed Selavi, (''that's life'' in Creole)
who is befriended -- saved, really -- by other homeless children. One lost
his parents when their boat sank. One left home rather than share the ''one
dry bean'' they all had to eat. Two sisters hid from soldiers in an oil drum
but when they came out, their parents were gone.

Landowne, who grew up in South Miami, first heard the children's stories
when she traveled to Haiti in 1997. By then the children were living at a
shelter that had been opened in the mid-1980s by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the
future Haitian president who was then a parish priest. They told her how
they stayed alive on the streets by sharing scavenged food and living
together in a banyan tree.

Landowne was living in California when she first heard about Radyo Timoun
(children's radio), a broadcast started after the shelter was destroyed by
arsonists. The shelter and radio station have been repeatedly targeted for
destruction.

''Friends had a party and people gave five and ten dollars which added up to
enough for the bus ticket to Miami and the plane ticket to Port-au-Prince,''
Landowne wrote in an e-mail. She took her paints with her to Haiti and drew
and talked with the children. ``They invited me back [and] every time I
went, generous Floridians donated batteries and pens, medicines and
vitamins, books and clothes. I brought as much as I could carry.''

The book contains her vivid and poignant paintings, and photographs of the
many Haitian children she met while researching their story.

Haitian writer Edwidge Danticat provides a poignant afterword. ``Being a
child of Haiti myself, I can only hope that Selavi's story will be repeated
in the lives of many other children, among them future writers and radio and
television journalists, who will continue to tell -- and show -- their
stories in such moving and powerful ways that the rest of the world will no
longer be able to neglect them.''