Selavi

Youme. (2004). Selavi. Hong Kong: Morris Printing.

This book is about orphans in Haiti who loose their families and homes from soldiers with guns. The story is about a boy who is renamed Selavi, which means "that is life." After he loses his family and home he finds a group of children who live in a tree and joins their family. The children find a church and all together with the people in the church they build a house for them to live in. The soldiers burn down the house they build and they have to build another one. This story shows the hardships that the children endure everyday and what they are doing to help others.

This book shows how different life can be for many other children. Haiti is not a place that many students have even heard of so it is important for them to be aware of it and the many hardships that occur there. At the end of the book, there are a few pages written by Edwidge Danticat and her life in Haiti. She discusses how important it is that people know what is going on. This book could be used to show the importance of working together because it is the children working together that leads to building a home. The students could focus on something going on in the world that needs to be changed and research and write about it.