A WEEK IN AYA'S WORLD: The Ivory Coast

The talented couple who depicted the new Africa From Bush to City (Harcourt, 1966) here focus on the daily doings of a little girl whose life is at once traditional and modern: Aya is the new Africa. The authors, is a notably undidactic text, refrain from pointing this out, as they omit specific mention of her family's economic status and the usual spectrum of social science topics. These the reader absorbs for himself from the photos and Aya's activities, meanwhile sharing Aya's pleasure in changing her four dresses during a single day, her discomfiture in being punished for naughtiness and satisfaction in being rewarded for neatness at school. During the week she bathes her baby brother and bundles him on her back, helps her mother market and make dinner (both outdoors), visits her father working at the harbor, visits the doctor with her mother, goes also to the museum, to the zoo, to a dance of young and old at Uncle Fanta's house. And she visits Cousin Lucy's village, very different from her city, Abidjan. The text consists of little more than captions for the sharp, very lively photos; that, and the fact that Aya is such an unselfconscious butterfly, make this an ideal read-aloud and a tempting easy reader.