Not So Fast Songololo

Story

Malusi is a young boy living with his family in a small town in South Africa. His family are poor and all of his clothes are hand-me-downs from his older siblings, but he’d love his own pair of shoes. One day, he and Gogo, his grandmother, go on a shopping trip to the city. Malusi (Songololo to his grandmother) helps Gogo with her shopping and keeps her safe as they walk through the busy streets. He spots a pair of tackies (trainers) he likes in a shop window but he knows they can’t afford them...can they?

Why we chose it

A gentle story about a boy and his grandmother which brings to life both the strength of the relationship between the pair and the day to day life of a small town in South Africa.

Where it came from

Niki Daly grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, and has lived there most of his life. As a child he loved to draw, and now will often draw his characters first and ‘live with them until they become believable’. In 1980 he founded Songololo Books, wanting to produce stories for all South African children, and to provide a place where black South Africans would not only see themselves in the stories, but were writing them too. Not So Fast Songololo! was one of them, along with Charlie’s House (Reviva Schermbrucker, 1989), and All the Magic in the World (Wendy Hartman, 1993).

Where it went next

Not So Fast Songololo! was on the Horn Book Honour List in 1987, and in 1988 it won the Parents Choice Foundation Book Award for Literature and the Katrine Harries Award for illustration. He has also been nominated for the Hans Christian Anderson and the Astrid Lindgren awards.

Associated stories

Niki Daly has written and illustrated many books of his own. One of his most popular is Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky (1995), which was on the New York Times Best Illustrated Books list and won the Anne Izard Story Tellers Choice Award. He has also illustrated for many others, including Maybe It’s A Tiger (Kathleen Hersom, 1981), and The Magic Pot – Three African Tales (Dinah M Mbanze, 1999).