Monday, December 21, 2020

FORBES: The Best Children’s Books About Entrepreneurship For Kids

Eevi Jones, bestselling author.


The Best Children’s Books About Entrepreneurship For Kids

by Stephanie Burns

 
A lot of parents (myself included) are always looking for ways to expand our children’s mind - especially when it comes to entrepreneurship. If you are eager to teach your kids about being a business owner, there are a few books that stand out. I sat down with Eevi Jones, an award winning & bestselling children’s book author, and the founder of Children’s Book University™, to get her take on what makes a children’s book great for budding entrepreneurs.
 From Forbes.

The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes by Gary Rubinstein (Author)  Mark Pett (Author)

Description

Being Perfect Is Overrated

Beatrice Bottomwell has NEVER (not once!) made a mistake. She never forgets her math homework, she never wears mismatched socks, and she ALWAYS wins the yearly talent show at school. In fact, the entire town calls her The Girl Who Never Makes Mistakes! One day, the inevitable happens: Beatrice makes a huge mistake in front of everyone! But in the end, readers (and perfectionists) will realize that life is more fun when you enjoy everything--even the mistakes.

From the award-winning children's book author Mark Pett: The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes is the perfect find for parents looking for teacher gifts or award winning children's books for their own collections. This book teaches growth mindset in a fun way, in the spirit of Your Fantastic Elastic Brain and Beautiful Oops. Like the little heroes in Rosie Revere Engineer, Most Magnificent Thing, and The Day the Crayons Quit, little Beatrice Bottomwell is an inspiration for kids who dream big.

Praise for The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes:

"Beatrice offers a lesson we could all benefit from: learn from your mistakes, let go, laugh, and enjoy the ride." --Jennifer Fosberry, New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Not Isabella

"This funny and heartfelt book conveys a powerful message about how putting too much pressure on yourself to be perfect can suck the joy out of everything. Beatrice's discovery that you can laugh off even a very public mistake shows the importance of resiliency and helps perfectionist kids keep things in perspective. Most importantly, Beatrice reminds the reader that it's more important to enjoy the things that you do than worry about doing them perfectly." --A Mighty Girl


Friday, December 18, 2020

I Saw Blood Splashed on the Green White Green

I Saw Blood Splashed on the Green White Green


 I saw them marching on the street.
I saw them stomping their feet.
I saw them carrying banners and placards of their agitation.
Agitation of their #EndSARS demonstration.
I saw them stomping to the toll gate with contorted faces
Contorted faces of angry grimaces.
I saw them waving our national flag like soldiers in parade.
I heard them chanting our national anthem with pride.
Young zealots of the new generation
They are the new patriots of our nation.

They were coming to protest in peace.
To protest against widespread acts of injustice.
Acts of injustice by the brutes in the police.
Then the hoodlums came like demons unleashed from hell.
Stinking street urchins with evil smell.
But they stood their ground against the agent provocateurs.
Among them were the betrayers and saboteurs.

Then I saw a crow flying above their heads in the sky.
Crows fly too as the doves fly.
They say the sight of a crow is not a good omen.
No ill will of evil can stop these young men and women.

Then I saw the troops coming in trucks.
Coming in trucks with their guns.
The street lights were switched off and DJ Switch gasped.
Many of the them were on tenterhooks.
Then I heard the cracks of gunshots.
I heard voices screaming, "They are shooting us!"
Screaming in fear and trembling.
I heard voices screaming, "They are killing us!"
I heard the loud cracks of gunshots.
I saw their red bloodshot eyes.
The bloodshot eyes of the demons.
I will never forget the date.
The fateful night at the Lekki tollgate.
I saw blood splashed on the green white green.


- By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima, author of "Scarlet Tears of London", "The Prophet Lied" and other books.
https://www.amazon.com/author/ekenyerengozimichaelchima




Thursday, December 17, 2020

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Michelle Obama, #BringBackOurWomen


The Timeline of the Abduction of the Chibok School Girls.


Dear Mrs. @MichelleObama 

 We should change the abandoned #BringBackOurGirls hashtag, because the #ChibokGirls abducted by #BokoHaram since the night of 14–15 April 2014, are no longer girls. We should call for #BringBackOurWomen .

Many of them are now unhappily married mothers of children for terrorists who raped them. And tragically, over 10 have died.


Do you know why they were abandoned?

Because they are not daughters of the rich and they are not daughters of the President and Vice President of Nigeria.

While these unfortunate Chibok school girls are still in the captivity of the demonic Boko  Haram terrorists and raped and in trauma, the daughters of our political leaders are having blissful weddings and going on  honeymoons overseas.

Boko  Harm has now kidnapped over 500 school boys in #Katsina State in the same north eastern region of Nigeria. And what did President Muhammadu Buhari do?

He went visiting his cattle in Daura. 

It is #FakeNews?

No. It the True News. 


Faithfully,

Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima,

Publisher/Editor, 

247 Nigeria (@247nigeria) / Twitter

https://mobile.twitter.com/247nigeria

https://www.amazon.com/author/ekenyerengozimichaelchima

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Wole Soyinka's New Novel "Chronicles of The Happiest People on Earth" Launched in Lagos, Ibadan and Abuja

“There is a greater dependency on religion because the nation is desperate. When a nation is desperate, it turns to the supernatural.

“Religion has always been with us. These days, however, you can’t walk one yard without stumbling on religion. Religion is today one of the fastest-growing businesses in the nation,” 

- Prof. Wole Soyinka, the first black Nobel laureate in Literature at the book launch of his third novel, "Chronicles of The Happiest People on Earth" on Monday, December 7, 2020, at Terra Kulture on Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.

His earlier novels were The Interpreters, 1964  and Season of Anomy, 1972.


Accomplished Nigerian actor and writer, Richard Mofe-Damijo  and Somtom Asibelibua, who read in English, French and Spanish were among the guests who read excerpts from the sociopolitical novel published by Bookcraft Africa .

The dignitaries at the event included Honourable Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Rotimi Amaechi Chibuike Amaechi, Federal Minister of Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN (represented by the CEO, Temple Management Company, Mr. Idris Olorunnibe), the US Consulate’s Public Affairs Officer Stephen Ibelli, Prof. Ebun Clark (the wife of the recently transited playwright and poet, Prof. John Pepper Clark), the environmental activist  and art patron, Dr. Newton Jibunoh, TheNEWS’ Executive Editor, Mr. Kunle Ajibade, The Chairman of the Editorial Board of The Nation Newspapers, Mr. Sam Oritsetimeyin Omatseye and Dr. Wiebe Boer, @WiebeB_Africa, the CEO of @allonenergy.

It was also launched in Ibadan on Wednesday, December 9 and yesterday in Abuja.


Excepts from the novel:

Adjusting to a new culture was his main concern, but not an insurmountable culture shock. Badagry, after all, albeit closely intertwined with Lagos, was still Badagry. Pitan-Payne was on hand, though keeping a frenetic pace to wind up his affairs and proceed to his UN assignment on schedule. The engineer seemed to thrive on interlocking calendars, and in any case, he now had Menka to pick up the loose ends for him in his absence….

The timing could not have been more thoughtfully ordained. The unexpected and the planned seemed to dovetail neatly, like the finely adjusted sprockets or his mechanical prototypes. And while Lagos/Badagry lacked the excitement of receiving sudden cartloads of human debris from Boko Haram’s latest efforts to out-Allah Allah in their own image, one could count on gratuitous equivalents from multiple directions. Such as the near daily explosion of a petroleum tanker on the expressway or city centre. Or a roofless lorry bulging with cattle and humans tipping over on a bridge and dropping several feet onto an obliging rock outcrop in the midst of the river.  Sometimes, more parsimoniously, a victim of military amour propre – in uniform or mufti, it made no difference. That class seemed to believe in safety in numbers, and all it took was that even a low-ranking sergeant should take offence at another motorist, who perhaps refused to give way to his car, a mere ‘bloody civilian’, never mind that the latter had the right of way. An on-the-spot educational measure was mandated. Guns bristling, his accompanying detail, trained to obey even the command of a mere twitch of the lip, leapt out of their escort vehicle, dragged out the hapless driver, unbuckled their studded belts, whipped him senseless, threw him in the car boot or on the floor of the escort van and took him to their barracks for further instruction. However, the wretch sometimes created a problem by suffocating en route – which left society to develop structures for neutralizing such inconvenience.


The contradicting, ironic sequence occurred to Menka only for the first time – yes, come to think of it, the military hardly ever recorded a fatality – once or twice, maybe even three times in a month — yes, the accident of excess did happen, but mostly such terminal disposal was left to the police, whose favourite execution site was a road block, legal or moonlighting. Perhaps a recalcitrant commuter, or passenger bus driver had refused to collaborate in providing a bribe on demand, or insulted the rank of the demanding officer with a derisive sum.  And it did not have to be the original offender but some too-know grammar spouting public defender who had intervened on behalf of the potential source of extortion. The outcome was predictable – victim or good Samaritan advocate instantly joined the statistics of the fallen from ‘accidental discharge’. The expression was still current, but often it was anything but. Accidents had become infrequent and unfashionable. Oftener to be expected was that the frustrated, froth-lipped police pointed the gun, calmly, deliberately, at the head of the unbelieving statistic and,  pulled the trigger. Again, the inconvenience of body disposal.


But then, the community of victims themselves – what a specialized breed of the species! The roles, it constantly appeared, had become gleefully, compulsively interchangeable. Allowing him only a few days to ‘catch your breath and get your bearings’, Pitan-Payne lost no time in taking Menka to inspect the land designated for the Gumchi Rehabilitation Centre, for victims of Boko Haram, ISWAP and other redeemers – nothing like striking while the iron was hot! On their way, the familiar sight of crowd agitation – how would the day justify itself without some kind of street eruption somewhere, wherever! Trapped in the chug-stop-chug of traffic, the favourite commuter distraction was to attempt to guess what was the cause, and even place bets on propositions. That morning, Menka’s first in nearly a year down south did not disappoint. But for the milling blockage by intervening viewers, they could have claimed the privilege of ringside seats. Compensating for that obstructed viewing however was the sight of men and women trotting gaily, anticipation all over their faces, towards the surrounded spot of attraction. From  every direction they came, some vaulting over car bonnets, squishing their legs against the fenders, squeezing through earlier arrived  bodies or simply scrabbling for discovered vantage viewing points. They climbed on parked vehicles and the raised concrete median. Commuter buses slowed down and stopped, keke napep — the motor-cycle taxis — pulled aside, drivers and passengers alike rubber necking on both sides of, or in the direction of a wide gutter that sank into a culvert. The lights changed to green and Pitan-Payne drove on, their last shared image a pair of muscular arms raised above the bobbing heads, clutching an outsize stone, slamming that object downwards into the gutter. Very likely a snake, Pitan suggested. With the rainy season, quite a few sneaked through the marshes into culverts and slithered their way into parking lots and even offices.


https://bookshop.org/shop/weread  💋✌🏼️💕

Saturday, December 12, 2020

WeREAD, Because We Love To READ

WeREAD, Because We Love To READ

In spite of the challenges of 2020 with the catastrophic COVID-19 pandemic and the consequential economic shortcomings, I still succeeded to complete two books and launched 

WeREAD powered by Bookshop, https://bookshop.org/shop/Weread

WeREAD is for the revival of the reading culture in Nigeria and the rest of Africa for the appreciation of literature with special focus on books by African authors.

The next level is to produce the WeREAD app for all users of GSM phones to access the platform. The app will include an interactive social networking feature for users to talk about books, booklists, book awards, rate books and trade books in book auctions where collector's editions of rare books can be sold to the highest bidders. We will also produce various branded products for WeREAD, such as WeREAD school, shopping and travel bags; facecaps; T-shirts and WeREAD Cafés strategically located on campuses of selected tertiary institutions and shopping malls. 




Friday, December 11, 2020

NOLLYWOOD is the National Treasure of Nigeria

NOLLYWOOD is the National Treasure of Nigeria

Nollywood is our precious National Treasure. But majority of Nigerians, including the majority of the practitioners in Nollywood don't have this realisation that everyone of the icons in Nollywood is a national treasure; the filmmakers, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers and the other indispensable professionals who have made Nollywood an international phenomenon in filmmaking and in the literary culture of motion picture.

The realisation of the importance and significance of Nollywood is the primary purpose of publishing the NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series, the first book series on Nollywood and the Nigerian film industry which has become a vital part of the knowledge base of Nollywood and the history of filmmaking in Nigeria. 

Nollywood is the focus of scholarly researches on African studies, film studies, haute couture and the literary culture of the literature of Nollywood screenplays in numerous universities in different parts of the world.  The  sociocultural, socioeconomic and sociopolitical developments in Nollywood  have only been fully realised by film students and scholars and they are increasing the knowledge economy of Nollywood which is more important to nation building than the short term benefits of the film and TV productions, cinemas and OTT platforms combined.  

The realisation of Nollywood as a very important national treasure of Nigeria will increase the local and global appreciation of the Nigerian film industry and the greatness of Nigeria in the world.


- By EKENYERENGOZI Michael Chima 

Publisher/Editor, 

NOLLYWOOD MIRROR®Series 

247 Nigeria (@247nigeria) / Twitter

https://mobile.twitter.com/247nigeria

https://www.amazon.com/author/ekenyerengozimichaelchima





Have You Watched the Best African Movies in 2020?

 

Thursday, December 10, 2020

The Penguin Big Book Quiz of the Year

The Penguin Big Book Quiz of the Year

Are you 2020's ultimate bookworm? Join us live at 7pm on 15th December to play along and test your wits against other literature lovers in the first-ever Penguin Big Book Quiz. 

With special guests including Stephen Fry, Bernardine Evaristo and Caitlin Moran, all you need to do is sign up to receive your free ticket  



Gift Guide for Book Lovers

Gifts Ideas

Still looking for holiday gifts? Look no further—a book is always a perfect gift, and we know just the right ones!

As always, we encourage you to check with your favorite local bookstore how best to support them this holiday season, whether it be curbside pickup, ordering via their website, or on Bookshop.

The Bookshop team

P.S. If ordering a holiday gift via Bookshop, we strongly encourage you to choose PRIORITY SHIPPING at checkout and no later than next Wednesday, the 16th. Or get them a gift card!