African children’s book project (ACBP) is a not for profit organisation that is working hard to achieve charity status.
We publish traditional old stories from Africa, adapt them to suit children and distribute them for free to schools, orphanages and villages in the originating countries, to encourage reading and imagination from an early age. Resources are very scarce in some areas of the countryside in Ethiopia and our books are a huge addition to the material teachers and volunteers use in some of the World’s most remote learning centres for children.
The Ungrateful Snake…
Our third children’s book is an African folk story adapted by ACBP into a colourful rhyming story aimed at 3-9 year olds. Click on the picture to see a sample, 8 of the 26 beautifully illustrated pages can be viewed right now. Buy a copy for your own children or as a gift via our website, for every book sold we will be able to print and deliver 10 books to remote schools and dedicated orphanages in Ethiopia. See videos of our books being distributed here. You can pre-order your copy here, it will be released for sale in July.
The Lady and The lake:
Northern Ethiopia, where the land of three ancient tribes meet, Oromo, Afar and Tigray. There is a market town in the mountains called Korem and a beautiful lake called Ashangi. There is salt traveled by caravan from the Afar region, hand made shoes from old car tyres, cooking utensils beaten out of panels of deserted tanks, handspun decorated clothes, even donkeys and camels for sale!
It was in this region that we stopped and quickly heard talk of a town at the bottom of a lake and the death of a woman in the mountains.
Priests, children and village elders pieced together an ancient story of biblical proportions that was unique to the area. A local shepherd took us in search of a woman, petrified in stone on the mountainside, we found her. And the story of The Lady and The Lake was out. Now 3,000 copies have been distributed back into the countryside.
Fire on The Mountain:
Selam told me “Fire on the Mountain is the favourite book” with many of the kids in the library where she worked, a story they could relate to, a folktale from their own country with very few children’s books. She translated the book into Amharic and we raised the money to re-print a few thousand copies that we gave out to children for free – just to get the story out to the kids in the country it came from.
Jane Kurtz and her publishers Simon & Shuster Books for Young Readers kindly agreed to allow us the rights for the text, local artist Yohannes Fitsumbirhan painted the illustrations. 
We worked together and produced a bright and colourful book that reflected the land and the culture of a rich and beautiful country. Appealing full colour pages for youngsters, containing both Amharic and English text to encourage language learning. Covering the cost of printing was done mostly by the hard work of Susan Polden, her friends in and around Borrisokane and the generous donations of the good people of Tipperary in Ireland.
Fire on the Mountain was written by Jane Kurtz and published and sold in The USA by ‘Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster publishing division. 1994.
better place through adjusting our attitudes toward love, sharing and understanding, and having a great time while doing it. In their free time they have pulled together motivation and co-operation from artists, event organisers, DJ’s, sound engineers and party people to put on a night of dance once a month at the Micro club on the seafront. They donate 
the proceeds to various organisations and ACBookP and Ryico have been the lucky recipients this summer. 400 pounds has given a great help to the book project and will be used to help cover the cost of printing in September. The group can be found on Facebook, join up and find out what’s going on next, meet some great people and get involved if you want to, or just enjoy the parties knowing it’s for a good cause.A big Thank you to you all for your support and commitment.June09: 
Eva helped out the project and raised some money for us by carrying out a sponsored bike ride. Many people clicked on the donate button on this page and gave her some support and encouragement. Eva has raised £250 for us!! Many many thanks to her for that great effort! 
May 09: We have had a fantastic contribution to kickstart our donation campaign this summer from Ptolemy Elrington, the World re-known sculptor who is the artist behind Hubcap Creatures and who has done work for The Environment Agency, Essex County Council, RSPB, The British Council in Greece and many other environmentally aware groups and organisations. A generous donation of £1,000 has given us a massive boost towards our target of £3,000 to enable us to publish 5,000 copies of our second book by September. Many thanks to him for that.
March 09: This is a drawing for the upcoming book The Lady and The Lake. The artist is painting them right now and we will be laying the book out in a few weeks time. When it is finished we will be ready to print as soon as we have raised the money to cover it. We hope to be distributing around Christmas time and gathering some more material for the next book.
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