Galimoto

Galimoto. ISBN 0-6881-0991-8. Karen Lynn Williams. Catherine Stock. 1991. Reading Rainbow. Ages 4-8. African.

Galimoto, by Karen Lynn Williams, with illustrations by Catherine Stock, tells the story of seven-year-old Kondi and his day long quest to build himself a galimoto. When he announces to his brother, Ufuli, that he is going to make a galimoto, Ufuli tells him that he is too young to take on such a task, and that there is no way he will find enough wire to make his toy. Kondi doesn't let this deter him, however, and finds the wire very cleverly by asking for old scraps from his uncle, the miller at the flour mill, and by getting scraps out of the garbage at the bike shop. Along the way he runs into many people from his village that question what he is doing. The illustrations are done with what looks like water colors and sketches drawn with pencil over the water colors. They add to the text very well by illustrating the different places that Kondi visits, and the different people he encounters.

This is the story that I read aloud during my lesson plan. I used the illustrations to show the students that maize is corn, and to help describe how the spokes of a bicycle could be used as wire for Kondi's galimoto. We discussed what we wondered about the story after looking at the cover, stopped in the middle and discussed what we had learned so far and what we wondered about again. At the end of the story, we revisted what we had wondered about and realized that we had answered all of our questions by reading the story. The students were very interested in this story. It was a lot of fun!