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Mister Sengi’s Very Big Friend wins award

By on 8th May 2014

Mister Sengi’s Very Big Friend wins a Bookchat Award for 2013.

Which is a pleasant surprise, but also an honour as there are some big names on the list.

Fiction

  • MISTER SENGI’S VERY BIG FRIEND by David du Plessis & Charles de Villiers (Struik Nature 2013)
  • MONDAY EVENING, THURSDAY AFTERNOON by Jenny Robson (Tafelberg 2013)
  • SHARP EDGES by S A Partridge (Human & Rousseau 2013)
  • SISI GOES TO SCHOOL and other stories by Wendy Hartmann, illustrated by Joan Rankin (Human & Rousseau 2013)
  • STORYTIME : 10 South African stories for children by various authors (Sunday Times/Nal’ibali 2013)
  • THE NAME OF THE TREE IS BOJABI by Dianne Hofmeyr, illustrated by Piet Grobler (Human & Rousseau 2013)

Non-fiction

  • FIRST FACT FINDER by Helen Lewis (Metz Press 2013)
  • SAM, The Toad in the Hole by Lulu & Tee (African Penguin 2013)
  • MISTER SENGI’S VERY BIG FRIEND by David du Plessis & Charles de Villiers (Struik Nature 2013)
  • MONDAY EVENING, THURSDAY AFTERNOON by Jenny Robson (Tafelberg 2013)
  • SHARP EDGES by S A Partridge (Human & Rousseau 2013)
  • SISI GOES TO SCHOOL and other stories by Wendy Hartmann, illustrated by Joan Rankin (Human & Rousseau 2013)
  • STORYTIME : 10 South African stories for children by various authors (Sunday Times/Nal’ibali 2013)
  • THE NAME OF THE TREE IS BOJABI by Dianne Hofmeyr, illustrated by Piet Grobler (Human & Rousseau 2013)

Non-fiction

  • FIRST FACT FINDER by Helen Lewis (Metz Press 2013)
  • SAM, The Toad in the Hole by Lulu & Tee (African Penguin 2013)

Mister Sengi’s Very Big Friend first review… and the serval

By on 18th Jan 2014

Mister Sengi cover

Mister Sengi’s Very Big Friend by David du Plessis & Charles de Villiers (Struik Nature 2013) is book of the month on Bookchat. Jay Heale writes:

An animal picture book story about size and safety in the bushveld, with the details remaining true to nature. Sengi is an elephant shrew (that’s what a ‘sengi’ is) whose new friend Tortoise tries to take him to meet a real elephant. On the way they encounter the dangers of a Hornbill and a Serval – and having a Very Big Friend comes in handy. Sensible, enjoyable text with some superb artwork. Computer graphics used as art. Soft graded colour-washes in the background, stylised grasses, clearly outlined main characters. I loved the way that the tortoise’s shell (and the Moon) suggested a map of the world. This is quality stuff, with atmosphere, character, drama (the first appearance of the serval is magnificently menacing) and still a splendid story for children 3 to 8.

How the serval came to be

Now that reviews are appearing I’m thinking about the amount of work it takes to create a picture book. A sane person wouldn’t attempt it. But it’s the drawings themselves that inspire you to keep working, and when they emerge fully formed you know you’re on the right track. About halfway through the book I met Mister Serval in Charles’s evocative writing ‘with his neat whiskers and his big ears sticking straight up like a top-hat’.

So I sketched him like this,

Sengi Pencil

and then all that remained was adding colour,

Sengi Colour

he is one of the stars of the show!

I’m lucky to have the opportunity to do this.

Mister Sengi’s Very Big Friend

By on 28th Aug 2013

The mopane bushveld of southern Botswana is a magical place. This is how I remember it:

The Magical Bushveld

orange-yellow rust coloured earth – scraggly mopane trees with leathery butterfly shaped leaves – abandoned shells of giant land snails – trees snapped at the base by rambling elephants – rhino dung set upon anxiously by tribes of dung beetles – southern yellow-billed hornbills gliding in wide arcs from tree to tree – baobab trees towering above the bushveld scrub, ancient and otherworldly – the sound of a startled leopard’s nails gripping dry tree bark – the crimson African sunsets – abandoned ant hills excavated by aardvarks…

And that’s only a fraction of what’s on show in daylight; after dark everything changes when a cast of noisy and unusual characters wake up: bushbabies, aardvarks, pangolins, giant crickets, nightjars.

All the buzzing bush activity made me curious so I decided to explore on my own (not a good idea in the wild) – risking it down an overgrown footpath on the banks of the Limpopo River. I was on high alert for something big and potentially angry, but instead, I was startled by a tiny creature racing across the footpath. It stopped suddenly, hiding in the shade under a nearby shrub. I peered into the shadows and slowly an elephant shrew, or sengi, came into view, looking something like this:

Mister Sengi's Very Big Friend

We froze – sized each other up and waited – then he, or she, was gone.

The result of that day is a new book, Mister Sengi’s Very Big Friend. It is the story of an elephant shrew who wants to see the world through the eyes of something much bigger than himself.

Mister Sengi's Very Big Friend

A number of story iterations, and many drawings later, the tale was beautifully captured and written by Charles de Villiers. The book is scheduled to appear in December 2013.

It is available in English and Afrikaans from Kalahari.com. You can also buy it as an ebook.