Children's Book Review

Children's Book Review

Masikhanyise

A recommended book for basic isiXhosa instruction: ‘Masikhanyise’, written by N Tshabe, M Bam, S Tshabe, and T Mbali.

This is an illustrated children’s book intended for Home-Language isiXhosa speakers in Grade 2 but can be very useful for teaching isiXhosa  to much older Additional Language level learners in High School. The book consists of illustrated pages which each depict a particular scene or setting such as the beach or a trip to the grocery store. Each scene then has accompanying words or phrase which relate to the scene which gives a nice visual link to new words. Each page also has a short narrative in the form of a few sentences which describes the scene or a story that is related to the scene such as: we went to the beach for our holiday (in the beach scene).

This book can be very useful for teaching learners who are learning isiXhosa for the first time as the visual illustrations great for creating associations between new words and phrases and aiding in memory in recall. The narratives also make the new vocabulary items more interesting and engaging for learners.