Bonny Norton – The Conversation

Illustration by Wiehan de Jager from the story by ‘I Like to Read,’ by Letta Machoga, originally from the African Storybook project. This story is now available on Storybooks Canada in 28 languages. (African Storybook)

January 19, 2020

Global Storybooks: From Arabic to Zulu, freely available digital tales in 50+ languages

Bonny Norton, University of British Columbia and Espen Stranger-Johannessen, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences

A free, open-access repository of multilingual children’s stories is one response to the United Nations’ urgent call to promote equitable education on the International Day of Education, January 24.

Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka with a group of children in Lagos. Research suggests that literacy in a mother tongue is a building block for multilingualism. Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters

May 14, 2015

Digital stories could hold the key to multilingual literacy for African children

Bonny Norton, University of British Columbia

Research tells us that multilingual literacy matters. But teaching children in Africa to read in their mother tongues as a springboard to literacy in other languages can be a fraught process.

Contact Bonny for