This book brings one of our nation’s most intriguing historical figures to life. It will help our children to learn about Nanny, seeing her as a person and not just an image. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Local [Jamaican] children's literature has a rare treasure in its midst. Nancy and Grandy Nanny is a touching tale that will no doubt inspire a love of history among Jamaica's youth. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nancy and Grandy Nanny is a 23-page book of prose and illustrations paying tribute to Nanny, Jamaica's sole National Heroine. In the historical notes, Miss Tortello tells us that the grave of "Grandy Nanny, or Nanny as she is more often called", is called "Bump Grave" and can be found in what is now known as Moore Town, Portland. But, far more appealing than the historical context in which the project is enveloped is the story itself. It is about a little girl, Nancy, being taken back to the 1740s in the midst of British colonial rule. She meets an old woman, "dressed in white, her head wrapped in a white turban", standing by "a clear river in a village deep in the Blue Mountains". The woman is Nanny herself. Miss Tortello's simple, vivid language and Mr. Napier's lifelike illustrations make reading this book extremely easy: "The water gushed by her sandal-clad feet as memories of people and places in her life flooded into her mind. The high-pitched sound of a child's voice broke into her thoughts. She turned to see eight-year-old Nancy running toward her". Grandy Nanny took a fancy to the child's name, Nancy, because it reminded her of Anancy "the tricky spider character who cleverly wove his way into African childhood". Eventually, Nanny told her a story. It was about a village in Africa where she grew up listening to Ashanti stories. Nanny recounted the whole story of that voyage across the Atlantic into slavery and how she was treated as a slave, leaving Nancy to wonder how could it be that people owned others like her mother owned goats and chickens. The story goes on to explain Nanny's escape from the plantation and her use of Maroon implements like the Abeng. The Jamaica Gleaner |