Kalahari Bushmen

This is a nicely organized and well written book about many Bushmen groups of southern Africa. This large book has 48 pages organized into 7 chapters, a glossary, recommendations for further reading and information, and an index. About half the book is photographs, maps and illustrations related to the text. There are also text boxes with cultural anecdotes---about games they play, how they make arrows for hunting, myths and social rules. The click sounds in the languages spoken by Bushmen are fascinating to children, and they are described in several text boxes that list some Bushmen words and and how to pronounce them. I've been to the Kalahari and have read a lot about !Kung Bushmen, and this book describes and illustrates the same things I find interesting about them. There are a lot of different groups of people in southern Africa, all called Bushmen, and this book describes them without being confusing. There is specific information in the book about the !Kung, the !Xo, the Hai//om, the G/wi, the Nharo an the /Xam, but don't worry if you can't keep all of this straight: each section of the book is self contained, so you can jump around and read what you like. Neighbors of Bushmen, like the Tswana, Herero, Kgalagari and Afrikaners, are included. The history of their interactions with Bushmen is emphasized. The sentence structures and vocabulary of the book are appropriate for young elementary school students, but the many new and strange names of people and places were overwhelming for my 9-year-old son to take in all at once. But this is a wonderful book about Africa for children, one of the few I've seen that actually reads like it was written for them. Yet, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it for anyone, any age, wanting a straightforward description of Bushmen. Nobody's perfect: the photo on page 31 is of Herero, not Bushmen.