The Rice Bag Hammock Paperback – 28 December 2013

This beautifully illustrated book highlights the many meaningful experiences one could have in the rice bag hammock. These experiences are very relatable to me as a Guyanese reader since the rice bag hammock was a part of every home while growing up. There was a strong feeling of nostalgia as I flipped every page and read this to my little one. I will read this to her many times as she grows so she too can appreciate and learn about her heritage. Thank you so much for this beautiful book.

I got this book after reading all the positive reviews, and I feel really sorry that I can't add to them with as much enthusiasm. There are just a few points that kind of ruined the enjoyment of the book for me. Most of them are are to do with the production of the book itself rather than the story, which is a celebration of the simple things in life (namely a hammock made out of rice bags) which had been made by the grandfather of the family, and used by every member of the large extended family for different purposes at different times. The tale is gentle and lyrical, with a nice repetitive refrain on every page: " ...is the rice bag hammock that Aaja made".However, the book's production seems to overlook a few details which to my mind should have been sorted before publishing. The most noticeable of these is the way many of the illustrations have been weirdly stretched to fit on the page, with the results that the proportions are way out of line (e.g. some of the people have extra long arms and legs etc). The coloured pencil drawings have a nice quality that is quite appealing; the botanical flower illustrations are particularly lovely; but some of the people look a little anatomically weird (which may be due to the stretched printing, I don't know). There is one illustration that is repeated in the front and in the middle of the book, and in the front it is reproduced with the correct proportions, which is how I know it's been stretched because in the middle it is really elongated - even the cat looks a bit pancake-like! Also, there has not been sufficient thought given to the way the illustrations are spaced on the page, so that part of the picture disappears down the binding crease in the centre of the book. There's a picture of a Grandma in the hammock, where most of Grandma has disappeared into the spine of the book. Before printing thousands of copies, perhaps that should have really been checked and rectified? The story itself is very sweet and I imagine would be really nostalgic and comforting for anyone born in Guyana or a similar country, but reading it to children in England, there's an awful lot of explaining that you need to do about why the grandfather is making a hammock out of a rice bag and why the hammock is so important, why they don't have chairs etc... and one other point I noticed was that the age of the intended audience has possibly not been fully thought through, because some of the language is a little bit complex with long words for little children. To me, this book seems to be aimed at young children, but the slightly complex language isn't really suitable. As a story for older children (8 plus) who are interested in other cultures, it may well hit the mark, but I do feel that it is written more with the author's own nostalgic childhood memories in mind rather than the book's intended appeal for any particular age group of today's generation of children living in England.

A delightful book. I now want to build one for my kids!