“Go” is such a little word, but what huge meaning it has. To most adults, it means responsibility: “We’re late, we have to go.” “Go take a shower!” “Yes, you do have to go to cross-country practice this afternoon.” “Go let that dog out before she pees on the rug.” “Stop talking and go to sleep!” Even yelling “Go!” at our kids’ basketball games has an air of desperation to it. “Go” means hurry, “go” means work, “go” means work harder. Frankly, most of the time I’d rather stay.
But “go” means something different to the young. Remember when “go” meant joy, when it meant freedom? When the feeling of wheels beneath you meant adventure? When buckling up in the back seat of the family car to go to the drugstore held the promise of a new comic book or a pouch of Big League Chew? When you rode a bike for the first time without fear and the wind was in your hair?
Remember how big that word was when you were small, when you just wanted to keep going?
Two new multilingual picture books present child’s-eye views of the word “go” in all its simplicity and complexity. Julie Flett’s “Let’s Go! haw êkwa!” and Kirsten Cappy and Yaya Gentille’s “Kende! Kende! Kende!” both capture its magic, though in many ways they could not be more different.
Written in English with Cree text interspersed, LET’S GO! HAW ÊKWA! (Greystone Kids, 44 pp., $19.95, ages 3 to 8) opens with a sound: “Cacussh! Cacussh! Cacussh!” It’s the sound of skateboard wheels on a concrete sidewalk, and the young boy at the center of the story is desperate to make it, since it means “go.” Go where? That’s not the point; it’s the wheels and the going itself that matter.
But for this boy, going is preceded by waiting: waiting for the skateboard from his mother (her own board, as it turns out, from when she was his age), waiting for confidence, waiting for belonging.
Once he gets on the board, he wobbles, he takes a spill, he’s wary of joining the park’s cascade of skaters, “like a waterfall … crashing down.”
Then suddenly it all comes together: “The more I watch and the more I skate, the more I become a part of something — and myself.”
He thought it was the wheels that would make him go, but the going was inside him all along.
“Cacussh! Cacussh! Cacussh!” is his sound now. So what if he’s alone on the sidewalk or in the park? So what if he falls, over and over again? The wheels are his, the freedom is his, the going is his. And for him, as for most of us, the going is just the beginning of a whole new world.
In KENDE! KENDE! KENDE! (Child’s Play, 36 pp., $19.99, ages 3 to 6), going is also the beginning of a new world, but a young girl’s constant desire to be on the move, to kende, quickly becomes a matter of survival. Written in English, French and Lingala (the language of the Democratic Republic of Congo), the story of Lolie and her family’s flight from their Central African village relies on one wheel: the single tire of the blue wheelbarrow in which Lolie’s father took her for ride after ride, as she gleefully yelled “noki! noki! noki!” (faster! faster! faster!).
“Kende!” The fighting has come! “Kende!” Load the wheelbarrow! There is no room in it for Lolie now. It is her own feet that have to make her go.
And go the family does, until they reach a refugee camp, where for years they stay. Eventually a plane takes them to their new home in the United States, where the word “go” will mean altogether different things for Lolie and her expanding family.
In both “Let’s Go! haw êkwa!” and “Kende! Kende! Kende!” the sense of urgency to “go” is as evident in the illustrations as in the words.
Flett sets off her protagonist’s dreams of motion with scenes of stillness and impatience. Her silhouette-like style is instantly recognizable and gloriously restrained, allowing broad swaths of richly textured space for the boy to move through. This gives the viewer a sense that not only is the world big, but its bigness impels us to keep going.
Rahana Dariah’s “Kende! Kende! Kende!” illustrations are full of bold colors and patterns and the busyness of life. From the vibrancy of a tropical village, to the dustiness of a refugee camp, to the stark white snow of an American winter, Dariah uses intense hues to take the reader through the drama of Lolie’s life, to remind us of her family’s constancy and to highlight their need to “go.”
Such a little word, and such a personal one. From the moment our feet hit the ground, we are all on the move in one way or another, and what that means to each of us is different. But as individual as our journeys are, the urge to “kende,” to “haw êkwa,” is something even the youngest among us can understand.
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