photo credit: Sherrie Y. Young

Painter and writer Youme Landowne met with two groups of elementary-school aged children at SCAN LaGuardia’s after-school program on Monday, May 10. Her residency was part of a week-long residency with illustrator and children’s author Eric Velasquez and young-adult author Sharon Flake at SCAN LaGuardia in East Harlem, NY.

To prepare for the author’s visit, both groups, totaling thirty-five children, read from Ms. Landowne’s book, Selavi: A Haitian Story of Hope, which she wrote and illustrated. When Ms. Landowne arrived, many of the young participants weren’t aware that she was the book’s author and the illustrator until she presented Selavi.

The author’s plan was to read Selavi to the young participants; however, participants from each group she met with expressed an interest of wanting to read aloud to the group from the book.

As the participants read from Selavi, Ms. Landowne took the opportunity to ask questions based on what was just read, or explained why she drew a particular picture. Someone from the ever-talkative audience was always expressing his or her opinion– The boy in the picture looks like me” or “Some of the soldiers look like kids.” The magical moments were when the participants helped a reader when he or she didn’t know a word or couldn’t pronounce a word.

After meeting with each group, Ms. Landowne distributed “dummy booklets” that she made for the participants to take with them as encouragement to write their thoughts during the day. A signed copy of Selavi was given to each participant.