By Sara Hailstone
I Have the Right to Culture is the third illustrated children’s book of the I Have a Right series that offer ethical critiques and a humanitarian scope on the quality of lives some children endure that do not allow for art or other cultural realities to be felt or lived. The aim of this series is to initiate and host the necessary conversation exposing inequality and the advocacy of every child to have fair access to a full human experience in connection to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child.
Because the right to art, to leisure and to culture is written down
in the Convention on the Rights of the Child
If we respect each word of this convention,
then every child will truly be respected, too.
I Have a Right to Culture follows I Have the Right to Be a Child and I Have the Right to Save My Planet.
This book takes on heavy subject matter, packages a sobering narrative, and projects it into a child’s textual space. However, despite the design of the text, the target audience is not the child, I think, but the adult.
I have the right to know
the secrets/ that hide in the heart of each flower
and in the shadow of each elephant,
so I can better protect every plant
and every animal.
Above is one message stated from the point-of-view of a universal child narrator.
The child who could not experience
any of this would have every right
to be angry.
Art and culture,
all these treasures of humanity,
should be shared.
The narrative is declarative and assertively flows through. And if humanity could be free to partake in art and culture, especially children, peace would prevail. “It would be the end / of all wars. / Bravo for artists!” The world would make music together and poets and writers would continue to build up new regimes and empires. Ultimately, artists would re-invent the world.
Truly, the book is visually stunning and illustrator Aurélia Fronty succeeds in creating a piece of art; many of the pages could be framed and are stand-alone paintings in their own capacity. My suggestion in taking on the responsibility of conveying such topics within a child’s space is to process meaning through analogy and metaphor, passing on the impact of the message to the hands of a capable character. The tone of the text does not tie around a central narrative or plotline but reads more so like an informational pamphlet appealing to the reader’s emotions through subtle nuance and semantics perpetuated by the discourse outlined by the United Nations. The risk is the loss of the message.
I think we wanted to be a part of a hero’s journey in which a child stands up to a world that would deny them the opportunity to tap into their creativity and self-expression because of discrimination, military agendas, and economy. We want to see this hero triumph over these impenetrable structures and create something beautiful along the way of that journey.
Thank you, Groundwood Books, for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.