We encourage our 6-year old daughter to be bilingual and she's doing pretty well, learning to read Afrikaans at home (and, of course, English at school). We hope that she will be able to speak, read and write in Afrikaans. We are thankful that she communicates well in both languages and think it may be a combination of her having being one year old when we moved to New Zealand, and having access to both Afrikaans and English stories.

Christchurch Library

A collection, housed in the World Languages section of the Central Library in Gloucester Street, has been launched on Wednesday 25 June.

Private Afrikaans book collection

A number of Afrikaans people in were so kind to donate a small collection of pre-loved Afrikaans books to parents with young Afrikaans children.

Because our local library did not stock any Afrikaans books until June 2008, we lent out the books in this tiny collection library-style: borrow a book, bring it back, borrow a new book.

Since June 2008, Afrikaans books are available from the Central library in Christchurch.

There are also lovely brand new Afrikaans books that can be ordered from South Africa:

 

Ordering books and music from South Africa

Lapa Uitgewers have great Afrikaans books at reasonable prices. Shipping is expensive, but if you ask them they can send it by land/sea mail, which is cheaper than air mail. The cheaper postage makes a big difference on a large parcel.

Kalahari.net sell books, CD's and DVD's online. They have a large selection of children's books. Unfortunately they send books by airmail only and charge about $36 postage per parcel, but it is worth the try if you don't mind the high cost of postage.

Storiewerf, an Afrikaans website, has great information about childrens literature. They know about most of Afrikaans books and publishers (like Lapa, Fantasie etc)

Kinderwerf is an interesting educational website for Afrikaans parents.

 

Storieman and Storiemuis

Storieman is a set of Afrikaans books and accompanying CDs, and it is bought by Afrikaans parents from over the whole world who want to help their children maintain an interest in Afrikaans, and maintain their Afrikaans reading skills.

Storiemuis was an immense aid that helped our daughter to develop her reading skills. It is a set of full-colour soft-cover books and CDs for toddlers and young children. Unfortunately Storiemuis is no longer available.

Storieman is available from:

Listeners Library Pretoria
PO Box 74096
Lynnwood Ridge 0040
Tel/Fax (012) 348 2480
e-mail: pta@listenerslibrary.com

 

General Afrikaans literature

Lapa and Kalahari.net are great options for general Afrikaans literature.

Christelike Uitgewers Maatskappy (CUM) have an agent in New Zealand for Afrikaans Bibles and Christian books:

Lorette Kok
FloralCafe - tel (09) 271-0056
e-mail: floralcafe@paradise.net.nz

Books4Africa is the New Zealand importer for Afrikaans magazines.

Both these businesses take orders from and deliver to the both North and South Islands.