Ossiri and the Bala Mengro (Travellers Tales)

Product Information

Director & Creative Producer at Spin Arts, Sarah Shead, says that it had been fantastic to spend time with the incredible young Gypsy Traveller people at Leeds GATE. Overall, the littles and I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading the rest of the books Child’s Play sent us.

Ossini is a sparky Traveller girl, who longs to make music, so she makes an instrument from wood and recycled bits. When she goes off into the hills to practise, she wakes a sleeping ogre – the ‘Bala Mengro’ – which is “huge and hairy as a Shire horse”. What follows from this is both wry and heart-warming. The story unfolds using language that is lyrical yet spare, in the tradition of other picture books. But the authors happily include Romani words and phrases, which works quite wonderfully. This tale of ‘Tattin Folki’ – or rag and bone people – vividly conjures a ‘Traveller’ way of life inside Britain that few ‘settled people’ know, and it comes from a collaboration between a Romani storyteller and a picture-book writer to capture oral stories before they are lost. She has spent most of her working life as a journalist and has made many films for the BBC, as well as working as a correspondent for The Economist, contributing to British broadsheets, including the Guardian, Sunday Times and the Telegraph. She also freelances regularly for other papers, including a stint providing roving political analysis for The Economist, where she has worked as a Britain correspondent, during the 2010 general election, with a similar stint for Prospect in the 2017 snap election.

Wednesday 13th January

Ossiri, a Traveler or Romani girl who loves music and is proud of the tinkering she does to help the family recycle, mend, alter, and sell goods as they travel, decides to make her own musical instrument, since they can’t afford to buy one. The illustrations, which remind me slightly of Lowry paintings, cleverly evoke the bold colours and style of Romani culture. Like the text, they include details of Traveller lifestyles that children will surely love to examine. For instance, one spread shows all the tiny pieces that Ossiri assembles to make her ‘Tattin Django’. Another gives us a wide-angle view into a Traveller camp at night. Teach the good with the bad. Frequently, teaching about the history of minorities focuses on tragedies, hardship or inequality faced by that group in the past (or present). When government ministers are asked about including GRT groups in the curriculum they often reference the compulsory teaching of the Holocaust in KS3. While it is of the utmost importance that these parts of history are learnt about, and in this case that the mass murder of millions of Gypsies and Roma people is included in that teaching, it should not be the only thing that is taught about these groups. Despite census data that shows 37% of the US population consists of people of color, only 10% of children’s books published have diversity content. Using the Multicultural Children’s Book Day holiday, the MCBD Team is on a mission to change all of that.

Richard O Neill was born and brought up in a large traditional Romani family in the North of England. He is an award-winning storyteller and writer who tells his original stories in schools, museums, libraries and theatres throughout the UK. A sixth generation storyteller, he grew up in a vigorous oral storytelling tradition, learning his skills from some of the best Traveling storytellers in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Richard is the author of eleven children s books, and his stories and plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio. His digital stories have been enjoyed throughout the world, and in 2013, he was the recipient of the National Literacy Hero award.Director of Development at Leeds GATE, Rachel Cooper, made clear the importance of cultural opportunities like this for young people.

The fundamental aim of GRT history month is to improve intergroup relations and reduce prejudice. Schools can play a key role in this but prejudice and discrimination against these groups is still widespread:Young people from both the Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller communities have been part of the development of the show, sharing their stories, experiences, learning dance and music, and recording their voices that appear as part of the show. Keira Martin worked closely with Gypsy and Traveller young people at Leeds GATE to bring this performance to life. This delightful book will translate easily to online programming offerings. The possibilities in terms of activities are endless. In the past, I’d struggled to translate the work of the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura, also known as the Recycled Orchestra, (the children’s orchestra of Asunción, Paraguay), but Ossiri and the Bala Mengro offers a jumping off point for our younger online participants. I can’t wait to try these out! —Jonathan Dolce, Aston County Library ABOUT THE BOOK Tattin Folki of the Romani and Traveling people were some of the first to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Our readers have much to learn from not only Ossiri’s innovative instrument-making, but also from her playing “from the heart, not for gain.” These activity sheets encourage readers to create their own instruments, learn to sew a button, construct a cardboard loom, and to explore Romani words.