Puku Children’s Literature Foundation is a reading promotion and book curation organisation that aims to ensure all children have access to quality, culturally relevant literature in the languages they understand. Since it went online in October 2009, Puku.co.za has established itself as a significant online resource for children’s literature in Southern Africa.
Puku works at the intersection of children’s literature, indigenous languages, digital innovation, and teacher development. We collaborate with universities, publishers, libraries, language bodies, and government to build the infrastructure that makes books in all South Africa languages more accessible, more discoverable, and more valued.
In 2021, Puku was awarded the UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize in recognition of this work.
Puku is a small organisation that works by building strategic partnerships. We describe ourselves as a “baking powder” project: following the Crisis Action principle of a small operation that builds clever coalitions through creative tactics, providing the extra ingredient to make our collective projects succeed. Most of what we do, we do with others, which is how an organisation of our size reaches as far as it does.
None of Puku’s work and impact would be possible without our ability to convene writers, illustrators, teachers, parents, policy makers, and peers through our partners and supporters.
We produce the recommended-book catalogues together with the University of South Africa (UNISA), the National Library of South Africa (NLSA), Biblionef SA, and IBBY SA. This collaboration has run since 2019 and is the backbone of the More Books, Better Books project.
In addition to our formal partnership with UNISA, Puku has interacted with other universities, including the University of the Western Cape, Rhodes, the University of the Witwatersrand, and the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for African Languages and Teaching.
Puku works within the wider reading, language and publishing sector alongside the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLAR), the Literacy Association of South Africa (LITASA), and the Publishers Association of South Africa (PASA) and ILIFA.
Puku is for teachers, librarians and literacy organisations who need to know which books are worth buying and reading, and for parents, grandparents and caregivers looking for good books their children will love, in their mother tongue.
“You cannot infect a person with a disease that you do not have yourself. Similarly teachers cannot infect children with the love of reading if they are not avid readers themselves.” – Sindiwe Magona.
Welcome to Puku’s new website and children’s bookstore. We are excited to introduce a rich selection of children’s books in South African languages, to readers young and old.
