Traveling to Tondo: A look into a different culture

Traveling to Tondo by Verna Aardema is a great book for children that steps them into a different culture explained by personified animals. Bowane has traveled to the neighboring town--Tondo--in search of a wife, and he has indeed found one. Once Bowane returns how and collects the price for the bride, he begins to head back to Tondo, stopping every so often to invite his friends on the journey. Through out the story, Bowane and his friends spend time waiting for each member--Bowane to get his water dish, Embenga for the palm nuts to rippen, Nguma to digest and antelope, and Ulu for a tree to rot so he could cross. Because of all of the delays, it took Bowane years to get to Tondo and by the time he got there, the cat he was to marry had already married another.
  This story opens the eyes of students to a culture much different from our own where dating is not how marriage is reached. Instead, a suiter must meet and impress the family of the female that he wishes to marry, get their blessing, as well as pay the family to marry the daughter; this ensures that the suiter is financially capable of caring for the daughter. This is much different from our culture where young men and women date to find a life partner and often do not even  ask the permission of the parents to wed the woman.
  While this book touches on a very strong subject, Aardema makes it kid friendly and understandable by making the characters animals. These animals have very human features such as talking and friendship. Will Hillenbrand's illustrations throughout the book also add a great visual of the entire story. The illustration follow the entire story allowing the students to read and see what is taking place in the story. Hillenbrand's use of neutral colors and watercolor painting matches that of other books I have read that take place in Africa which leads me to believe that Africa is the setting of this story.
  I really enjoyed this book because though the town was serious, it was also very lighthearted and playful. Bowane learned a lesson that all people learn eventually in life, that it is okay to say no. I think that this would be an excellent way to teach students that sometimes 'no' can be an answer.

Motivational Activities:

• Thinking of the story, the students will list as many times as they can think of that Bowane could have said no and he would have had a better ending to the story. 
• Compare and contrast our marriage rituals to those in the book. (older students, ie. high school)
• The events of the story will be placed on separate sentence strips and the students must work with their group to place them in the right order. 

Discussion Questions:

• Does a true friend always say yes or do they know when to say know? Use what you have read in the story to back your answer up.
• Using sequencing, place the events that happened that required waiting in chronological order based on how long it took to wait, why does one order make sense and not another?

 References:
 Aardema, V., & Hillenbrand, W. (1994). Traveling to Tondo: a tale of the Nkundo of Zaire. New York: Knopf.