Thalumi

Tan... Tanka?

On her first morning at a new school, Tanaka's teacher reads her name from the register and gets it wrong. Three children laugh. By home time she has decided to be called Tan.

She is seven. It takes her a whole year and a bird to get her name back.

Only 100 signed copies. 87 still available.

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Cover of Fambo the Swallow: a girl in a maroon and navy school uniform smiles at a swallow on her shoulder, with a baobab tree and a blue sky behind her.

Some things you build. Some things you stand on.

When you raise a child in a country that is not the one you are from, two things are building an identity in that child at the same time. School is building somebody who fits in here. You are building somebody who is connected to home. Both of you are right, and you are not building the same thing.

A child who manages both looks like a child who is fine, which is what makes it easy to miss. The question arrives much later, when somebody asks who they are and they find they have an address rather than an answer.

Our books are built on one idea. Identity is not a structure, it is a foundation. You can build anything you like on top of it: an accent, a school, a career, a life your grandmother would not recognise. And when a storm takes the structure down, and one always does, the foundation is what you rebuild from.

We write for the child, and we write for the adult reading aloud, because both of you are living this.

If you are raising a child in a country you did not grow up in, this book was written for both of you.
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Pre-order, and your child's name goes in the back.

Until publication day
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203 days to go
Announced15 April 2027

87 of the first hundred copies are still available.

Pre-order, and your child's first name is printed in the back of the book, on a page called The First Readers. In a story about a girl whose name nobody says properly, that seemed like the right thing to do.

The first hundred copies are also signed, numbered by hand, and come with a letter written to your child by Fambo herself. After those hundred are gone you can still pre-order, and your child's name still goes in the back.

Reserve your copies now and pay when the book ships. Nothing is charged today.
Chapter One

Read the first page

Tanaka was seven. It was her first morning at a school where she did not know one single person.

She had planned for most of it. She had planned where to put her coat. She had planned what to say if somebody asked where she was from. She had planned what to do at lunch if there was nowhere to sit.

She had not planned for the register.

The teacher stood at the front with the list. She went down it. Every name came out easily.

Chloe. Amir. Grace. Bobby. Two Jacks.

Then she stopped.

from Chapter One, Three Taps

Cover of Fambo the Swallow: The Whole of Her Name.
Fambo the Swallow

The Whole of Her Name

Tanaka is seven. On her first morning at a new school in England her teacher reads her name from the register and gets it wrong, and three children laugh. By home time she has decided to be called Tan.

That night there is a swallow sitting on her windowsill. Her name is Fambo, she has flown six thousand miles, and she would like to sit down.

Over one summer, Fambo takes her to a baobab tree in Harare, to a cousin she did not know she had, and to a grandmother who says all three sounds of her name and does not hurry a single one of them. Tanaka comes home able to teach her own teacher.

She also comes home carrying a folded piece of paper. Her cousin has asked her to give it to his mother, who is somewhere in England, and neither of them knows where.

  • Twelve chapters, one a night.
  • Ages 7 to 9, and read aloud from 5.
  • Paperback. Publishing 15 April 2027.

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“A name is not a coat. You cannot leave half of it at the door.”
Fambo, on the first night

The world our books share

Our books share a world. Tanaka is seven and lives in England. Her cousin Tonderai is eight and lives in Harare, being raised by his grandmother while his mother works abroad. And Fambo is a swallow who comes to Tanaka's window every night through the summer, and then has to leave before the cold arrives.

Around them there is Mbuya, who says all three sounds of a name and hurries none of them. A baobab called Muuyu, which has never once lost anything left under it. Three guinea fowl called Kuru, Piri and Shasha, who never go anywhere and never stop arguing. And a line of old stones that nobody remembers building, where everybody has always met.

Twelve books

Fambo comes for one summer a year, so there are twelve books, one for each summer. In the first four, Tanaka finds the foundation. In the middle four there is a storm, and one book where Fambo arrives with nothing to carry at all. In the last four, the children build on what is left standing. Neither of them is the finished version of the other. Tanaka has a mother and no place. Tonderai has a place and no mother.

What we promise

Bilingual, properly.

The mother tongue on the page alongside English, with a pronunciation guide written for the adult reading aloud.

Illustrated by hand.

Every book is drawn by an illustrator we name and credit. No generated artwork, at any stage.

Two homes, both real.

We do not draw home as a paradise or Britain as a waiting room. Children can tell.

How we make them

1

Every book is checked line by line by a Shona speaker before it is printed.

2

Every book carries a pronunciation guide written for the adult, not the child.

3

Every illustrator is named, credited and paid properly. No generated artwork.

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