David Livingstone (For Children)

It is a children’s version of the full-length biography of David Livingstone. It tells how a boy who worked in a Scottish cotton mill became a doctor and missionary in Africa, learned to read the Bible with a chief named Sechele, walked from one side of Africa to the other, and worked hard to stop people being captured and sold as slaves, and how his African friends Susi and Chuma carried him home at the end.

A Scottish doctor and missionary who lived from 1813 to 1873. He went to southern Africa in 1841, lived among the Bakwena people, and was the first European known to cross Africa from coast to coast. He spent his last years exploring and telling the world the truth about the slave trade. He died in what is now Zambia and is buried in Westminster Abbey in London.

Every chapter is short and made to be read aloud. It begins with a Bible verse, tells one part of David’s story, shows one simple thing it means for you, and ends with a short prayer. Three questions follow, to talk about together.

Some parts are sad or exciting: a lion attack, people being captured and sold as slaves, and the deaths of David’s baby daughter, his wife Mary, and David himself. The book does not pretend these things did not happen, but it tells them gently, without frightening detail. Above all it is a story of faith, promises kept, and friends who would not give up.

Yes. They come from David Livingstone’s own books and journals, from people who knew him, and from the account his friends Susi and Chuma gave after his death. A few things, like the famous words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” and the way David was found at the end, come from just one or two people’s memories, and the book says so when it tells them. It also says plainly that the places he “discovered” were already well known to the African people who lived there.

It is for children, to be read aloud by a grown-up or read by an older child alone. There is also a teen edition, and the full-length biography for older readers.