--Borrow the Ethiopia Box from Jane. She'll send it to you just for the cost of shipping. It includes something to see, smell, taste, touch, hear from Ethiopia, including things that fit especially well with her other books.
--Read other books about Ethiopia. Some books for children that Jane recommends are these:
--The photographs in this book were taken by Jane's brother, Christopher, who was teaching in Ethiopia at the time the book was written. See if you can find the photo that students often say is "just like in The Lion King." Look for the photo of the waterfall where Jane made up many, many of her childhood stories. She would make boats from leaves or wood, put plant "people" on them, and sail them down the river while telling stories about them. Use other photos as background information for reading Jane's books and/or working on illustrations.
--Africa is a huge continent. When studying Africa, it's good to look for some things that make each country unique (see "Reading the World: Africa" from Book Links, January 1996). Ethiopia, right across the Red Sea from the Middle East, has a mixture of African and Arabic cultures, ethnic groups, and languages. It was the only African country that wasn't colonized (except briefly under the Italians during World War II) and the only African country to develop its own system of writing.
--Look for Faces: The Magazine About People, February, 1995 for an issue on Ethiopia.
--A helpful regional approach to Africa is taken in the series African Kingdoms of the Past by Kenny Mann (Dillon Press). It's a beautifully designed series with great visual resources. Each book looks at a region--its timeline, history, stories, languages, artifacts.
--Flat maps have to distort the shape and size of the
continents because the maps flatten out all the curves
of the earth's surface. Most of the maps we use,
based on the Mercator Projection, make Greenland and
Africa look about the same size. Actually, Greenland
is 2.1 million square km. and Africa is 30 million
square km. In fact, the whole United States, plus
India, plus Argentina, plus Europe, plus New Zealand,
plus China would fit inside the continent of Africa.
See if you can find a map based on the Peters
Projection, which distorts the equatorial and polar
regions but shows the size of Africa more truly.