The plot revolves around a little girl who accidentally ruins her mother's special fabric, which kids will recognize as a good girl who did something bad but isn't bad herself. Demonstrates that if a mistake can be fixed, then sometimes it turns out even better than if there was no accident at all. ( )

A young girl Jamela living in South Africa, is left in charge of the new cloth her mother had purchased. Along the time, Jamela urges to play dress up with the new cloth.

Jamela uses some fabric that her mom purchased and after it got ruin. Jamela won prize money for her dress and used it to but more fabric for her mother.
4-6 yrs
Source-classmate ( )

Jamela is a clever, spirited little girl who happens to live in South Africa. When she falls in love with her mother's new dress fabric, trouble ensues. My daughter and I loved Jamela, and Daly's pictures and text present Africa in a positve and realistic way. ( )

Niki Daly writes about a young girl named Jamela who goes to a shop with her mother to pick out material for a dress to wear to Thelma’s wedding. They pick out a gorgeous and expensive material and go home and wash it together. As the material is drying outside, Jamela looks after it and admires it. Jamela eventually decides to wrap herself up in the material and strut around town in it. People admire Jamela and the beautiful material and even call her “Kwela Jamela African Queen.” A photographer named Archie decides to snap a picture of Jamela and the gorgeous material. Throughout Jamela’s outing the material gets dirty and destroyed and when her mother discovers this she is extremely upset considering she no longer has anything to wear at Thelma’s wedding. Jamela feels awful about it and does not know what to do until she runs into Archie. The photo he snapped of her ended up being a prize-winning one, so Jamela and Archie buy some new material for Jamela’s mother. She is so pleased that she even decides to make Jamela a dress out of the material as well. I really enjoyed this book! I could not help but think of Jolene from Mister and Me while reading this book even though the circumstances were different. Even though Jamela made a very bad decision, I got the feeling that she only had good intentions and was just trying to be like her mother. The fact that she is wearing larger shoes, that looked to be her mothers, at the beginning of the book brought this thought to me. I really like how detailed the illustrations were and how they added to the story. ( )