Simone, 8, has Down’s syndrome. Unable to find stories that reflected her modern African family, her mother decided to fill the gap, then publishers came knocking
When Tonye Faloughi-Ekezie decided to write her first book it was for her own children and she printed just two copies. She had been trying to explain to her son why people came to the house to play with his sister, Simone, but not him.
“When my son, Ugo, was about five, he came up to me perplexed and asked why he was not allowed to join in,” the Nigerian author recalls. “I explained to him that those people who visited were actually therapists because Simone has Down’s syndrome. Of course, he went on to ask me ‘what is Down’s syndrome?’.”