10 minutes | Thursday, 29 August 2024
'Ozzee the Dozy Mozzee' is an educational and fun fictional story for children about eight young female anopheles mosquitoes learning how to bite humans. (Males don't need to.) They face many difficulties, including the ways humans try to stop them. Ozzee, the mosquito who is the central character, is a dozy reluctant learner, who eventually gets caught in a mosquito net and has to be rescued.
It's a humorous fictional book aimed at children 7+, that aims to help educate about the dangers of malaria mosquitoes, and how to avoid being bitten by them.
A more serious epilogue transfers the viewpoint to the adult world to plainly state the different methods that need to be adopted to stay safe.
Author Jillian Viygrass, who is part South African, draws from her experience as a school teacher working in Ethiopia where she and her children needed to keep mosquitoes at bay. Having since moved to Geneva and continued to work as a school teacher for many years at La Châtaigneraie, she now launches a project to not only write and release this book, but also raise funds to send it to schools and libraries in areas where malaria is rife, particularly in the most affected areas of Africa; DRC, Nigeria and Uganda. She also hopes to have it translated into other languages.
Published by Blue Poppy Publishing in the UK, the book is currently available online and locally in the Librarie du Centre in Ferney.