White Gloves

by Jenny Robson

When the teacher puts on white gloves to help Wame with her bloody nose, Wame worries that her teacher thinks she's dirty. Illustrated by Anthony Okuku. Ages 6-9.

14 pages, paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Jennifer Marion Robson (née Murray) is the first author to ever win four consecutive prizes in the Sanlam Youth Novel Competition for the novels Don’t Panic, Mechanic (1994), One Magic Moment (1996), The Denials of Kow-Ten (1998) and Because Pula Means Rain (2000).

Jenny was born and raised in Cape Town. She studied primary school teaching at the Teaching College in Mowbray and went on to study at the University of South Africa (Unisa) where she obtained her B.A. degree in Philosophy.

After two years of teaching in Simons Town, she moved to the diamond-mining town of Orapa in Botswana. She taught music there at Livingstone House for over thirty years. Jenny now lives in Maun in Botswana where she still teaches music. She is widowed and has two adult sons who live in London, UK.

Jenny loves writing for young people as she admires their spontaneity and lack of hypocrisy. Her favourite theme in her books is the utter uniqueness of the individual. She hates any form of stereotyping and sees every individual as a “never to be repeated entity.”

Reviews

[LeAnne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wame’s feelings are hurt when her teacher uses white latex gloves to help her with a cut finger. Does Miss Kgosi thinks Wame is dirty? But the teacher explains that white gloves are a way of showing that we care. “I just want to keep us both safe… We don’t know who has the sickness, because that is private.” Wame uses white gloves to show she cares when her cousin is hurt. The illustrations are not as strong as some of the other books in the series.

[Kedibone Mokwa]

I was doing my methodology assignment and i choose to do talk about the white glove story as a story that I can teach teach my learners about Personal and social well-being under the subject of Life Skills in my future classroom.