Helen produced illustrations for the Civics textbooks in Ethiopia, an Amharic/English bilingual storybook and an Amharic language magazine for Ethiopian children living in Europe. She also wrote short stories for Writers for Ethiopian Children's bilingual storybooks and prepared the layouts for the Civics textbooks. More recently she has produced illustrations for supplementary readers for the Amhara Region through Habte Books.
Civics and Ethical Education
Helen was involved in preparing the Ethiopian Civics and Ethical Education textbooks for publication. She edited the English language Grade 9 to 12 books and lay them out in InDesign, adding illustrations, many of which came from her own photographs and sketches. The Amharic Grade 5 to 8 textbooks were prepared in Publisher format with illustrations including many of Helen's own. She edited the English translation of these books. Finally, she wrote and illustrated the teachers' guides for the Grade 9 to 12 books with the head of the Civics and Ethical Department in the Ministry of Education, Addis Ababa.
Supplementary Readers in Amharic
Helen illustrated a series of books for children in the Amhara Region. These are a few samples from the traditional tales published by Habte Books.
Illustrated storybooks for Ethiopian Children
While working in Ethiopia, Helen helped produce two of the back-to-back bilingual books for Ethiopian children and included an illustrated story, Lucky Black Cat, for the Tikur Fiyeley (Black Goat) anthology which is for older children. Now two more anthologies (Azuregn and Atazuregn) are available in Ethiopia with Helen's illustrated stories in each. Copies of these books are distributed free to a range of organisations across Ethiopia.
