Meet
Won-Ldy Paye
Award Winning Children’s Book Author,
Artist and Performer
“Arts fills up spaces, makes things beautiful, and tells stories.”
Won-Ldy Paye – My love for art started when I was a kid in Tappita, a rice farming region in Northeastern Liberia, West Africa. My grandmother would say preverbally, “Know one says life is supposed to be easy. Show me where life is utopia, and we will all move there for free.” Oral literature was and is still today the foundation of my work.
“A life without a story is like a tree without roots.“
Elementary and Middle Schools visit
SSES 1st Grade. An Intro to African Mask by Won-Ldy Paye
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R8y50uib8KQ
SSES 1st Grade. An Intro to African Mask by Won-Ldy Paye
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R8y50uib8KQ
My works have been presented on stages in Liberia, British Columbia in Canada, in classrooms throughout United States, in Mexico City, Mexico, and Katmandu in Nepal. The archives of the Washington State Arts Commission, the Seattle Arts Commission, the Anchorage School District, the Montana Art Council, and The Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, will agree that “Won-Ldy Paye was here.”
“Storytelling is putting sensual emotions into events or playing with words as though they were toys.”
I am proud to be a part of the publishing world. Please checkout:
- The Talking Vegetables: Henry Holt and Company,
- Mrs. Chicken and the Hungry Crocodile: Henry Holt and Company,
- Head, Body, Legs: Henry Holt and Company, (which is also printed in Japanese and Korean)
- Why Leopard Has Spots: Fulcrum Publishing
I am fortunate to have some of my works included in the fallowing Publications:
- Earth Care: World Folktales to Talk About: By Margaret Read MacDonald, Linnet Books,
- Teacher’s Read Aloud Anthology (Volume I), Margaret H. Lippert, Anthologist, MacMillan/McGraw-Hill,
- Teacher’s Read Aloud Anthology (Volume IV), Margaret H. Lippert, Anthologist, MacMillan/McGraw-Hill,
“It takes the whole village to raise a child.” African proverb
