“There are books for the early readers; there are books for children at the intermediate level; there are books for young and advanced readers, and you have the young adults. So, I think that when we don’t have those clear demarcations when it comes to children’s writing, you assume that because a book is targeted at someone from 8-12 years, then a child of 4-5 years’ old should be able to read it and make meaning out of it. No!
By Godwin Okondo
THE city of Lagos was abuzz with excitement as the annual Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) 2024 came to a close on Sunday, November 17 to wrap up a week-long celebration of books, art, and creativity. This year’s edition, the 2th, had as theme ‘Breakout: Hope is a Stubborn Thing’, and it brought together a diverse gathering of renowned writers, publishers, artists and other creatives, and featured a range of engaging activities, including workshops for school children, colloquiums on book reviews and other expository literary discussions.
Just as the festival rounded off, its secretariat, Committee of Relevant Arts (CORA) also released the theme for next year, the 27th edition, to whet the appetite of book and art lovers, as they look forward to next year’s Lagos Book & Art Festival. The theme for LABAF 2025 is ‘Change: Imagining Alternatives’. It’s highlight will be the special celebration of of ’20 years of Green Festival with Adesola Alamutu,’ the section dedicated to children at LABAF and scheduled for November 10 – 16, 2025.
One of the electrifying colloquiums featured publishers and writers who publish the best of children’s writing in Nigeria. They discussed the challenges writers and publishers face when writing or publishing stories, as well as the importance of encouraging children to read more often. The panel session had multiple award-winning author Dr. Chigozie Mbadugha, founder of Noirledge Publishing and poet Mr. Servio Gbadamosi and book coach Josephine Ogufere. The choice of Mr. Gbadamosi is instructive; two books from his stable have won back-to-back The Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2019 (Jude Idada’s Boom Boom) and 2024 (Olubunmi Familoni’s The Road Does Not End).
Ogufere spoke on providing good content for children, noting how privileged working she’s been working with children.
“Basically, what I do with their books is just edit and proofread. Africa is enough inspiration for every child, so the experiences we have in Africa gives them a lot of ideas,” she said. “I started writing when I was very little, because I saw things around. There were things that happened to me personally, and because we are living in a very peculiar condition, it’s easy to generate ideas. So, what happens is that the kids automatically generate those ideas, and somehow, those books are readable, and that’s the first thing.
“We (usually) have a 30-day course, and the first thing we do is idea generation. The first thing I tell them is, ‘close your eyes and imagine anything, a person, a place, a thing.’ That exercise inspires them to get ideas. So my work is just to polish their ideas and make it perfect for kids their age to read.”
Ogufere said children are capable of writing stories meant not only for children but for adults as well. She pointed out a child, Teni who she said wrote a book, adding, “as far as I’m concerned, that book is not for children. She’s a child, but she wrote a book for adults. By next year, we are actually going to adapt it into a movie, because it’s that good. So, there are times when children don’t write books for children; they write for adults.
“The book that Mayowa (another child she’s mentoring) is writing is actually not just for children; it’s also for adults. So, it’s amazing how a child can have an adult’s mind and come up with adult ideas to write books for adults. What I try to do with most of the kids I coach is to let them come up with ideas, and I find that they have ideas that make great stories for children to read.”
Gbadamosi spoke about the suitability of books for a young audience, noting that writing for children is “a niche area, and it is not everybody that can do it. A lot of times, the frame of mind, the imagination that is required is somewhat different from what you would need to write for an adult audience. Over the years, one has come across quite a number of manuscripts that the writer is just talking to him or herself. Maybe there is a younger character, but the language and all that the character is trying to communicate is something that is beyond the grasp of children.”
Gbadamosi outlined the categories that define children’s writing that some writers possibly don’t know or apply wrong. According to him, “There are books for the early readers; there are books for children at the intermediate level; there are books for young and advanced readers, and you have the young adults. So, I think that when we don’t have those clear demarcations when it comes to children’s writing, you assume that because a book is targeted at someone from 8-12 years, then a child of 4-5 years’ old should be able to read it and make meaning out of it. No!
“There are different categories, because the children have different understanding, vocabularies, grasp of the language and the workings of the world and environment around them. So, when we say children’s literature, it’s just the general classification for all of that. Within that, you then have subcategories. When manuscripts come in, you need to be able to identify the audience from the contents of that manuscripts. If a book is targeted at age 3-6, then you know the book would be heavy on illustrations, because at that age, they take in more images. If you have a manuscript that is between 500 and 1,000 words long, then you could have up to 40 illustrations, depending on how expansive you want the book to be.
“For that class of readers, it’s not about writing a 10,000-word book. It’s how beautifully the illustrators and designers you are working with can interpret those few words, so that the children can picture them and it stays in their imagination. If you go to the next category, you can take the word count up a notch, and by the time you get to that third ladder; the illustrations can just be few and far between, and when you go beyond that, you can do without illustrations because they’re already used to reading things in that category.”
The Ibadan-based publisher said some writers fail to see the progression in children’s writing, noting, “Try to perfect the content requirement for that age category until they do the transition and become adults. Quality-wise, there is a lot of confusion. It’s easy to assume that because there are young characters in a book, then it is for children. But often times, it is not. I think a lot of people who try to write or create art actually need to take more time and mingle with the audience they have in mind and have actual conversations with them, because if you have not spoken to a child or a group of children in a classroom, how then do you depict those things in your writing efficiency? You need actual experiences that can becomes reference points in your creation process.”
A medical doctor who writing chose, Mbadugha said her first book was not for children, but a collection of three novellas which won an award, but the next book after that was for children. However, someone felt it was downgrading of her talent to write for children, and she said, ‘just leave me with my flow,’ causing the same fellow to later recant, by way of oblique praise, ‘you appear to have mastered this children’s literature thing’
“My children inspire me,” declared Mbadugha. “Who my favourite (child) is is a big sibling rival thing in my house. If one of them is passing and I ask who it is, the person replies, ‘your favourite child.’ One of them took my phone and added favourite child to his name. When they ask me who my favourite child is, I tell them it’s their father. I tell them they are all different. That inspired that book, Who’s Favourite am I? And my middle child says I should pay her royalty, since they were the ones that inspired the book. So, I find that being around them inspires me.”
“One of my books A Visit to Grandma and Grandpa was inspired by my dad’s visit to Lagos. He came for a cataract surgery and I actually wrote about it. All the interactions they had with him inspired that book. When I write books, I find mothers of young children and I ask them to let their children read the manuscripts for me, and they give me feedback.”
Mbadugha wrote her first book aged six since “My parents were teachers and everywhere in that house contained books; so, we grew up reading. My siblings haven’t published but they wrote books as children. We grew up with books and we read, and somehow that translated to acquiring some literary skills. Writing for children is peculiar. You have to write something that appeals to the people spending the money (parents), and also write about things that would resonate with the audience that you’re writing for.”
Writing poetry and drama, according to Gbadamosi, boils down to assets of infrastructure and support within the industry, which he said are lacking, but he has made conscious efforts in amplifying children’s drama, adding, “This year was when we did our very first collection of plays for children. For prose fiction, you write and you read. For poetry, you write and they read. For drama, yes, they can read, but that’s not the role of drama. It is meant to be acted, to be brought to life on stage. Now, throughout my nursery to secondary school years, apart from literature in SS1-3, I never knew what drama was. Sometimes, I also volunteer to teach literature in senior secondary schools, and I think they are a bit lucky because they have technology.
“Some schools have multimedia facilities. There’s a stage play that is recorded and played in those school setting. I think the collapse of stage tradition in the country is one of the things that has demotivated playwrights from even creating at all, and creating specifically for children. There are a couple of drama books for children, but if you speak with the writers, they tell you it’s either a labour of love, or a love of labour. There’s no winning with it.”
Gbadamosi further said his literary sensibility has remained sharpened by “a seed planted by just one of my teachers. He taught me literature in SS2-3. This man even fixed Saturday classes, and he would spend hours on Saturday when he should be with his family. Out of all of us, I think I’m the only person who has published a book, and I had to go look for the man. I went round about five schools to be able to find him. Even at that point, I had no money to give him. He might die tomorrow, but this is one of the seeds that he sowed.”
Also, Mbadugha spoke about the book hunger she sees among schoolchildren who visit the library in Yaba, and was made enquiries about donating books to augment what the library has, saying, “There’s a library in Yaba, and sometimes I go there to read my medical books, and when schools close, you see like 20 to 25 children trying to enter the place because they have a children’s reading section. They are so excited. I had to ask a librarian how I could donate books, because I don’t think what they have will be enough for these children. The children go there before they go home.”
Winner of The Nigeria Prize for Literature, poetry category in 2013, Tade Ipadeola, said some journalists accused him of not having written anything since 2013, adding, “They did not consider that what I published for children over the last 10 years was anything worth reporting, and it’s really painful. It’s almost uncanny how journalists who have desk jobs at big newspapers will say that XYZ stopped writing in 2013. I think we should celebrate Mr. Familoni who persisted. If I were to go by the reception given to what I’ve written for children, I would stop writing tomorrow, and I have written five books for children.”
The winner of The Nigeria Prize for Literature 2024, Mr. Familoni recounted an incident in Port Harcourt years ago about a ship that gave out books that then inspired many people to start reading. “A lot of people who were in Port Harcourt at the time said that’s how they started reading,” he said. “Sometimes , you have to go out to get those books yourself. For people who are very familiar with the University of Ibadan, there is one guy called Osama. And there’s a basement the size of this entire place and it’s dark. You might not want to go in there, but if you are a lover of books, you would want to go in there. So, how did I come about that place? I saw a book with somebody and I asked him how he got it, because the book is old, and he said he got it from a guy called Osama. The first time I went, there were some books he placed outside, which were general books and he told me I had to go and check the basement.
“I went in there; it was dark, dank, there was moisture, but I found some gems. Sometimes, you have to go the extra mile. When you say the books are not available, they are where they are. If you want to be a reader and you want more books for yourself, all your books don’t have to be new. Go out and look for books.”
Ogufere recalled with nostalgia how she started reading. Ogufere and Mbadugha attested to the healing power inherent in the reading and writing of books. Ogufere confessed to how she was forced to read, but which later cured her of trauma and clinical depression.
“The reason I read at first was that my father would buy books and ask us to read,” said Ogufere. “So, it was compulsory for us. By the time we heard the car horn, everyone would pick a book and pretend to be reading. Sometimes, reading makes you beautiful. One way to make children read more is to put the books in their phones and make it look dramatic. At the end of the day, we owe it to ourselves to read. Why was I able to write? I have more than 50 published books on Amazon. I read everyday and I encourage my kids to read.
“Another thing that made me read was trauma. I suffered clinical depression for two years, and at that time, my dad had passed and I couldn’t afford therapy. I started to read books. By the time I read one book, I cried, and then when I wrote my first book, that book healed me of clinical depression. When we read let’s not just be like the coin that keeps accumulating. Let’s also write, because writing can heal you.”
For Mbadugha, “Writing and reading can be therapeutic. I like to write fiction because I’m able to dictate the ending. In life, I can’t dictate how things will end, but in fiction I can dictate how things work, and that helps me escape from things around me that I don’t like. People have asked me how I practice medicine and write. When you like something, you will create that time. Passion will push you.”
*https://thearthubng.com/labaf-2024-exploring-the-art-challenges-of-writing-stories-for-children/
