Children Literature: A Potent Tool in the Hands of Absentee Parent(s) (original) (raw)
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Children literature remains the focus of discussions among those concerned with the positive socialisation of children within the African society. However, how it can serve for the socialisation of children by the home has not been clearly understood. This paper discusses the tangible role children literature can play in the socialisation process. It specifically focuses on the way the absentee parent(s) can effectively use children literature as a tool of child training. It outlined the nature of children literature as it exists in the Nigerian society. It identified some important techniques such as didactism, journey motif, child abuse, characterisation, etc. which writers use to convey their messages in Nigerian children literature. It identified how writers use aesthetics to attract, keep and teach children the needed morality in the society. It concludes by outlining the way that the teacher/parent can effectively bring to life children literature to youngsters and thus engage it for positive socialisation of children within the African social milieu.
Nigerian’s Children’s Literature: A Viable Tool for Addressing Social Issues in Nigeria
2020
Nigerian's Children's literature is one valuable tool for addressing social issues in Nigeria. However, it is often neglected due to its simplicity and it has implication for the future of any nation. This paper discusses the concept of Nigerian children's literature and how it can be used as a method for addressing social issues in Nigeria. The purpose of the study was to identify these social issues which include gender discrimination, insecurity, corruption and sexual immorality, the causes of these social ills, the implications of these social issues, the relationship between social issues and children's literature and also proffer children's literature as a solution to the decadence in the society. An evaluative survey was used in this work and it considers Nigeria as a country. It was found out that most children's literature often have a theme that is being projected and if these themes are well emphasized through various methods of learning which includes instructions from parents, teachers, guardians and authors, they could go a long way to help in the formation of a child's attitude even from a tender age. This will in the long run produce better citizens and also help to shape the society to the benefit of all.
2015
Abstract: This study examines Nigerian children’s literature as a metaphorical construction and process for a better understanding of our world. Among the several reasons why authors write children’s literature are to entertain and to teach the children about their cultural, traditional, political and social history. Most authors, therefore, have moral reasons for embarking on the arduous task of writing for children. The entertainment and education of the child have been at the heart of children’s literature right from the eighteenth century. Thus, the education and inculcation of moral values are central to the writing and production of children’s literature. Besides, children’s literature appears to be an attempt to protect the innocence of the child from the vagaries of socio-moral decadence that pervade the adult mind and world. That, of course, was the eighteenth century romantic ideology that has found its way into contemporary literary production and expression. Working with...
Metaphor and Education: Exploring the Social Semiotic of Nigerian Children’s Literature
2013
This study examines Nigerian children’s literature as a metaphorical construction and process for a better understanding of our world. Among the several reasons why authors write children’s literature are to entertain and to teach the children about their cultural, traditional, political and social history. Most authors, therefore, have moral reasons for embarking on the arduous task of writing for children. The entertainment and education of the child have been at the heart of children’s literature right from the eighteenth century. Thus, the education and inculcation of moral values are central to the writing and production of children’s literature. Besides, children’s literature appears to be an attempt to protect the innocence of the child from the vagaries of socio-moral decadence that pervade the adult mind and world. That, of course, was the eighteenth century romantic ideology that has found its way into contemporary literary production and expression. Working within the fra...
WRITING FOR CHILDREN: A COMMITMENT TO SOCIAL CRUSADING
Children are the future of every society; a people or group which does not value its children by nurturing and preserving them is mortgaging its future. Consequently, those factors which engender development and growth in children are identified and earnestly pursued. Pursuing developmental plans for children presupposes that their presence and importance are recognised, and that quality attention is paid to their physical, mental, spiritual, psychological and social well-being. One way of giving attention to children and also nurturing in them a robust personality, is by writing for, and about them. The focal point of this paper therefore is the advocacy that any literary endeavour which targets children, should be that which exposes them to, and at the same time sensitizes them on healthy behavioural patterns, wholesome socio-cultural phenomena and beneficial principles of life-virtues which, they as children, should be encouraged to imbibe. The writer of children's literature thus faces a herculean task in this regard, because the Nigerian society, from where literary materials are derived, is incongruous with the aspirations of children. The socio-political and economic factors actually conspire to stunt, rather than generate growth. The paper is of the opinion that despite the unwholesome social environment, writers for children must write with a mission to salvage the nation and the future; they should see it as their social duty to couch up a message which will prepare the children as change agents in the nation.
Children's Literature and Culture
2000
Walton's place and steered me through the dissertation's completion. He was standing by at that time of crisis and mourning, and I must add that he has been standing by as a supportive friend for over a decade. We are engaged in an ongoing conversation about literature and culture, a conversation that helped lay the groundwork for this study. Finally I am grateful to my husband, Dick, who assisted me in large and small ways and offered support when I felt swamped by real or imagined difficulties. A Note on Usage In this study the term "Black" is used to mean all peoples of African descent. People of mixed African and European descent come under this heading since they generally face the same problem as other Blacks in the United States and other Western nations. The term is capitalized because it refers to a specific population, the peoples historically connected by the Black diaspora. In recent years the term "White" has taken on a similar meaning, referring to people of European descent. We now find "White" used in books, conferences, and college courses that specifically focus on a field called White studies. I capitalize the term when it designates or implies an ethnic population, but not in instances where the "color line" is the primary connotation (as in "white supremacy," "white racism," "white hegemony" and so on). In such value-oriented fields as history, sociology, and art, labels become quickly outmoded; the usages in this book reflect current self-definition within groups as well as my own preferences. Malcolm Cowley has noted how literature is less abstract than other art forms and more socially relativistic. He writes: Literature is not a pure art like music, or a relatively pure art like painting and sculpture…. Instead it uses language, which is a social creation…. The study of any author's language carries us straight into history, institutions, moral questions, personal stratagems, and all the other aesthetic impurities or fallacies that many new critics are trying to expunge. 4 The kind of "impurities" Cowley refers to are compounded in children's literature because cross-generational activities tend to be purposeful-purposeful in directions beyond an interest in artistic form. A move into youth culture on the part of creative artists is, among other things, a move in the direction of culture maintenance or culture change. This point is but a logical extension of the findings of such sociologists as Peter L.Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The sensitive approach suggested here has enabled Kelly and others to answer important questions about the literature of the past and about those who produced and circulated it. But this inside view of the publishing world is available in Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing by Lewis A.Coser, Charles Kadushin, and Walter W.Powell. 17 In the field of Black studies, Nancy Larrick checked on the quantity of children's books about Blacks and reported on her findings in "The All-White World of Children's Books." 18 The Council on Interracial Books for Children did The Aesthetic Focus The formal features in a text either empower or enfeeble it. Eloquence, clarity, textural richness, strength of characterization, plausibility of plot-these are among the elements that can give a text an almost autonomous sense of strength. On the other hand, circumstances surrounding the reading experience, as well as reading readiness, have a lot to do with what makes a text compelling in a child's eyes. Children seem able to make something out of nothing, or conversely, remain oblivious to the most manifest literary delights. Peter Hunt sees this problem as inherent in the art form: Unlike other forms of literature, which assume a peer-audience and a shared concept of reading (and which can therefore acknowledge, but play down, the problem of how the audience received the text) children's literature is centered on what is in effect a cross-cultural transmission. The reader, inside or outside the book, has to be a constant concern, partly because of the adult's intermediary role, and partly because whatever is implied by the text, there is even less guarantee than usual that the reader will choose (or be able) to read in the way suggested. 20 But irrespective of this unpredictability in the young reader, the generalization still holds that formal qualities need to be treated as a Introduction xxi significant cultural variable. In earlier eras, this variable was discussed by literature specialists in terms of high art or high culture. Now theorists treat high art (more inventive art) and low art (more formulaic art) as two points on a continuum. They see the reader as able to make use of both. From this perspective (developed by John Cawelti in "Notes Toward an Aesthetic of Popular Culture"), 21 a historian can examine a range of cultural uses and meanings in a work. The high art dimension-formal elements that impact on meaning-will not be neglected. The critic will engage in the close reading that uncovers patterns, ironies, resonances, and the kinds of spontaneity and inventiveness that often make a work memorable over time. The case for aesthetic sensitivity and analysis in children's literature has been made by Lois R.Kuznets. She advocates cultural pluralism combined with the approach of the New Critics-that is, the scrutiny of the structure created by an author out of plot, characterization, theme, imagery, symbolism, point of view, and time and space projections. 22 The historian needs this perspective because it is a way to discover a certain kind of wholeness in a literary object, and that wholeness affects the synthesizing that is the historian's job. However, the very elements that loom large in a New Critic's dissection are highly culture-bound. The formalistic elements that Kuznets sees as a prerequisite to discussion of a book's political (i.e., rhetorical) level changes somewhat if one is referring to a Black aesthetic, a Hispanic aesthetic, and so on. The cultural specificity of the work is not its political content alone; it is also part of its stylistic content. In "Towards a Black Aesthetic," Hoyt Fuller writes about nuances of style and speech in the works of Black writers-distinct qualities that come directly out of the Black world. 23 Summarizing his sense of a Black aesthetic, Julian Mayfield writes: "[It is] our racial memory and the unshakable knowledge of who we are, where we have been, and springing from this, where we are going." 24 Addison Gayle Jr. has noted that "a critical methodology has no relevance to the Black community unless it aids men [sic] in becoming better than they are." 25 The Council on Interracial Books for Children makes a related point when it argues that when books cause children harm and pain, "one can hardly talk about their 'beauty'; the inner ugliness of their racism…corrupts the very word itself." 26 Young People and Audience Response Theory Reader response theory springs from a new level of solicitude for the reader. It involves an exploration of how a reader makes meaning from a text, and the intent underlying such exploration includes the idea that meaning should be beneficial. This welcome human focus is combined with a generalization from gestalt psychology: that the mind handles holistic configurations better than fragmented ones. A One job for historians is to discover why such specific protective strategies are necessary-why classic publications denied Blacks dignity, distorted the quality of the African heritage, and provided a convenient channel for hate feelings. These issues have been insufficiently analyzed by theorists; however, historian Samuel Pickering Jr. points critics in a direction that could lead to a more pluralistic practice. He notes that many children's books (being structurally simple) do not warrant multiple close readings. He says that "close readings are often less valuable than broad readings which examine both the text and the world beyond." 32 This perspective is seen as advantageous for all types of critics: 1. A study of the white supremacy myth is not an antiquarian exercise. In April of 1987, a grand jury indicted fifteen individuals for alleged criminal actions associated with white supremacist beliefs. Each person was affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nations-groups implicated in the "killing of blacks, Jews, Federal officials, [and] journalists…," and committed to creating an all-White nation in the northwest corner of the United States
English Language Teaching and Linguistics Studies, 2022
This study is a cross-disciplinary investigation of the pedagogical significance of children literature in Nigeria—a linguistic study of selected samples from Akintayo Oluyinka’s The Greatest Mistake. Visual illustrations are typical of children literature because of the age-range of the readers. Hamilton (2000) notes that “children who encounter excellent picture books learn how to read not just the moods but also the pictures. They pay close attention to what they see often discovering things in illustrations.” Like in the literary text we examine in this study, pictorial illustrations in Nigerian children literature have varied contextual underpinnings which make them have meanings to children-readers. This establishes their pragmatic relevance. Objects and gestures convey messages in discourse. Therefore, semiotics is a crucial concern of this study. Hinging on the Pragma-crafting theory, this study concludes that the effectiveness of children literature in the transmission of k...