CHILDREN’S LITERATURE IN AFRICA: CONTENT AND NARRATIVE FORM

Literature, among other things, serves as the conveyor of a people’s history and culture by sustaining it to keep it alive if it does not go extinct. Children’s Literature in Africa, though not given the needed attention as adult literature, is central to preserving and sustaining the African heritage. What constitutes Children’s Literature in Africa, and how it is made manifest or passed, forms the crux of this paper. The paper adopts Social-reader Response Literary Theory: So that, the readers (African children) can read and perform literary content in more innovative ways as they like it. Literature written for the African child should both carry African imagery and be of interest to them if they must enjoy and cherish it. Whether Children’s Literature in Africa is written in local or other colonial languages such as Anglophone, Francophone, Lusophone, Italian, Afrikaans, or Spanish, it can be given such a status when the message it conveys is African. Aside from educative, rich moral lessons and entertainment children derive, the common strand that runs through the content and narrative form of Children’s Literature in Africa is, the shared nature of its themes, performance across the continent, and self-identity that makes it African, as no other can do better.