Preserving the Landscape of the Imagination: Children's Literature in Africa (review)

Preserving the Landscape of the Imagination: Children's Literature in Africa, ed. Raoul Granqvist and Jürgen Martini. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. xvii + 361pp. ISBN: 90-420-0160-7 paper.

A functional and viable literary landscape for children and young people is characterized by enjoyment or entertainment, and instruction as well. In Africa, as I have indicated elsewhere, a didactic or moral stance has always been an integral part of literature for juveniles, from simple songs and jokes through well crafted and sophisticated fiction (African Youth Literature xi).I quote the following statement of Chinua Achebe in an interview in 1981 because I believe the editors of this book, Raoul Granqvist and Jürgen Martini, got their title, Preserving the Landscape of the Imagination, from it:

Our responsibility as Nigerians (or as Africans ) of this generation is to strive to realize the potential good and avoid the ill. Clearly, children are central in all this, for it is their legacy and patrimony that we are talking about. If Nigeria [or Africa] is to become a united and humane society in the future, her children [and all other African children] must now be brought up on common vocabulary for the heroic and the cowardly, the just and the unjust. Which means preserving and refurbishing the landscape of the imagination and the domain of stories, and not as our leaders seem to think--a verbal bombardment of patriotic exhortation and daily recitations of the National pledge and anthem. (Cott 192; emphasis added)

I took the liberty to make the additions in square brackets because much of Achebe's observation is applicable to other African countries. Clearly, in the above statement, Chinua Achebe's perception of children's literature as a viable tool for contributing to the peace, harmony, solid coexistence of all religious groups and the like, and stability of an ethnically diverse nation like Nigeria now and for the next generation cannot be questioned. Raising well-rounded children and young people on literature that is in touch with their cultural heritage, individual lives, and social functions promises more to ensure a next generation of a peaceful and stable Nigeria than does superficially forced recitation of national pledge and anthem. That this kind of situation is applicable to other African countries that have been plagued by ethnic, religious, and sociopolitico problems is a statement that needs no treatise or corroboration here.

Indeed most African writers' motivation to write for children is a worthy and noble desire to mold young Africans along an acceptable African way of life for a positive humane society. Their writings also reflect their own vision of what young Africans and their role should be in the society, contributing in the process to the preservation of various aspects of Africa's cultural heritage. In relatively recent times, these writings have been slowly receiving scholarly attention in books and professional journals and periodicals in Africa and other parts of the world. Preserving the Landscape of the Imagination: Children's Literature in Africa is a welcome addition to the slim but growing scholarly works and reference books on African children's literatures. With this preamble let us look at the book and what it has to offer.

Preserving the Landscape of the Imagination: Children's Literature in Africa is a special issue of Matatu-Journal for African Culture and Society, combined numbers 17-18, devoted to children's literature in Africa--the result of the international conference on African children's literature, the first of its kind that took place in Umea, Sweden, in March 1992. The conference was sponsored by the Swedish Institute and Umea University (and in particular the English Department). Deriving from a conference, this volume recalls works like African Youth Literature Today and Tomorrow, which is the result of an international symposium on African children's literature held in March 1986 in Munich, Germany, and Children and Literature in...