Sowing the Seeds of Knowledge in Children's Literature: Sociocultural Values in J. O. de Graft Hanson's The Golden Oware Counters

Abstract

Mahoumbah Klobah has a doctorate in comparative literature and an interest in cultural studies and the cross-national relationships in African and African American literature. He has taught African/African American literature, served as a researcher on African/African American projects, worked as a consultant for articles connected with children’s literature, and is currently a major contributor of articles about African authors/illustrators in the upcoming Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature (publication date: 2006).

Our children must look at the things . . . which formed us yesterday . . .

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

[T]ales provided entertainment and instruction of the child listeners and initiated them into the historic, verbal and artistic constructions of the community they belonged to.

Jürgen Martini

Historical novels are a complex means for unearthing the things "our children must look at," yet such fiction is not too remote or intricate to stir and inform the young reader. Accordingly, Jürgen Martini has drawn attention to the importance of "fictional history in children's books and the role [it plays] in 'the social production of memory' in African societies" (35–6). He points to the dual function of such fiction: the entertainment and the instruction of children. He argues that praisesongs,¹ riddles, and tales ("oral history," "everyday history") generate children's interest, retention, and understanding of the past more than textbook history. Moreover, J. O de Graft Hanson² , one of the most distinguished and prolific Ghanaian authors for children and young adults, wrote about the subject matter of his stories:

I draw inspiration largely from our own storehouse of traditional stories, myths, legends, and quasi-historical material, particularly of the Akan. My objective has been to satisfy my own interest and love of literature and also to create literature that the Ghanaian child can find appealing, because he can relate to the traditional, historical, cultural, and social background. I have no higher aim than to entertain children, stimulate their imagination, and perhaps foster in them a love of literature and our cultural values.

(Qtd. in Boye 18)

He refers to folktales in one of his lectures on children's literature as the "imaginative responses of . . . nameless ancestors to the challenges of their living conditions, reflecting as they do, their particular environment, its recurrent problems, and the people's beliefs, values and ideals" (Children's Literature 1). In addition, he infers from oral literature two ancestral worldviews: myth and legend.

Mythic stories, according to de Graft Hanson, express "ancestors' conception and understanding of nature, through various imaginative attempts to explore and explain nature's peculiarities, in particular the physical characteristics and behaviour of animals around them" (Children's Literature 2). Legends, on the other hand, convey nationalism and patriotism, which are the "recollection of past historical events but over which the creative imagination has exercised its enchanting magic and embroidered them with much that is not only fanciful and fantastic but sometimes even quite incredible" (Children's Literature 2). P. Osazee Fayose sums all these up with his definition of African children's literature as

a literary creation which draws its subject matter from the African world view and which is written in a language and style the African child can comprehend. It must be seen as promoting African culture and must enable the child or young adult to understand and appreciate his or her environment better and it must give him or her some pleasure.

(Qtd. in Granqvist 23)

Stories emphasizing social functions and cultural values, acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, appreciation of the environment and the values of co-existence are a way of presenting a view of life that the adolescent can readily understand. Others highlight heroic deeds and bravery, distinctions between good and evil, and the use of common sense or intelligence as a tool of survival in an unpredictable world. These features are some of the lessons that make children more aware of both their identities and their surroundings.

Through Frimpong Atuahene, the narrator in The Golden Oware Counters, one easily notices with appreciation...