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  • Africa in Children's Books:A Review of Children's Fiction About Africa in English
  • Lee Haring (bio)

In Children's Fiction About Africa in English (Buffalo: Conch Magazine Ltd., 1981), Nancy J. Schmidt has produced the first study of its field. To carry out her "anthropological" treatment of children's fiction about Africa, Schmidt compiled enormous amounts of bibliographic and background information on authors, publishers, and contents of books. Her annotated bibliography, Children's Books on Africa and Their Authors (New York: Africana, 1975), was a critical examination of children's fiction and nonfiction about sub-Saharan African peoples. The present book, growing out of that massive assemblage, "covers 542 novels and volumes of short stories written for children that I read before July 1977" (p. 1). Even on this scale it excludes fiction with white South African heroes, though the author indicates where such material is elsewhere listed.

Part I, "Background," sketches the beginnings of European and then of African children's literature and the growth of the industry, as well as discussing the rise of fiction for African children. Then it gives information about the publishing of children's and other books in English-speaking, sub-Saharan Africa, with attention to the several series of supplementary school readers for children. Next, Schmidt presents some facts about the authors of the books she will discuss; although some of these have briefly resided or traveled in African countries, hardly any are specialists. "Most authors who write fiction for Euroamerican children have no special knowledge of Africa" (p. 37). Many are simply professional children's book writers, Schmidt notes, though that category is much smaller and of more recent emergence in Africa than in Britain or America. This first part concludes with a detailed and critical view of the importance of the illustrator in children's books about Africa.

Schmidt begins her second part, "Themes," with a general discussion of the geographic settings, ethnic coverage, and the range and degree of realism of characters and topics in her 542 volumes. Then she takes up in turn local life stories, adventure [End Page 72] stories, animal and safari stories, historical fiction, fantasy, and school stories, discussing many books in such detail as to inspire a reader's confidence in the accuracy of her reporting and judgment. A useful appendix lists publishers' series including fiction about Africa; all the children's books consulted are listed in one bibliography, while another includes secondary sources, children's non-African fiction, and children's nonfiction about Africa.

Schmidt has carefully extracted the African content from hundreds of volumes, separating those intended for African children from those for Euroamerican children, and she has described that content so that prospective readers will know what to expect. For example,

Kenny (1957), a type of contemporary travel story about Uganda by E. Harper Johnson . . . is a very American story in most respects. The hero comes to Africa expecting it to be different from the United States. He is not disappointed and repeatedly expresses his amazement by saying, "Golly Creeps." When the hero arrives in Mombasa, he thinks it is like a "circus" because of the different-looking people and their bright clothing, whereas he compares Nairobi to Detroit because it has so many cars. While riding the train from Mombasa, the hero sees a "jet black native," whom he thinks looks like a "cannibal chief," and other "wild looking natives.". . . [T]he story contains some cultural errors. For example, the hero sees tall Mandingoes in the Kampala market, but the Mandingo are West African traders,

(pp. 87-88)

This quotation shows how careful Schmidt is to support her assertions about a book and how many of the author's original words she will employ to give us a sense of his style.

By assembling all this information about so many decades of fiction for Euroamerican children and the last two decades or so of fiction for African children, Nancy Schmidt has performed a considerable service for parents, teachers, and librarians. But what a dismal picture the Euroamerican material presents. Author after author and illustrator after illustrator have striven mightily to voice and confirm the stereotypes of Africa's steaming...

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