ENHANCING QUALITY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION THROUGH QUALITY CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: IMPLICATION FOR THE CLASSROOM LITERATURE TEACHER

Children’s literature has tremendously grown in number of titles and in variety of themes and subject matter. Critics and literary writers have observed and stated that the production of children’s books is the most rapidly growing segment in the publishing industry in sub Sahara Africa. More than six hundred children’s literature books were listed in the 1983 African Books in Print, and this number has since increased. Educators, librarians’ writers and publishers have in the recent past had a filled day in the production of children’s literature. In addition to stimulating seminars held on children’s literature, the competitions on children’s writings by organized publishing companies, especially Macmillan and the African University Press have increased the production of this genre. Other reasons for the rapid growth of children’s literature seem to be the usually slim volume of this genre of literature, which writers illusively believe to be very easy to write. Publishers on their side, have found it to be economically expedient to produce. And these have tremendously increased the number of titles of children’s literature. This has resulted in the fear that the attractive and lucrative nature of the enterprise of writing for children has blinded writers and publishers of the purpose and principles of the task. This again has resulted in the wild circulation of unhealthy books for the child’s consumption, poor and very low quality books especially at the early primary level of education, which do not appear to have professional handling. To circumvent this misnomer, the paper recommends that writers of children’s books should create holistic and wholesome books for children. What is needed is not an increase in the output of children’s literature but an increase in number of books of literary aesthetic and value that will satisfy the societal needs of the child, so as to develop, promote and enhance the total development of the Nigerian child. The paper also suggest that the problem of the Nigerian Children’s literature does not rest on the writer, the publisher and the critics alone but that the classroom literature teacher has a much more role to perform to see that the child consumes a healthy book actually meant and written for him.