REPORT OF THE PANEL OF JUDGES FOR THE NIGERIA PRIZE FOR LITERATURE, 2007 EDITION (CHILDREN’S LITERATURE)

The first cycle of four years of the NLNG-sponsored Nigeria Prize for Literature has now been completed with the selection of a short list of three potential winners of the prize. This year’s competition is quite different from the earlier three because it is not restricted to any of the major genres of literature, like the earlier competitions; rather, all the genres of children’s literature are admissible. It is also different in the sense that although virtually all its authors are adults, it is written almost exclusively for an audience of young people, so that adults may well experience that guilty feeling of nostalgia anytime they are caught eavesdropping at childhood story-telling sessions. Yet not many adults can resist the lure of this enchanted world of wonder and innocence in which one may wander for ever. Indeed the best of children’s literature quite often evolve into literature for the edification of adult readers. How many parents or guardians would not gladly sit up to read a bedtime story to their children or wards, thereby re-enacting their own childhood story telling sessions a generation ago when they also listened to story telling by their own parents, neighbours and extended family members. Stories are, of course, central to the acculturation of young people. Their powerful effect on the impressionistic minds of young people makes them an especially powerful instrument for the shaping of character and the development of a sense of morality and fair play, as well as bridging the separate worlds of children and adults. We dare to add that indeed a competition on children’s literature is of far greater value for the strengthening of family values and for laying the future foundation for nation building than competitions for adult literature. But this utilitarian view of literature for the young is subordinate to its purely imaginative quality; for literature is of little value without this entertaining value, this product of the imagination. This competition is important and justifiable for this reason alone.

The organizers of this year’s competition began by seeking an answer to the question, what is children’s literature? The judges have adopted a set of simple criteria for their own guidance. Children’s literature may or may not be written by children, although it goes without saying that adults will be its main producers. Its content and form will reflect the social experience, level of psychological maturity and linguistic ability of its primary audience rather than that of its author, although this criterion may not apply to the scope and depth of the moral and narrative control of the material. There will be many levels of the social, psychological and linguistic levels of complexity and sophistication to be encountered in the literature. This makes it important to acknowledge that children’s literature may not be taken as a uniform type of material, rather, there will be different levels, reflecting different age groups. A broad range of these levels include: literature for young adults and adolescents, literature for early teenage years, pre-teen literature and literature for children up to eight years old.

The second set of criteria that the judges took into account includes the quality of the content and the material production of the entries. Although no restrictions on subject matter were published when entries were invited, the judges expected that author’s will impose their own censorship on matters of morality and ethics. The quality of language remains a key criterion in these competitions, and it received even greater attention and rating in this year’s competition because children are more vulnerable than adults to undesirable effects of stylistic and grammatical flaws in the work, since they are subconsciously regarded as the models in these matters. The production quality of this literature is of utmost importance. The quality of the illustrations and the quality of the paper and print are important for the success of the text. The story telling quality and the ability to attract and hold the attention of young readers are among the most highly rated qualities expected in children’s literature.

At the end of the closing date for this competition, the Literature Committee received 70 entries. Eight of these were disqualified for non compliance with the guidelines for entries, including those of residency, production and genre. If I may remind my audience, the residency requirement, which the organizers insisted on from the start of this competition was meant not only to encourage writers who live and work within the Nigerian environment, it was also meant to stimulate the growth of a literary culture in the country. The list of 62 was initially reduced to 10 entries, before a final short list of three was published in the national press. Once again, I present the 3 short listed entries in strictly alphabetical order.

Adimora-Ezeigbo’s My Cousin, Sammy, is a novel about the appearance of a teenage orphan from the rural areas at the home of his city-dwelling relatives – a middle class family with middle class prejudices and pretensions. Ezeigbo has chosen one of the most representative themes of contemporary African fiction. The regular flow of rural migrants into African cities is as old as the emergence of cities in Africa. Many writers of adult literature have been attracted to this theme, not only because the migration from rural areas to urban centres is a key agent of social transformation but also because the considerable social tensions that it produces often makes exciting story-telling. In adopting as a backdrop to her story this contrast between the traditions of provincial life and the new lifestyle of city dwellers Ezeigbo is consciously exploiting and extending a rich tradition of fiction of the modern city as a centre for social change by exploring the psychological tensions inherent in the experience. What Ezeigbo brings to this well-worked theme is its presentation from the point of view of a sensitive eleven year old girl whose experience is capable of bringing out the delicately poised but powerful family tensions that threaten the well-being of her family. Ezeigbo’s handling of the story of domestic conflict and its resolution through the sheer selfless love and fellow feeling of an eleven year old girl is sustained by skilful storytelling. She is in complete control of her medium in this novel for children in their early teenage years. At no point does the narrative move beyond the point of view of the child whose story this is. The complexities of the adult world and its contrast with the relatively limited experiences of childhood are accommodated and contained within the child’s linguistic capabilities and psychological insights. Although this novel is carefully kept at the level of the world view of its young audience, it is a reliable picture of aspects of middle class family life in some of our cities in addition to giving the reader a completely convincing picture of the nature and effect of adult repression on the emotional and psychological growth of adolescents.  It is for this skilful control of the narrative medium that the judges have picked My Cousin, Sammy as one of the three contenders for the Literature Prize.

Mabel Segun’s Readers’ Theatre is an unusual work. It is unique in its original approach to children’s literature. As a text for young adults it may be described as a forward looking text in the sense that it is a construction of bridges linking the oral traditions of the past with the future of a reading culture that should be constructed on this indigenous heritage. Reader’s Theatre seems a straightforward presentation of ten folktales and myths, a historical account of a national hero and an original story about school children preparing for a parade. It follows a deceptively simple format – a plot abstract is linked to a suggestive fleshing out and dramatization of the same plot, resulting in an interface of drama and its prose summary. Apart from the common plot shared by the narrative and its dramatization, there is a further link in the author’s suggestion that even the dramatic experience begins as a reading of texts. Although the plays appear to be simple dramatizations of well-known folktales rather than full-fledged plays, they are in fact skilfully created play-texts that transcend the narrative outlines. For example, “The first corn”, an aetiological tale which heads the collection, is rich with suggestions of human beginnings and the fortunate fall from innocence, and seems to be a kernel of the story of human civilization.
     It is in fact a more complex and flexible project, for these texts are not designed as finished play-scripts but as texts to be read by groups and as outline guides for creative production. The design of the work minimizes the usual intervention of the playwright through stage directions and detailed dialogues for actors. There is instead a privileging of the actors by encouraging improvisation and the partial participation of the audience in the realization of the play. Costume, props and the stage itself are kept to a bare minimum because of the desire to encourage resourcefulness and creativity. This theme is reinforced in “Tunde leads the parade”, the one text in the collection that remains inimitable because it is the author’s own original fictional contribution to the work. One could say of this work, that its most important contribution to our literary culture is its openness to creativity through improvisation based on our time-honoured oral heritage.
It is clear that this work presents itself as one answer to the problem of the increasing alienation of our young people from the indigenous narrative traditions of tales, legends and myths that seem to be fading from our collective memory. This rich cultural heritage used to be taken for granted until the .recent resurgence of western cultural practices swept them out of our consciousness just as we thought that our indigenous traditions of entertainment and aesthetics were safely in our custody. The publication of Reader’s Theatre at this time is a timely reminder that the cultural education of our young should not be a closed book.
 
Since Independence urban fiction has become one of our most important genres because of the importance of cities in our national development. However one of its sub-genres has not received as much attention as it deserves – that is, stories about the underprivileged sections of urban society, as distinct from stories about criminal gangs - from drug traffickers to conmen. What has not been adequately represented in the literature is the story of life among those who live in slums, work or loiter at motor parks, sleep under bridges or eke out a living from traffic jams on our highways. We have, in Sam and the Wallet by Uche Peter Umez, an important exception to this generalization, a work that stands out among contemporary fictions of urban life. It is the story of a teenager who is forced to become a motor park tout. The novel is a significant addition to the fictional tradition because its courageous affirmation of the enduring superiority of moral principles over the seductions of unearned material acquisitions helps to extend that strand of the fictional tradition that places the morality of art above the titillations of pornography and other forms of pop fiction. Existing fiction shows that Umez’s choice of a moral form of narrative is not always the preferred option even among very good quality novels. The degradation of the natural environment and an increase in the urban crime rate are often linked in quite a few of the higher class of fiction in which characters are shaped by their environment, and their warped psychological and moral states are naturalized as products of social injustice and a dehumanizing environment. The result is an amoral world of fiction in which characters and activities are divorced from the judicial principles and characters are absolved of all moral responsibility for their actions, even when these turn violent. But we know that it is these same principles that ensure the stability of real societies. It is to Umez’s credit that he stays with the morality of art. But his real achievement is that in doing so for the sake of his young readers, he does not idealize Sam, his central character. Sam is an ordinary boy, not endowed with extraordinary will, intellect or physique. But he remains resolutely honest against tough, though not insurmountable odds. This moral realism gives merit to Sam and the Wallet.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, it is now my privilege to end the suspense of the audience and the anxiety of our short-listed authors by announcing the decision of the judges. This year the Literature Prize for children will be awarded to two joint-winners: first, again in alphabetical order, My Cousin, Sammy, by Adimora-Ezeigbo. The other joint-winner is Mabel Segun’s Reader’s Theatre.