Children's books on my mind

Two meetings in recent days with some stakeholders in the books and reading promotions circuit in Nigeria have set the stage for this entry.

The first was with Mrs. Moore and the Bookfair committee for the annual Lagos Television-organised Lagos Bookfair and the other was with Mrs. Funke Adeniji of Achievers Educational Services.

First LTV. Regular readers of this blog would know that I do not only make a point of duty to follow on bookfair events in Nigeria, but that I also go the extra mile to both critique their output and make recommendations on how they can do better. It is in this mould that I decided to pay the LTV organisers of the Back-to-School leaning Lagos Book Fair a visit at the close of the month.

The first thing that I find impressive about the LTV event is that they have presently reconstituted their LOC to ensure an even better event this year. Great. Talking with two members of the team, I am encouraged by the fact that they have presently begun to take steps to deal with the content shortfall of that event which I commented on after viiting the fair last year.

Second is the fact that the current team appears to be more disposed to receive and consider inputs from outside the LTV enclosure.

As  for Mrs Adeniji and the Achievers project, I had been informed about her project on a visit to my son’s school. His proprietress, Mrs. Oladeji, who very well knows of my interest in books and reading had mentioned her to me in the course of that visit and I promptly decided to see her.

The visit was very rewarding.

On the heels of planning for a Conference of Reading Promotions Organisations to hold on the heels of the Ibadan Bookfair on September, 13, 2012, I had been on the lookout for organisations that were currently doing impactful work in the Nigerian reading promotions circuit.

Seeing and talking with Adeniji confirmed that the idea of the conference was indeed a most timely one. Before meeting adeniji, a second recent confirmation for this had come out of discussions with the University of Lagos Chapter of the Reading Asociation of Nigeria (RAN) and Dr. Chiji Akoma of the University of Villanova who is currently involved with a reading project in Yola, Adamawa State, Nigeria. I shall return to the Yola project in a future post.

Back to Adeniji and my impressions from our meeting. With an office in the Yaba area of Lagos, Achievers Educational Services is engaged in bookselling, library development and consulting. What had actually taken me there was their novel reading initiative and this is what I found out.

The project is structured as a resource development initiative for participating school children built around books. The Achievers team visits schools and signs on interested ones to their combined library development and reading promotions resource initiative.

It involves helping schools develop and stock their libraries, scheduled reading and resource development sessions with the children and developing their capacities in the areas of feedback-giving, independent reading, book reviews, ethics, accountability, the use of the library and creative writing and expression.

And would you read better if you are the subject of the text?

My encounter with the promoters of the personalized book concept in nigeria is the motivation for this post. Here is how it works: to get children reading voraciously, put them and their associated environment into  the content of the books.

Project Coordinator, Uncle Jeff, is sure doing some work here. Keep it up sir.

And CORA makes a Hay trip

Through a facebook post, I learnt that the Committee for Relevant Art is observing the Hay Book fairthis year.

This is great. Exposure and training would continue to be given elements in the bookfair arena and other Nigerian bookfair organisers would do well to similarly broaden their diet.

What does Cape Town offer this year?

There may be a debate about whether between NIBF and CTBF which is the biggest African book event. But it must not be reduced to the pedestrian logic involved when the PDP and the ANC jostle for the political party captainship in Africa.

It is rather content and impact that is king.

While NIBF has been growing notably its Indian link even in the face of reduced governmental and sub-regional participation which it needs to check), Cape Town with an eye on impact and the bottom-line - and hopefully yet with the continued strong support of the global bookfair avatar, Messers Frankfurt Bookfair  GMBH - has recently adjusted its fair to hold every two years.

The Return of ZIBF

Great news, a smaller version of the once imperial Zimbabwe International Bookfair  (yes, I was lodged at the Hotel Ambassador during my 2000 visit!) now takes place in the traditional July/August period.

This much was confirmed to this correspondent at the 2012 NIBF by African Publishers Network Executive Secretary, Tainie Mundondo. As she put it ‘the good times are back again.’

And this is also praying that President Mugabe gives that country an even bigger break so some of us would yet find pleasure in visiting and participating in one of Africa’s most impact-ful book convocations till date.

And this time I plan to lodge at the even more majestic Monomatapa Hotel!!