/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/BOOKS-COTE D’IVOIRE: Reaching Children

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Austin Merrill

ABIDJAN, May 14 2002 (IPS) - The halls of the Palais des Congres at the Hotel Ivoire in Abidjan are filled with thousands of young children.

Some of them stand at microphones and read poems, some sit and listen as others read to them, and still others stare wide-eyed as writers autographed new copies of their latest children’s books.

It is the second day of SILA – le Salon International du Livre d’Abidjan (Abidjan’s international book show) – and the day is dedicated to young students.

Organised by Cote d’Ivoire’s Ministry of Culture and the French-Speaking World, the Association of Ivorian Publishers, and the Publishing Houses of Cote d’Ivoire, this third edition of SILA opened last week.

Each day’s schedule is packed with lectures, appearances, presentations, and performances by persons of all kinds whose private and professional lives revolve around books – journalists and cartoonists, historians and scientists, teachers and writers, librarians and publishers.

The theme of SILA 2002 is “Reading for Everyone”. Laurent Gbagbo, the president of Cote d’Ivoire, attended the opening of the fair to help reinforce this message. “Cote d’Ivoire has lived through a difficult period,” he said. “There are no books about the (governmental) transition. There are more and more discotheques. I would like it if there were more libraries.”

It is a message that the organisers of SILA hope will not be confined only to the borders of this country. To that end, the fair will have participants connected to the United States, Asia, Europe, and Francophone and Anglophone Africa. Among them are publishers from Morocco, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Cameroon. There are representatives of the teachings of Islam and Christianity. And there is a French journalist, Emmanuel Goujon, who sits at a table and speaks with people about his new book “Depuis le 11 Septembre”.

In the book, Goujoun gives his perspective on last summer’s terrorist attacks on the United States. It is the point of view of a European who has spent most of his working life writing about Africa and its relationship to the rest of the world.

There are those who say that the love of books is not a part of African culture – that Africans are working too hard to feed and clothe their families to have much time to read. Clearly one of the principal goals of this year’s SILA is to combat that notion and to work toward the promotion of the importance of reading for everyone.

“All peoples of the world who developed actively and progressively were those who knew writing,” said President Gbagbo, himself a former teacher and historian. “It is in this way that they were able to preserve their experiences.”

It is no surprise, then, those two full days of SILA 2002 have been dedicated to young people. The other days’ schedules are full of discussions on education policy and publishing practices, as well as opportunities for novelists and other authors to speak to the public about their work. And every day there are booths set up by newspapers, magazines, publishers, and bookstores to advertise their wares.

As worthwhile as these other events all are, there is a sense that the most effective way to spread the message on the importance of reading is to target the children.

“I think it’s very important to engage children and to give them a base,” says the Ivorian writer Veronique Tadjo. “So that later, they can follow us in this African literature. More and more, people are realising the importance of children’s literature.”

One person who understands this is Kouadio Benjamin, a children’s writer and cartoonist. There are children swarming all around him, many clutching copies of his latest work, “John Koutoukou”, which pokes fun at Ivorian family life while delivering a message on the importance of being responsible, honest, and hard-working. There are pencils and pens scattered about the table, and Benjamin is busy autographing books for the children, each signature complete with a personalised cartoon.

A young boy named Xavier stands at Benjamin’s elbow and watches him expertly draw a picture of a boy in shorts and a T-shirt, a huge smile on his face and an open book in his lap. He finishes the sketch, and then writes in the voice bubble, “I love reading, don’t you, Xavier?”

The drawing complete, Xavier takes the book carefully into his hands and turns to walk away. He is so entranced that his father has to remind him to say thank you.