orature from children in developing countries that this must remain for now a highly
speculative conclusion. The Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986), recalling his own
Kikuyu upbringing, has noted that his appreciation of language was reinforced by word
games, an approach so similar to the English-language orature recorded by the Opies that
one is tempted to equate them without a closer comparative look (or hearing).
A change in the adult’s tone of voice when talking to children has been noted in many
cultures. But there are some cultures, notably the Thai, that use not only a special voice
but also special linguistic expressions and devices when performing orature for children
(Thai IBBY 1991). Such devices give a signal to the child listener that can be likened to
the children’s room in a public library, where children are shown by a specific sign and
physical location that this is ‘their’ literature.
It has been noted by a number of scholars that orature often survives longer among
the children than it does among the adults in a culture. Also, it is accepted as a truism
that the children’s literature of today, in all cultures, has more elements surviving from
orature than does the general, adult literature in those same societies. However,
children’s literature has not been examined for traces of orality in the same way that
adult literature has been scrutinised. It will first be necessary to cite many more specific
examples before one can unequivocally accept the truism.
A very clear-cut example of orature pervading a modern piece of literature for children
can be found in the works of D.O.Fagunwa of Nigeria. Fagunwa’s works were written in
Yoruba, and the largest number of persons who could read them was to be found among
school children. The adventures of his protagonists were of the type that appeals
strongly to children. Whether he intended them as children’s literature or not, his novels
became part of Nigerian children’s literature, much as Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s
Travels were usurped by English-reading children.
The best-known of Fagunwa’s works, Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale, first published in
1938, has been translated by Wole Soyinka as Forest of a Thousand Daemons. On the very
first page, the reader is given a direct instruction to treat the book as though the author
were a drummer performing the story and they, the listeners, were dancing out the
appropriate responses. In other words, they must act as though they were at a
traditional story-telling session. He exhorts his readers (listeners) not to dance like a
mosquito but ‘with joy and laughter’ and he further requests two things:
Firstly, whenever a character in my story speaks in his own person, you must put
yourselves in his place and speak as if you are that very man. And when the other
replies, you must relate the story to yourselves as if you, sitting down, had been
addressed and now respond to the first speaker. In addition ...you will yourselves
extract various wisdoms from the story as you follow its progress.
Fagunwa 1982:1Fagunwa senses that his printed words cannot possibly convey the give and take of a
Yoruba story-telling session, with its music, audience response (even takeover of the
narrator’s role at times) and onomatopoeic, proverb-packed speech. His novels are
episodic rather than linear. As Soyinka, his translator, points out ‘he is both the
enthusiastic raconteur and the pious moralist, and the battle of the inventive
660 THE WORLD OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE