Representing Africa in Children's Literature

Vivian Yenika-Agbaw is Associate Professor of literacy/children’s literature at The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA. She is an assistant editor of Sankofa: Journal of African and African American Children’s Literature and serves on the Children’s Africana Book Award Committee.

• Introduction: Children’s Literature and AfricaSection 1: Image-making and Children’s BooksChapter 1Images of West Africa in Children’s Books: Replacing Old Stereotypes with New Ones?Chapter 2Illustrations and the Messages they convey: African Culture in Picture Books.Chapter 3The Typical West African Village Stories.Section 2: Growing Up African and Female in Children’s BooksChapter 4Religion and Childhood in Two African Communities: Ogot’s The Rain Came and Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.Chapter 5Revising Traditional Cultural Practices in Two Picture Book Versions of African Folktales.Chapter 6African Girls’ Sexuality in Selected Fiction for Young AdultsChapter 7Individual Healing vs. Communal Healing: Three African Females’ Attempts at Constructing Unique Identities.Section 3: Reading African Cultural Survival in Children’s BooksChapter 8Reading Images of Resistance in Tom Feelings’ The Middle Passage.Chapter 9African Sites of Memory in Diasporic Children’s Literature.AfterwordChapter 10When Illustrations by Africans Lack Visual Appeal, How Should African Readers React?Chapter 11Authenticity, Hybridity and Literature about African Children

"Representing Africa is a text that I will gladly recommend and use in my own work."-- Barbara A. Lehman, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Summer 2009, Vol. 34, No. 2"Few scholars have written in such depth about modern Africa and the diaspora in children's literature so this title is very welcome... an intelligent book...with a mature response to the documented ills of the former colonial powers." --Phyllis Ramage, Wasafiri, Winter 2009