The State of Children's Literature in Ethiopia

Children's literature criticism comprises both generalists' discussions of the relationship between children's literature and literary theory as well as a literary analysis of specific work or works of literature. But practical children's literary criticism tends to limit its scope in content analysis giving emphasis for the psychological and educational merits of the literature. This made children literature an under studied young genre in the world of literary scholarship. This is also a reality in Ethiopian Children's Literature. Even if the history of writing for children in the country can be traced back to the time where writing in the main stream literature began no serious literary criticism is undergone in the area and most books for children are limited to sketchy preschool story books.