The Sunday Mail
Andrew Moyo Beyond The Cover —
THE declining reading culture in the country was one of the subjects that came up during the Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) earlier this year.
This should be of great concern considering that we are among some of the countries with the highest literacy rates on the continent. In order to ensure that the love of reading is resurrected there is need to deal with the situation from the grassroots.
Writers should also play their part by publishing literature that encourages children to read. It seems like Tatenda Charles Munyuki is moving in the right direction in terms of promoting the reading culture from grassroots as he recently released a children’s book titled “The Angry Girlchild”.
This story revolves around a young girl Anna and the various challenges she has to deal with while she is growing up. With the separation of her parents and being left under the guardianship of her father, she has to adapt to life without motherly love.
This book explores some of the situations that children encounter without understanding what is really going on around them. At one point her father’s friend has a habit of coming to the house showering her with gifts but then the maid discovers that the man has bad intentions when she walks on him fondling the girl.
When the maid relays the incident to the little girl’s father, he does not believe her and sends her packing but then another relative intervenes and ends up taking custody of the child.
There are various levels of abuse that children come across on a daily basis and I am glad that this writer shed a bit of light on the subject in a book that is actually meant to be read by the young ones.
Being so young and having to deal with disoriented family ties can be difficult and can lead to psychological problems. Dealing with the aforesaid plus school seems to be hard for Anna whose frustration is evidenced by her behavioural change.
From fighting with her friends to even insulting her teachers at school it is clear that there is something boiling from within the child. The downside of this otherwise special package was the writer’s numerous mistakes — the book could have been much better with proper editing and proofreading.
In other instances the writer seemed to be thinking in Shona but then would get lost in the translation thereby creating terms and phrases that are non-existent in the Queen’s language.
“Anna remembered meeting what her mother called little uncles,” goes one of the statements where the narrator recalls her encounters with her mother’s boyfriends.
Despite the mistakes that I encountered, evidence of a rushed job, the storyline is not that bad. Thorough editing to polish up the work would have added a bit of quality to the book. Simply put, this is an interesting read for children, which just needed bit of ironing to make it a better product.
