Editorial

African children’s literature—a body of aesthetic writing or performances embodying the African child’s experiences and targeting child readers or viewers—has come a long way. Before colonialism, it was mainly in the form of folktales and performances enjoyed on moonlit evenings. When colonialism facilitated the introduction of written children’s literature in English which conveyed British culture and the British world-view, it did so more as a transfer of a literary product to a reading Other than a transplant of a foreign literature into a local one. Such texts as Snow White, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and many others made the reading list of colonial schools.