Defects on Children’s Amharic Story-Books in Ethiopia: A Critical Evaluation

Abstract

Conducting research on the qualities of children’s literature on a continuous
basis can serve as supportive reading materials for children’s literacy
development in the country. But, unfortunately, there is no research work on
this critical issue in Ethiopia. Therefore, the productive competence of the
books for the development of knowledge and language acquisition skills in
children still remains little known among policymakers, implementers,
scholars, and those concerned. The main purpose of this study is thus to
explicate the productiveness of children’s storybooks written in Amharic in
the last four decades using the major literary criteria in reflection on the
fundamental concept of “children’s realities,” including ‘age-stage, proposed
by scholars from different but most closely related fields of study in the social
sciences and humanities. Data are collected based on critical reviews done on
28 randomly selected children’s story/folklore books.