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.