Five pupils of Kamblos Nursery and Primary School, Lagos were on Sunday, July 21, 2024, celebrated in the city of excellence for authoring three books titled: “The Haunted World”, “The Beautiful and Honest Child” and “The Brave Boy and other stories”.
“The Haunted World” was authored by Marvelous Innocent; “The Beautiful and Honest Girl” was authored by Cherish Ifeanyi and The Brave Boy and Other Stories” was written by three pupils: Eze Use, Angel Olanrewaju and Chikezie Prosper.
Speaking at the launch of the books and the 2024 Graduation and Prize Giving for outstanding pupils of the school, the Publisher of Genius Books, Mary-Joan Nwaogu, said the children achieved the feat after a writing talent discovery programme.
According to the publisher, she usually visits different schools to teach children, especially those who like to tell stories how to write.
Some of the activities in which she engages the children include casting their characters and getting their books right.
Her words, “So if children can be constructive about their stories but do not know how to put them down then they should not be denied the opportunity of putting down their stories in black and white.
“I know that a lot of children can write and tell stories so we use the opportunity to groom them. If you go to some schools so many of them write stories but they don’t know how to continue and how to publish it.
“So we use that opportunity to put them through by assisting them to publish their books and market their books to schools,” Nwaogu said.
Having trained about 20 children, the publisher noted that only seven have gotten to the stage of publishing their books.
Also speaking at the event, Proprietress of the school, Mrs Favour Osuji, said she was excited about the book launch because it would further inspire other talented pupils to toe the line of inspiration in writing stories and getting them published.
She said: “I am excited about the books being launched because they are new babies, the first of its kind. We have been grooming these children through the Writers Club Society.
“Though we never thought of writing books anyway but when we now noticed that some of these children love writing. At times. I will see these children in their classes with their jotters writing one story or the other.
“It was the Publisher, Dr Nwagwu, that inspired me to publish their stories and I informed their parents that we should bring the talent out of these children.
“We have several of them that have written books but we are just launching only three books believing that subsequently we will have more,” Mrs Osuji noted.
The proprietress said there is also a need for the government to assist some of the pupils, especially those who lack funding and have been unable to have their books published.
She added that the children will also be receiving prizes as 2023/2024 outstanding pupils.
The new authors speak
One of the authors, Cherish Ifeanyi-Osuji, a 10-year-old pupil of the school, said her work is centred on love and some other attributes.
She said, “The Beautiful and Honest Girl” centred on the love, honesty and humility of a girl.”
For Ifeanyi-Osuji her work illustrates how honesty could open several doors, and possibly could attract love from both the young and the old.
Also, Marvelous Innocent, a primary four pupil, said the book “The Haunted World” was adopted from a real-life incident of what happened in the environment where he lived.
He noted that the story was about the carelessness of parents who leave their children at home unsupervised.
