ABSTRACT
E-mail: leyeola@hotmail.com
“Usually, children who lack interest in reading is a legacy from a home where reading is not held in high value. Home is children’s first world, where they learn what becomes memorable to them for the rest of their lives, including the love for books. Solution: Read to them before they are born. Play book recordings in vehicles. They are listening—in the womb. Introduce to them as soon as they are born the exciting world of creating worlds with words. They may taste the book or chew it to make sure it is good. If they sink their teeth into books as toddlers, they are likely to sink their minds into them as adults. I try to put everything into my books to incite children to be literary and useful citizens of tomorrow. And I espouse the sentiments expressed by Doctor Maria Montessori, an educationalist with special interest in children: ‘We know how to find pearls in the shells of oysters, gold in the mountains and coal in the bowels of the earth, but we are unaware of the spiritual gems, the creative nebulae, that the child hides in himself when he enters this world.’ I hope my books spark or enhance that ‘creative nebulae’ in children of all colors and cultures. Reading and writing children’s books and interacting with the young ones have become to me like a lifetime celebration of youth.”
