International Children’s Books Day Interview by Shimbo Pastory, published in The Citizen Newspaper Tanzania on April 01, 2025.
It is 58 years now since the first International Children’s Books Day was observed. The generation of children then is due for retirement in most countries around this time, especially where retirement age is 60 years.
The questions are however tough, especially on whether the implementation of the 57 annual thematic resolutions have been taken seriously and incorporated in our formal and informal learning systems.
This conversation with Ms Corona Cermak, an award winning Tanzanian author of Children’s books for international audience will be eye opening. Her storytelling is exceptional as it emerges from a cultural convergent point to engage meaningfully children both in Africa and in Europe.
Our readers will love to know you.
My name is Corona Kimaro Cermak; a Tanzanian, a lawyer by training, a teacher by practice, and an author of children’s books living in the Czech Republic. I am super happy to be part of this conversation on the International Children’s Books Day, and I am thrilled by the theme “The freedom of imagination,” because it resonates with my core beliefs about children.
Whenever I advertise my books or talk about children’s books, stories, or education, I always say: ‘a child is a free mind.’ I believe this will be a very interesting discussion.
What inspired you to start writing children’s books?
My most important motivation was my children, as I had a strong desire to teach them Swahili language and culture. Because I live in the Czech Republic, I did not find books that satisfy that need. I looked for Swahili books and stories in Tanzania but had difficulty, and the few I found were expensive, but also did not have the cultural merger I desired. Then I decided to write stories for my children to help them learn Swahili language and the Swahili culture.
What role does your African heritage play in your storytelling?
My African heritage plays a crucial role in my storytelling. My Swahili culture and language largely constitutes my identity as a storyteller. I want my children to joyfully explore and embrace their identity.
Even though my children are half Czech, and half Tanzanian, they are blended in both cultures in a beautiful way. I believed by them having Swahili language and cultural awareness they will appreciate more the half of who they are, and be happy and free, when they visit Tanzania.
Personally I did not read a lot of books as a child, but I dearly cherish memories of a storytelling radio programme back then dubbed “Mama na Mwana” – hosted by Deborah Mwenda. Both ways, we all have this heritage passed on to us in different ways.
How do you balance traditional storytelling with modern themes in your books?
I believe both the traditional and modern storytelling aim at the same thing, to teach. But nowadays there are stories that teach nothing! I love the traditional way of storytelling because it is more engaging and interactive. In modern story telling the contact between the listener and the story teller is not there.
In my children’s stories I use songs and rhymes to engage them more deeply with the story, which eventually gives them that narrative encounter that characterized traditional African storytelling.
This brings them holistically close to real experience of the story’s world and engages their imagination in a fruitful way.
My storytelling sparks excitement and discovery among children, particularly here in Europe, especially when they lead them to look beyond the common and immediate.
I also tell stories that address the problems of society today. I wrote a story titled Grandma Pipi and Roses, for my son.
He was being racially profiled and segregated at school. I presented in the story roses of different colours having a fight, and there was a grandma there who tried to help solve their problem.
The roses were arguing who is the most beautiful than others, etc. This story confronted a real issue in life, where some people see others as less or ugly just based on the colour of skin.
What do you think are the biggest barriers to children’s literacy and reading culture in Tanzania?
In Tanzania we have a habit problem of not reading to children. I blame parents and teachers. There is need to nurture children into reading for pleasure, to help them form their own reading culture as they grow up.
We also don’t have enough convenient places for children to peacefully read. Most of our homes do not have children’s books at all, and there are not a lot of good books in circulation which children can read and be excited.
It gets more complex with the government bureaucracy to approve local books and have them accessible to children in schools. These practices work against our own success.
To help in this, parents and educators have a big role. But it will have to begin from the lowest levels by improving access and standards of delivery basic education more widespread so that most parents will themselves be able to read, even in the rural and remote areas.
Twenty minutes of reading to a child, and encouraging them to read for twenty minutes by themselves, if they can, will go a long way to build a reading habit in them.
What do you think African children’s literature offers to the global literary scene?
African children’s literature offers a lot as it comes from a richness. We have left the outside world especially to write for us and about us for so long.
Even their lies have become truths! What they teach in their schools about us is written by them, while we have a little written about African cultures by Africans.
As such, writing our own stories will bring a lot of change in the children’s world and it will influence their imagination in a more productive and life-giving way. This is why I illustrate my children’s books in a Tanzanian way, including having the characters appear African.
It will also be of a huge impact to invite Tanzanian writers, both adults and children authors, to speak in schools in Tanzania encourage children in reading fiction and in writing. Some children can eventually find their role models through these initiatives.
What’s your advice to young African authors who desire writing for children?
I advise them to write what will make children learn and laugh. Write what you think when you read in front of your own child will be educative, entertaining, and appropriate.
Listen to children, how they speak, how they fight/disagree, and how they solve their problems, so that you can communicate with them in their language, and read children books written by others, including children authors, like Georgina Magessa, Gladness Eleazar, Raffat Simba, and others.
Any closing remarks?
First, I call local newspapers and radios to write about Tanzanian writers in order to make them and their work known. If we do not speak about our local stories and our local story tellers, nobody will know us deeply, not even ourselves!
Secondly, I am very happy to contribute to this International Children Books Day which is marked on April 2, the birthday of a children’s books writer Hans Christen Anderson. Just last month I went to Copenhagen, and I visited a statue of ‘The Little Mermaid’, which was a name of one his most popular children’s stories, published in 1837. In Tanzania we need to support our local authors and make their work more meaningful to children in Tanzania and beyond.
Corona Cermak’s books can be purchased in all Elitebookstores, at Mkuki na Nyota Bookshops, and on Amazon.
