Aspects of graphology in the construction of selected Kiswahili children’s novels

Abstract

Graphology has today dominated children’s literature making it look like an amorphous and an ambiguous creature with its relationship to its audience. Children lack the required knowledge and skills to associate meaning to the stylistic devices in use. This, however, means that children’s literature has undergone a series of transformations and it appears that in the process of its transformations, it has been affected and it has equally affected its representation as well as the socialization of children as manifested in five (5) purposively selected Kiswahili children’s novels of Nyumba ya Sungura (2012), Hadithi ya Mamba (2009), Harusi ya Mwanasungura (2006), Usicheze na Moto (2003) and Dani na Wezi wa Toyota (2015).This is so because a keen look at the five (5) literary texts confirms a lot of graphological dominance which has presented an avenue for debates and radical shifts in the scholarship in the discipline of children’s literature. With Leech & Short’s (1981) Stylistics and Rosenblatt’s (1939) Readers Response theories Rosenblatt (1939), this paper attempted to highlight and reexamine some of the graphological aspects used in the construction of children’s literature with a focus on selected novels and how those graphological features impact on the readers. It established that graphological aspects enhance thematic foregrounding in children’s literature besides giving those texts some aesthetic appeal resulting into ideal comprehension