The book for this week also falls in the category of children’s book. It is a collection of poems written for and about children. It is titled: “Dreamrun: Poems for Bright Young People,” written by Tade Ipadeola, an award winning author, lawyer and farmer.
Ipadeola won in 2013 the most important literary award in Africa: the Nigeria Prize for Literature, sponsored by the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG).
He did this with his work: “Sahara Testaments.” Dreamrun was published in 2017 by Metamorphic Books and Consulting.
The book: “Dreamrun: Poems for Bright Young People,” is a collection of 14 poems. The book is Ipadeola’s first work for children, and the poems in the work are written in simple, easy-to-read language, which will quickly aid young minds in appreciating arts and poetry. Most, if not all, of the poems in this work are rendered in a maximum of 10 lines. And the poems in the collection explore themes of friendship, love, and nature.
Ipadeola, in this work, beautifully crafts the words that capture the imagination of young minds, and stirs their heart towards Africa, their homes, their parents and friends. Even for a grown up or adult, he triggers our memory and gives us a ride into our juvenile past when we played under the mango trees, reminding us about days that we enjoyed tales by moonlight with our friends and peers.
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In this poem: “Gather,” Ipadeola writes:
Come, my friends,
let us count our school days from the first
until today, let us spell our names
with kindness in the afternoon recess,
sing our oldest songs together.
And let us dance before we say goodbye.
In that poem, Ipadeola plays on children’s sense of friendship and togetherness. He employs the innocent point of view to teach about friendship and the gaiety that characterises the lives of children.
In Dreamrun, Ipadeola draws imagery from the home front to mesmerise us into gleefully joining in the songs. For example, the next poem that fascinates me in this work, reminds us about those days when our parents kept pets in the house. Here, the poet writes about a cat, in the poem: “The Cat Lupita”:
You want a cat like this
Smart and strong keeping the mice away
You really want a cat like this;
Gentle and fierce with friend and foe
Folk singer and poet, Beautiful Nubia, in a brief review of Ipadeola’s book: “Dreamrun,” writes: “The poems in Dreamrun are simple yet laden with knowledge; stripped of flowery language yet flighty like a song… Tade writes for young minds seeking wisdom, he writes to positively influence our common future.”
That is indeed the philosophy behind the work, Dreamrun. Ipadeola believes in children and thinks that they need to be tended well and given proper education for their future to be bright. Thus, he takes the reader on a pleasant adventure into the world from a child’s eyes and perspective. He invites the reader to appreciate water, fruits and vegetables, the world of the bees and the way honey is made.
In the collection, there are also poems about the airplane and what it is made of, the dog, and Carl Lewis as well as Jesse Owens, two black American athletes. And ultimately, he muses about books.
In the title poem: “Dreamrun,” the author whets our appetite for books and provokes in us the need to read books. He writes in Dreamrun:
Tomorrow is a book I want to read
So I’m running to the shelf today.
Yes, I’m running to the shelf this day
for tomorrow is a book I badly want to read.
In all, Dreamrun is a delight to read and digest. Dreamrun is colourfully illustrated and presented in a way that the reader will easily move from poem to poem, and from page to page without being conscious of time. It is also a clarion call for us all to pay attention to children.
. Olatunbosun is a broadcast journalist, fact-checker and book reviewer at Splash FM 105.5, Ibadan. He can be reached via 08023517565 (SMS and WhatsApp only) and email: molatunbosun@splashfm1055.com.
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