‘Once Upon a Village Tale’ reignites twilight tales for the young and old, by Michael Olatunbosun  |

The book for today is titled: “Once Upon a Village Tale,” written by Su’eddie Vershima Agema, and published by Sevhage in 2019. The book is a short prose, which is centred on fictitious stories and folktales.

Su’eddie Vershima Agema is an award winning poet, editor, literary administrator and culture promoter. In 2014, Su’eddie was Joint Winner, Association of Nigerian Authors Prize for Poetry, and nominee, Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature 2018. He has been long-listed for various literary prizes, and in 2019, Agema’s children’s book Once Upon a Village Tale was shortlisted for the Association of Nigerian Authors Children’s Literature Prize. In 2022, he was shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature.

In the book, the author paints the picture of a typical African father who creates time for his children, grandchildren and the young ones in his neighbourhood to tell them some generational stories. Most of these stories are based on superstition and myth.

In the book, Su’eddie adopts the first person point of view narration. The main character, Baba Gbande who is the narrator, takes the responsibility of telling the children folktales every night before bedtime. He would tell them ancient stories, tales and proverbs. Most of these stories focus on instilling good morals and discipline in the children. They also serve as a lullaby as the children are easily made to sleep after listening to interesting stories.

Baba Gbande, the omniscient character, uses various literary techniques to tell most of his stories. They include foreshadow, figures of speech and flashbacks. This could be seen in the first chapter of the book when he flashes back to when his father told him that the number of stars a person beholds in the sky would determine the number of years he or she would spend on earth. He has believed in this superstition until one day, when he could only count two stars in the sky but lived beyond the expected time.

Other major characters in the book are Gbande and Terdoo. They are the children of Baba Gbande. Despite their young age, they are very intelligent and inquisitive. This is seen mostly at the beginning and the end of any story telling activity. They would ask questions from their father to verify the authenticity of the stories being told.

The book, Once Upon a Village Tale, is not lengthy, but it has a lot of themes directed at addressing various issues in the society. 

The writer deploys anthropomorphism to exhibit the themes of greed, betrayal, revenge, anger, promise, amongst others. 

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In this book, Su’eddie successfully splashes throughout the book, the rich culture of the Tiv tribe of Benue state. So he does this by adopting their language for most of the story titles and songs. This is more evident where he uses Tiv language in place of the popular “story story” chant that precedes every story narration.

The book is also educative. This is seen in the conversation between the village doctor, Dr. Lynes, Baba Gbande and Terdoo at the clinic. The doctor educates them about the meaning of brace in the teeth and its functions.

It is worthy to note that the book, Once Upon a Village Tale was shortlisted for the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) prize for children’s Literature 2018. It is written in the stories instead of chapters and it carries six great folktales about animals. The book also has a glossary section to explain some of the words that may be difficult for children and young readers. 

. Olatunbosun can be reached via 08023517565 (SMS and WhatsApp only) and [email protected].

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