Growing up, I read anything and everything I laid my hands on.

At age 5, you would find me in my dad’s favourite armchair in our living room, reading the paper. Never mind that I was half covered by the thing and only my legs and the little hands clutching the sides of the paper would be visible. Never mind that I probably understood about twenty words per page. I just wanted to read.

At age 8, I had read everything written by Enid Blyton. At age 9, I had run out of books in my house (my poor mother simply couldn’t keep up), my friends’ houses and the school library so I moved to my mum’s wardrobe (secretly) for Mills and Boon.

At age 9.5, I wrote my first story. I wish I could say I remember the story but I don’t. I do vividly remember that I wrote with a blue pen on plain white A4 sized paper. Then I cut the paper up into little squares, bound it with yellow cardboard sheets and voila! My first book! I wrote many more ‘books’ for my classmates and by the time I graduated from primary school, I was a popular writer and I had ‘published’ at least a dozen books.

At age 12, while my classmates read integrated science books and prepared for Junior WAEC, I read my literature books, Jackie Collins and Barbara Cartland and wrote articles for my magazine.

At age 16, I stopped reading. But that’s a story for another day/blog post.

Today, I’ve decided to start a Children’s Book Review Blog for Nigerian Children.

This blog is primarily for anyone from ages 7-12. These are the golden years of reading. We are able to read alone for the first time and to choose the books we want to read. I want to help kids find and read wonderful books. To love them, live them and maybe create a few stories of their own.

Parents, teachers, siblings (older and younger), friends, not-friends and well-wishers of 7-12 year olds are also welcome. I will endeavour to find one or two things to keep you busy and smiling 🙂