In the 21st century, the role of African children's literature is pivotal in connecting the past, present and future generations through the expression and celebration of cultural heritage. For the African child, the world today represents myriad challenges to success such as urbanization, migration and displacement, generational conflict, and tension between tradition and modernity. These realities collude with the ever-present barriers of race and class for African people. The voluminous works produced by Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, explore diverse and timely themes that have earned critical acclaim in the literary world. Her children's literature reifies her commitment to African-centred and authentic literature that fulfils multiple roles in society.

As a prolific writer across genres of poetry, the novel, and the short story, her literature for young readers is a connecting thread to oral traditions of story-telling for the purpose of acculturation and socialization of youth. The potential impact of this genre on young readers is invaluable because literature, as a mirror of life, may convey didactic elements as well as aesthetic appeal to the young mind. This chapter will examine select works of children's fiction by Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo to highlight conflicts between tradition and modernity within urban and rural settings in Nigeria. Through the lens of childhood, the author has woven significant ideas about character formation, African values and cultural continuity. Children universally represent the future and writers for this audience have a commitment to use their artistry in ways that foreground the preservation of African cultural integrity in a globalized world of fractured identity and misplaced values.

In contemporary Nigerian literature, one of the foremost writers of children's literature is indisputably Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo whose prolific outpouring of creativity has earned her prestigious literary awards and critical acclaim. To date, she has produced five novels, twenty-two books for children, four collections of short stories and two plays. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo is a writer, activist and professor at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. As one of Nigeria's leading contemporary writers, she has won the coveted ANA Spectrum Prize (2001), the Zulu Sofola Prize (2002) for women writers, the Flora Nwapa Prize (2003) and the WORDOC Short Story Prize in 1994.