Sing Me a Song Cover Final 2

Author’s Words

‘Sing Me A Song, Ma’, is a collection of children’s poems written by Ifeoma Onyefulu, a Nigerian author living in England.

The poems are set mostly in Nigeria, although two were set in England, Ifeoma’s home at present, and Jamaica, where her sister, a professor lives.

One of the poems, titled ‘Grandma’s Tree’, set in Nigeria, is loosely based on her late mother’s quest to find a cure for her beloved avocado tree. The tree, popular with her neighbours failed to produce fruits for about two years, and they were not too pleased, eventually she called a tree shepherd, who identified the problem, and the tree was healed, spreading joy all round. In this poem, Ifeoma has also highlighted the way we treat the trees and the environment.

Another poem of this collection, titled ‘Play, Child, Play’, is set in England and is also about the environment, in which a mother creates an interesting game about nature in the hope of enticing her child away from the phone.

Finally, in her book Sing Me A Song Ma, every parent would relate and recognize the “mini battle of getting a child to go to sleep at night, and the tricks children play to stay up”. The child in the poem asks her mother to sing her a song a few times, each time she requests a different song and how the song would make her feel, eventually settling one, and her mother tactfully promises to sing the song the next day.