Children’s books that address technology often begin from a position of adult concern. Like in most real-life scenarios, screens are presented as distractions and shown to be source of danger. Children are often warned to the supposedly healthier world outside. This forms the crux of Tokei Akinola’s book, What If Your Cup, a twenty-four paged children’s picture book that asks the playful question: what would happen if an ordinary cup stayed awake all night using gadgets and became too tired to do its job the next morning?
It is a playful, yet effective premise. Rather than placing a misbehaving child at the centre of the warning, Akinola gives the troublesome habit to a cup. It scrolls, beeps and taps through the night, then yawns, wobbles and refuses to cooperate when it is needed. The child reader can therefore laugh at the cup before recognising the larger lesson about sleep, attention and screen-time balance.
This reversal is the book’s strongest imaginative choice. The cup’s exhaustion leads to comic confusion when the child attempts to drink from it, creating a clear connection between staying awake, becoming tired and struggling with ordinary responsibilities. Thus, the child is no longer the person being warned to sleep or step away from a device. Instead, the child must deal with a cup that has acquired the habits adults frequently worry about in children. This creates enough distance for the lesson to be received without the child feeling directly accused or reprimanded. Young readers can first laugh at the cup before recognising something of their own world in its behaviour.
As is expected of works like this, Akinola’s language is deliberately simple and accessible. She uses short sentences, familiar vocabulary, sound effects and predominantly rhyming lines. Words such as “slurp”, “burp”, “ouch”, “wobbles” and “wiggles” give the story physical energy and make it well suited to reading aloud. A parent or teacher can exaggerate the cup’s yawns, complaints and sudden movements, turning the book into a small performance.
Writing in rhyme is more difficult than it appears. The writer must preserve meaning, maintain rhythm and still sound natural to a young reader. Akinola handles this largely with warmth and humour. Some rhymes are approximate and the rhythm occasionally loosens, but these moments are passable within the book’s lively, comic movement. They do not obstruct understanding or diminish its general appeal.
Akinola writes within the broad tradition of the rhyming moral picture book. The talking cup belongs to the long literary practice of giving animals, toys and household objects human behaviour so that children can consider their own habits from a safe distance. In this sense, the book shares something with the traditional fable.
There are also distant echoes of the comic absurdity associated with Dr Seuss and the read-aloud musicality of writers such as Julia Donaldson. Akinola’s style, however, is plainer and more openly instructional. Her aim is not elaborate wordplay but a story through which children can discuss a contemporary concern.
Naomi Anidi’s illustrations support that purpose well. The cup is lively and expressive, while the night-time image of its face illuminated by a screen immediately communicates fascination and overstimulation. Later images of children painting, experimenting, dancing and participating in sport broaden the story’s meaning. The world beyond the screen is shown as active, creative and full of possibility.
The representation is also welcome. Black children appear naturally as artists, scientists, dancers and imaginative participants in the world. Their presence gives the book relevance for children who do not always see themselves placed at the centre of stories about curiosity, achievement and everyday life.
The book’s deeper message emerges when it contrasts the cup’s fixed function with the child’s wider potential:

“It holds your drink—that’s what it’s for,
But you, dear child, are so much more!”

The cup has one clear purpose, but the child can learn, dream, create and discover many gifts. Screen-time balance is therefore connected not only to rest but also to the protection of imagination, attention and possibility.
This book’s message has universal value. In British homes and schools, where screens are increasingly tied to learning, entertainment and communication, the book offers a sensible argument for balance rather than rejection. Technology is not presented as an enemy, but as something that should remain a tool.
The same is true in Nigeria, where children’s access to phones, tablets and digital media continues to grow, although not equally across all communities. The book’s concern with tiredness, distraction and creative life can travel across different social settings. Its personification of an everyday object also sits comfortably beside African storytelling traditions in which animals and ordinary things are made to speak, act and reveal human weaknesses.
The discussion and activity pages make the book useful beyond private reading. It could work well in homes, primary schools, libraries, churches and community programmes, where adults can use it to begin conversations about sleep, screen habits, creativity and life away from devices.
In all, What If Your Cup? is a playful and thoughtful picture book. Its humour keeps the lesson light, its illustrations extend its imaginative reach, and its simple rhymes make it accessible to young readers. Most importantly, it reminds children that rest is not wasted time and that the world beyond the screen remains full of movement, creativity and discovery.

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S. Su’eddie Vershima Agema is a multiple-award-winning writer, editor, cultural advocate, scholar and development practitioner. He is the Executive Director of SEVHAGE Literary and Development Initiative, and notably convenes the annual Benue Book and Arts [International] Festival holding in Nottingham (United Kingdom) and Nigeria. He was previously the Black History Month/Project Curator and co-founder/president of African Writers [Society] at the University of Sussex, where he earned an MA with distinction in International Education and Development as a Chevening Scholar. He was also a 2022 David C. Pollock Scholar of the International Families in Global Transition.
Among other prizes across genres, he has won the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize (2014 and 2022), the Mandela Day Short Story Prize 2016 and was a finalist for the Nigeria Prize for Literature (2022), Africa’s most prestigious literature prize worth $100,000. He has also been nominated/shortlisted for prizes such as the the Abubakar Gimba Prize for Short Stories 2022, SDGs Short Story Award 2021 by the Economic Commission for Africa (2021), the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature (2018), the Association of Nigerian Authors’ Prize for Children’s Literature (2018), the Association of Nigerian Authors Prize for Prose Fiction (2014) and Saraba/PEN Nigeria Poetry Prize (2012).
Among other books, he is the author of Memory and the Call of Water, The Bottom of Another Tale and the children’s book, Once Upon a Village Tale. He also heads SEVHAGE Publishing, as well as African and Black Creatives 4 Development. He is the Managing Editor of the notable poetry collective, Konya Shamsrumi, and sits on the editorial team of Cons-cio Magazine. He also convenes and administers the SEVHAGE Literary Prizes, a collection of different prizes across the various genres.