African Folktales at Internet Archive: Storyteller Len Cabral

Yesterday I featured a beautiful book of West African folktales, and of course Spider figured in those stories (The Orphan Girl and Other Stories by Buchi Offodile), and today I want to share a children's book about Spider: Anansi's Narrow Waist: An African folk tale retold by Len Cabral and illustrated by David Diaz. The book is just a click away at Internet Archive, and there are two copies available for digital lending. 

The story is driven by Anansi's charactistic greed — he wants the food, and he wants ALL the food... and he doesn't like having to wait either — and it explains how he ends up not just with a narrow waist, but also with eight legs. I don't want to spoil the plot, so I won't say more than that, except that it's a fun story, and a great way to introduce young readers to "aetiological" stories, i.e. folktales that provide an explanation for the way things are now, the cause (Greek aetion) of how they came to be. 

I'll also add that there's another Len Cabral book you can find at Internet Archive for digital checkout also: Len Cabral's Storytelling Book. 

This book features tips for beginning, intermediate, and advanced storytellers, along with lots of stories to tell with Cabral's own "telling guide" with information about how he himself presents that particular story. Anansi's narrow waist is one of the stories he includes in that book too, and here's a sample of what that looks like with his "telling guide" notes to the side:

So, I can highly recommend both of these books from Len Cabral that are available at Internet Archive: Anansi's Narrow Waist and Len Cabral's Storytelling Book. Enjoy! Maybe you will be inspired to tell / write / imagine stories of your own. 

Plus you can find out more at Len Cabral's website, LenCabral.com. And...... he's at Twitter: @Len_Cabral.

And I also found this recent video at YouTube... Len Cabral is Zooming!