African Folktales at Internet Archive: Warrior Son of a Warrior Son

For Week 18, I want to switch back to doing a post with a regional focus, this time looking at stories from eastern Africa, starting with this children's book inspired by a Maasai story from Kenya: Warrior Son of a Warrior Son: A Masai Tale retold by Melinda Lilly, just a click away at Internet Archive:

In this book Lilly has collaborated again with Charles Reasoner as the illustrator, and the illustrations are gorgeous; here are two of his 2-page spreads:

Lilly's book is inspired by a folktale collected by Hollis and published in his book about the Maasai: The Masai: Their Language and Folklore. You can see the story of "The Caterpillar and the Wild Animals" both an interlinear version with the Maasai translated word for word into English, and then also a stand-alone English version with more standard English word order and phrasing.

Having access to the Maasai version allows you to compare in detail the choices that both Lilly and then Reasoner made as they created their own version of the story. Lilly stays close to the Maasai version in some ways, like including the Maa names of the animals along with some other distinctive phrases. At the same time, she changes the story in some important ways, like including a lovely frame of a grandmother telling a story to her granddaughter (see illustration above), and also adding an important twist at the end of the story which connects back to the theme of the grandmother and granddaughter, but *spoilers* I'm not going to say what that twist is here. :-)

And for more comparative fun (that's why I love studying folktales: it's all about comparing different versions), you can look at another book inspired by this same story, which I've blogged about before: Who's in Rabbit's House? by Verna Aardema, with illustrations by Diane and Leo Dillon.

Aardema chose a very different frame for her version of the story: a performance of the story in a Maasai village by actors wearing masks. That choice, in turn, prompted the beautiful illustrations done by the Dillons showing human performers wearing animal masks:

Of course I also have to mention the other wonderful books by the team of Lilly and Reasoner which I have blogged about earlier:

Wanyana and Matchmaker Frog:

A Bagandan Tale

Zimani's Drum:

A Malawian Tale

Kwian and the Lazy Sun:

A San Myth

So, if you have some time, these beautiful children's books are all waiting for you to explore at Internet Archive, along with primary source material like Hollis's book of Maasai stories with the Maa language text. All just a click away!

Warrior Son of a Warrior Son:

A Masai Tale

by Melinda Lilly