African Folktales at Internet Archive: The Magic Horns

Finishing up this week of stories from southern African (see all the posts on one page), here is a collection of stories from Botswana: The Magic Horns: Folk Tales from Africa by Stuart Forbes.

Stuart Forbes was born in Bechuanaland in southern Africa, a British possession which in 1966 gained its independence and became Botswana:

The book contains eight of the stories that Forbes remembers from his childhood there, and there is additional information in the introduction about the sources for the different stories.

There are marvelous illustrations by Charles Keeping, who was a quite famous illustrator in fact; you can find out more about his work at Wikipedia. Keeping really brings the animal characters to life with so much personality. Here are tortoise and leopard for example:

And here is an illustration from the title story, which is a very famous southern African legend about magic horns of plenty:

And if you want to compare Forbes's version of that story with another version, take a look at Ashley Bryan's beautiful book: The Ox of the Wonderful Horns. It's also available at Internet Archive!

So, if you are looking for a beautifully illustrated and fun-to-read book of folktales from southern Africa, this fine book is just a click away at the Internet Archive.

The Magic Horns:
Folk Tales from Africa
by Stuart Forbes