Sunday, October 31, 2021

Africa at the Internet Archive: Tiny Tales from Africa

So today's post is a little different: I get to feature my own book of African folktales at the Internet Archive today! Here it is: Tiny Tales from Africa: The Animals by... me! :-)


I finished publishing the book just yesterday, uploaded a copy to Internet Archive, and then the Internet Archive worked its magic so that the PDF I uploaded is a full-fledged Internet Archive book that you can read, search, link to, download, etc. So, for example, you can do a search for all the rabbits, and read through the book going from one rabbit to the next using the navigate-by-search-results option; you can also share the actual search results by means of a link: Rabbit.


The book is also available as an EPUB and in other formats here: Africa.LauraGibbs.net. There's even an audiobook. :-)


As you can see from the list of stories there in the audiobook index, the book contains 200 "tiny tales" with animal characters from a wide variety of storytelling traditions; each story is 100 words long. You can see the list of sources, with links to their Internet Archive versions too, here: List of Sources. Some of the books on that list have been featured here already; other books will be appearing here in November (I'll have more to say about the November focus in tomorrow's post).

I started writing 100-word stories for my dad about two years ago, and you can see all the "Tiny Tale" books that I've published so far here: 100 Words. The books are all free to download (PDF, EPUB, etc.), and they are also available as Kindles and as paperbacks from Amazon. 


I really like writing 100-word stories: I try to make sure they really feel like stories, not just summaries of stories, and because they are so short, it is easy to include 200 of them in a single book. A friend of mine calls them "potato-chip stories" because you can't stop reading them once you get started. That's my hope anyway. :-)

In addition to being free, these books are CC-licensed OER (online educational resources) so that teachers can adapt the materials in whatever ways might be most useful to them; you can find out more about that in the Teacher's Guide that I prepared, with excerpts from the first three books paired with storytelling ideas.

This book of African animal tales is the first one where I've included illustrations, which was really fun to do! I used Fotor's GoArt to create "sketch" versions of CC-licensed photographs, and I also used some greyscale versions of photos with the Fotor editor; I went with these black-and-white options so that the photos would work in the paperback version also. (The image credits are in the back of the book.)


As you can see from the title of the book, I have optimistically labeled it as "volume 1" because there are still hundreds of animal stories from Africa I want to retell. The next volume should be ready in January; I've already got all the stories I need, so it's just a matter of doing all the editing and book preparation in November and December to get it ready to go. You can browse through the stories now if you are curious: African animal tales for volume 2.

Meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy this book... I had more fun and also learned more writing this book than any other of the books that I've done, and that makes me optimistic that it will be fun and useful for readers also! 

by Laura Gibbs




Saturday, October 30, 2021

African Folktales at Internet Archive: Week 24

It's the end of Week 24, and nearly the end of October too! Here is a link to all the past round-ups: May - June - July - August - September October.

The focus this week was stories from southern Africa, and I've linked to all the book posts below.



by John Tom Brown



by Thomas J. Larson



by J. Torrend



by Credo Vusa'mazulu Mutwa



by Fiona Moodie




Friday, October 29, 2021

Africa at the Internet Archive: Nabulela

Finishing up this week of stories from southern Africa, here is a book written and illustrated by Fiona Moodie, a South African artist and writer: Nabulela.


The book has a wonderful heroine and a happy ending, and Moodie's illustrations do a great job of dramatizing the story. Here you can see the chief's daughter and her dog: 


Nabulela is the name of the monster that they must defeat:


Moodie has written other children's books, and you might enjoy looking at her book Noko and the Night Monster at the Internet Archive; it's not based on folklore, but it is populated by African animal characters: Noko and the Night Monster. Here are illustrations of Noko the African porcupine, talking with a pangolin and with a hyena:


Moodie's source for the Nabulela monster story was Phyllis Savory's book of Zulu stories, which I profiled in a previous post: Zulu Fireside Tales


You can compare the text of the stories and also the illustrations; here is how Sylvia Baxter showed the chief's daughter and the other young women of the village, along with the loyal dog:


So, if you like Moodie's story, then maybe take a look at Savory's book full of Zulu tales; both books are just a click away at the Internet Archive! In fact, there are multiple copies of Moodie's book, so you shouldn't have any trouble finding one to check out digitally. :-)


by Fiona Moodie





Thursday, October 28, 2021

Africa at the Internet Archive: Indaba, My Children

Continuing this week with books of stories from southern Africa, I want to share a storytelling project by the Zulu writer and spiritualist Credo Vusa'mazulu Mutwa: Indaba, My Children.


This book weaves together mythological material in the context of a larger narrative, so it's something like a novel, but not a typical novel by any means. The stories told here are also not traditional Bantu legends and not traditional history, but instead something that comes from Mutwa's visions and secrets into which he was initiated. 

The book was first published in 1966, when Mutwa was in his 45; he was born in 1921. You can read more about his life story at Wikipedia and at South African History Online. Mutwa died very recently, in March 2020, at the age of 98; you can read an obituary and remembrance in The Conversation: South Africa’s towering healer, prophet and artist Credo Mutwa. You can see some photographs of his art and learn more about that dimension of his work here: Spiritual Art of Credo Vusamazulu Mutwa (which includes a fascinating comparison between Mutwa and William Blake).

You can see Mutwa here in a recent video at age 97, about a year before his death:


Mutwa has his fans and his detractors; some people consider Mutwa a visionary prophet, while others regard him as a sort of mytho-conspiracy theorist. And here's the great thing about this book being at the Internet Archive: you can explore the book for yourself and see what you learn from it. Plus, if you are curious to learn more, you will also find another collection of his writings there: My People, My Africa, first published in 1964, and published for the first time in the United States in 1969. 


That book contains material that also appears in Indaba along with materials from another book: Africa Is My Witness, and it took is just a click away at Internet Archive. 

by Credo Vusa'mazulu Mutwa

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Africa at the Internet Archive: When illustrations go wrong...

Carrying on with the stories from southern Africa this week, I have another book by Verna Aardema to share, but it's a book with offensive illustrations, so I am sharing it today to provide an example of what kinds of books are NOT good for sharing with children... and in this case, I'll be able to provide two totally different styles of illustrating the same story in order to make the point.

So, starting with the more recent book, the one with the terrible illustrations: This for That: A Tonga Tale, published in 1997. The text is by Verna Aardema, a prolific author of African folktale books for children, and the illustrations are by Victoria Chess, also a prolific illustrator:


Here's an example of what I mean by offensive images in the book:


I'm really shocked that a published in 1997 thought this was acceptable. At this point, Aardema was in her late 80s (she was born in 1911), and I'm guessing she had little or no involvement with the illustrations; it's hard for me to imagine that this is the way she would have wanted the story to be illustrated.

The review at Kirkus points out that the images are derogatory: "the portrayal of Africans borders on stereotypical, and the landscape is fairly flat and nondescript—derogating the origins of the material."

When I read the review of the book in Publishers Weekly, I was very disappointed to see that the review had nothing to say about these troubling images: "Chess using a tawny palette, crafts straw-yellow grasses, red-dirt roads and olive-green bushes, then tweaks her compositions with cagey details, such as giraffe-patterned tree trunks. She neatly frames the images in borders resembling woven reeds, and attires the guileful Rabbit in a clownish skirt of yellow-and-red feathers. As the action progresses, a golden sun sets to a red glow behind blue mountains, adding to this book's strong visual appeal."

Strong visual appeal? I don't think so... although you can take a look and decide for yourselves.

This same chain tale about Rabbit also appears in a book Aardema had published in 1973, Behind the Back of the Mountain, illustrated by the amazing artists Leo and Diane Dillon, also at Internet Archive. There is just one illustration for the story in that book (it's not a picture book for children, but instead a collection of stories written for older readers)... and it is breathtakingly beautiful, a total contrast to the racist cartoons in Chess's book:


Did Chess even look at this earlier illustration by the Dillons? Maybe if she had looked at this work of art it would have given her pause before she embarked on her own illustrations. 

In addition, you can see the source that Aardema used for the story, a book of Bantu folklore published in 1921: Specimens of Bantu Folk-lore from Northern Rhodesia by J. Torrend, also available at Internet Archive:


Using the version printed in Torrend's book, you can see just what Aardema started with: My Berries! You can also see the Tonga version in the book, because Torrend's book includes the original, as well as his English translation, and he provides the name of the storyteller at the end: Ndime Ñanga, "I am Ñanga" (which is also the word for a traditional Bantu healer; there are other stories in the book narrated by this same storyteller).


So, in addition to sharing Torrend's book (which is an incredible resource), I hope that this post can serve as a caution about what can go WRONG when adapting traditional stories, and what a crucial role illustrations can play. Just as with the text, if the illustrations are done with no respect for the culture, then there's nothing "multicultural" about that book; it does more harm than good, reinforcing already narrow-minded stereotypes and assumptions.

Meanwhile, if you want to read a picture-book with an African chain tale written by Aardema and illustrated beautifully by the Dillons, take a look at Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: A West African Tale. The Dillons were awarded a Caldecott Medal in 1976 for their beautiful illustrations to this book, and justifiably so! Their work here is the opposite of Chess's illustrations in every way.





Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Africa at the Internet Archive: Tales from the Okavango

Carrying on with this week's theme of stories from southern Africa, here is a book of stories from Botswana: Tales from the Okavango by Thomas J. Larson, just a click away at the Internet Archive.


These are stories of the Hambukushu people of the Okavango Delta of Botswana, which has been declared one of the "Seven Natural Wonders of Africa." 


You can find out more at Wikipedia, which is also the source for this photo


You will find animal stories here, including stories about the trickster hare who is called Kadimba. The drawings are by Rufus Papenfus, and they are beautiful; here is Nthoo the leopard:


And here is Ngando, the crocodile, with Mbii, the zebras:


Larson, born in Minnesota in 1917, was a cultural anthropologist who lived with the Hambukushu people in the 1950s; the book was published in South Africa in 1972. Larson has written academic books also; this is his book intended for a general audience, focusing on the sheer pleasure of the stories themselves. Larson also wrote a short novella, published in 1978, about a young Hambukushu man who is choosing whether to go to South Africa to work in the mining industry or to continue his schooling; that book is also at Internet Archive: Dibebe's Choice. Although the book is fiction, Larson explains that the story is based on that of a teenager whom he met while living among the Hambukushu in the 1950s. If any more of Larson's books show up at Internet Archive over time, I'll update this blog post.

Meanwhile, enjoy the Bantu tales here; this book is a great addition to the Bantu stories featured so far this week. 

by Thomas J. Larson




Monday, October 25, 2021

Africa at the Internet Archive: Tales of Temba

Following up on yesterday's post about Bantu stories from Botswana, I wanted to share this book of Bantu stories by Kathleen Arnott: Tales of Temba: Traditional African Stories, just a click away at Internet Archive.


This is a really interesting storytelling experiment, as Arnott explains: "All these stories are retold folk tales of the Bantu-speaking peoples of Africa. The name of the hero has been changed to Temba in each case, and the stories have been arranged in a sequence which tells of his adventures from babyhood to manhood."

The illustrations are by Tom Feelings, and they are very nicely done. Here, for example, is the illustration for the story of "The Hyena's Egg":


This shows grandfather, a storyteller:


Arnott, both in 1914, was a missionary in Nigeria from 1939 until 1951. There she met and married a scholar of African languages who later became a professor of West African languages at London University. Living in England, Arnott began her career as a writer. She wrote primarily about Africa, but I also wanted to mention an anthology by Kathleen Arnott that you can also find at Internet Archive: Animal Folk Tales around the World


So, if you are in the mood for stories (I'm always in the mood for stories), these books by Kathleen Arnott await you, and I'll be back tomorrow with more stories from southern Africa.

by Kathleen Arnott





Sunday, October 24, 2021

Africa at the Internet Archive: Bantu Nomads (Botswana)

Starting Week 24 today, I thought I would focus on tales from southern Africa, starting with Among the Bantu Nomads: A record of forty years spent among the Bechuana by John Tom Brown, just a click away at the Internet Archive, originally published in 1925 and reprinted in 1969.


There are 21 stories in the book, collected between 1885 and 1924 when the author was living in Botswana among the Bechuana, or Tswana people. The stories are in the chapter entitled "Mythology and Folklore," beginning on p. 162 of the book. You will also find chapters on tribal names, totems, kinship, family life, marriage, burial customs, religious beliefs and ceremonies, along with historical information about Bechuanaland, which became the Republic of Botswana when it won its independence from the United Kingdom in 1966.


There is also a chapter of Proverbs beginning on p. 197. Thankfully, he includes the original Setswana language text together with the proverbs: 


So, if you are looking for folktales or for proverbs (I'm always looking for both!), you will find some good ones here. :-)

by John Tom Brown




Saturday, October 23, 2021

African Folktales at Internet Archive: Week 23

Here we are at the end of Week 23 already, and I really like the way this project also marks the calendar of my retirement life, since I started this as soon as I retired from OU! Here are links to all the past round-ups: Past round-ups: May - June - July - August - September - October.

The focus this week was stories from west Africa, and I've linked to all the book posts below.

This week also marked the death of the great Jerry Pinkney, one of the all-time greats of book illustration, and a personal favorite of mine; I did a post dedicated to his African folklore books: Jerry Pinkney


You can also see an outpouring of appreciations and remembrances at Twitter: Jerry Pinkney.

And now, here are the links to this week's books and posts:





by Harold Courlander
and Ezekiel Eshugbayi



by Harold Courlander
and Albert Kofi Prempeh



by Ashley Bryan