Africa at the Internet Archive: Dianne Stewart

Yesterday I wrote about Phyllis Savory and her books of folktales from southern Africa, and that inspired me to write today about Diane Stewart, another prolific South African author of folktale collections (more at her website). The Internet Archive does not have a lot of her folktale books, but they do have two of them, so that's what I'll write about today, starting with Folktales from Africa, just a click away at the Internet Archive.

This book contains 20 stories, and there is a bibliography of sources in the back. The illustrations are by Marjorie van Heerden, and they are one of the nicest features of this book: very lavish color art, including two-page spreads as you can see here for the table of contents: I really like how the animals want to see the book the child is reading: very meta- and very cute!

And here's an informative map at the start of the book; once again van Heerden has incorporated a person into the illustration in a way that is really charming and engaging, as opposed to the map just sitting on the page by itself:

And look at this lively encounter between a person and an elephant:

Van Heerden is a South African author and illustrator; you can find out more at her website. I am really glad to have learned about her work from this book!

The other book is a very sweet version of a traditional "air castle" folktale: The Gift of the Sun. 

In most "air castle" stories someone is having a fantasy about the things they will do to become rich step by step, but it's just a fantasy. In this book, step by step, the characters really do get a happy ending, but it starts with trading-down instead of trading-up. The illustrations for this book are by Jude Daly:

So, I'll keep an eye out to see if more Dianne Stewart books show up at the Internet Archive in future, but for now these are two fine books to start with!

Folktales from Africa

by Dianne Stewart

The Gift of the Sun:
A Tale from South Africa

by Dianne Stewart