Africa at the Internet Archive: Misoso: Once Upon a Time Tales

I had so much fun doing epics and proverbs over the past two weeks, but I'm also excited to get back to folktales this week, and I'll be featuring anthologies of African stories (and then I'll jump back into region-specific collections).

I'll start this week with one of the mainstay authors of African folktales for young readers, Verna Aardema, and this anthology: Misoso: Once Upon a Time Tales from Africa.

The book contains twelve stories, with illustrations by Reynold Ruffins, a great American painter and illustrator born in 1930; he died just this past summer at the age of 91. You can find out more about his work and career at Wikipedia. There is an obituary here: Artist Reynold Ruffins Died Sunday at Age 91, which includes this photo:

Here, for example, is Ruffins' illustration for the story Half-a-Ball-of-Kenki:

Some of the stories that you will find in this book have been published as individual books with different illustrators, which gives you a chance to compare illustrations, like this version of the Kenki story illustrated by Diane Stanley Zuromskis.

Half-a-Ball-of-Kenki

by Verna Aardema

The Kenki story is from an Ashanti source, and Aardema provides bibliography in the back of the book... plus, with the resources of the Internet Archive you can look up Aardema's sources and compare her versions with the traditional stories. For example, Rattray's book of Ashanti folktales is available at Internet Archive, and not only does it contain the Kenki story, it also contains an illustration by an (unnamed) Ashanti artist; more about that here. 

I still have not posted about all of Verna Aardema's books of African stories, but I have posted about a lot of them; you can see all those posts here: books by Verna Aardema, including today's lovely book: 

Misoso: Once Upon a Time Tales from Africa

by Verna Aardema