A Look at Laura's Bookshelf: Africa at the Internet Archive: Brock Peters and Eartha Kitt

I've got something different for today's post: it's a record album with 3 stories read aloud from this book: African Village Folktales by Edna Mason Kaula.

Even better: the reader is Brock Peters! You can read about his career at Wikipedia; I always think of him from his Star Trek roles; here he is in Undiscovered Country.

For some reason not clear to me, the Internet Archive's copy of the actual book is not available for borrowing in general; it's only for people with print disabilities. I'd never seen that restriction before and, when I asked the help desk, they told me they hope it will be available for lending at a later date. Meanwhile, you can get a taste of it from the record album. (There are two other record albums to complete the book, but the Internet Archive only has one; if they acquire either of the other albums, you know I will update this post!)

Something I just realized recently is that you can link to specific tracks on a record album, so here are the links to the 5 stories (each story has an informative introduction, followed by the story itself): Audio: The Mighty Warrior in Hare's House / Audio: A Lot of Silence Makes a Great Noise / Audio: The Light in the House / Audio: Lion and the Woman / Audio: The Wise Old Camel.

You might recall that I shared an earlier record album with Eartha Kitt (wow!) reading selections from Paul Radin's African Folktales; here's an earlier blog post about that book and the audio recording: Folk Tales of the Tribes of Africa.