ABC 1: Who's in Rabbit's House?

The first book we're reading for Anansi Book Club is Who's in Rabbit's House, as told by Verna Aardema and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon. We'll be reading this book from May 1-May 7, and I'll try to update this post each day with new information along with comments that come up in the Twitter discussion. Be sure to use the hashtag #AnansiBookClub when you tweet.

There are TWO copies at Internet Archive, so if one is checked out, you can see if the other one is available: Who's in Rabbit's House?

If you want to have a physical copy of the book, there are abundant used copies available. You can use Bookfinder to locate used copies.

There is also a short animated film narrated by James Earl Jones! And wow, he is a great reader, plus it has music. You can find the short film at YouTube for $1.99, and at Amazon Prime Video it was just $0.99.

What the Dillons did for the illustrations is really ingenious: they have re-imagined the story as a tale told by people in a Maasai village, wearing masks for the different characters. The story opens in the village as people assemble for the performance:

Then the performers put on their masks:

Then the story is narrated at the top of the page, with the action being shown below:

This story originally appeared in one of Verna Aardema's earlier collections: Tales for the Third Ear from Equatorial Africa, where it was titled "The Long One." That book is also available at Internet Archive; it contains nine stories, with art by Ib Ohlsson, a Danish artist who is probably best known for his illustrations in the "Encyclopedia Brown" series.

Here are his illustrations for the story; it's very charming, but nothing to compare to the creative interpretation by the Dillons IMO.

Meanwhile, Aardema's source for the story is a book I featured in an earlier post: Alfred Hollis's The Masai: Their Language and Folklore.

Here's that story available as a single PDF at the Internet Archive: The Caterpillar and the Wild Animals. There is a complete interlinear translation with the Maa text and a word-by-word English rendering:

Then comes a version in easier-to-read English prose:

THE STORY OF THE CATERPILLAR AND THE WILD ANIMALS

Once upon a time a caterpillar entered a hare's house when the owner was absent. On his return the hare noticed the marks on the ground, and cried out: Who is in my house? The caterpillar replied in a loud voice: I am the warrior-son of the long one, whose anklets have become unfastened in the fight in the Kurtiale country. I crush the rhinoceros to the earth, and make cow's dung of the elephant! I am invincible!

The hare went away saying: What can a small animal like myself do with a person who tramples an elephant under foot like cow's dung? On the road he met the jackal, and asked him to return with him and talk with the big man who had taken possession of his house.The jackal agreed, and when they reached the place, he barked loudly, and said: Who is in the house of my friend the hare?

The caterpillar replied: I am the warrior-son of the long one, whose anklets have become unfastened in the fight in the Kurtiale country. I crush the rhinoceros to the earth, and make cow's dung of the elephant! I am invincible!

On hearing this the jackal said: I can do nothing against such a man, and left.

The hare then fetched the leopard, whom he begged to go and talk with the person in his house. The leopard, on reaching the spot, grunted out: Who is in the house of my friend the hare?

The caterpillar replied in the same manner as he had done to the jackal, and the leopard said: If he crushes the elephant and the rhinoceros, he will do the same to me.

They went away again, and the hare sought out the rhinoceros. The latter, on arriving at the hare's house, asked who was inside, but when he heard the caterpillar's reply, he said: What, he can crush me to the earth! I had better go away then.

The hare next tried the elephant, and asked him to come to his assistance, but on hearing what the caterpillar had to say, the elephant remarked that he had no wish to be trampled under foot like cow's dung, and departed.

A frog was passing at the time, and the hare asked him if he could make the man who had conquered all the animals leave his house. The frog went to the door and asked who was inside. He received the same reply as had been given to the others, but instead of leaving, he went nearer, and said: I, who am strong and a leaper, have come. My buttocks are like the post, and God has made me vile.

When the caterpillar heard this, he trembled, and as he saw the frog coming nearer, he said: I am only the caterpillar.

The animals who had collected near seized him, and dragged him out, and they all laughed at the trouble he had given.

As you can see, Aardema has kept the same basic plot and characters, but she has added one entirely new dimension to the story: instead of just giving up, in Aardema's version the big animals offer to help in ways that are not helpful (which is a motif you can find in other African folktales, for example: The Partridge and Her Eggs). It changes the story, but in a way that reinforces the paradox of big-versus-small on which the whole story turns.

UPDATE: IDEOPHONES

I wanted to say something today about one of my favorite features of Aardema's storytelling style in this book: ideophones! You can read about ideophones at Wikipedia; they are conventionalized "sound effects" in spoken language. We have some ideophones in English, like the gun that goes "bang" or clocks that "tick-tock" or horses that go "clippity-clop" but these are very few in number compared to the incredibly abundance of ideophones that are a distinctive feature of so many African languages. For more, see the article on Ideophone in African Folklore: An Encyclopedia.

Here are a few of the ideophones as the story gets going; you can find more as the story goes on!

She banged on the door, ban, ban, ban!

Instead she crouched — semm — 

Off Jackal went — kpidu, kpidu, kpidu.

And bakah, he pushed the whole pile of sticks against the door.

The jackal trotted off kpata, kpata down to the lake.

Bit of the roof went flying — zzt, zzt, zzt.

And pa, pa, pa, Leopard went down to the lake.

She smoothed and patted the roof — bet, bet, bet!

I checked to see if Aardema was already using these ideophones in the first version of the story that she wrote and published back in 1969, "The Long One." There are no ideophones in that version! The story is mostly the same word for word, but without ideophones. So, somewhere between 1969 and 1979, Aardema learned about the power of ideophones for storytelling and made them part of her storytelling tool kit. I think the story is so much better in the later version with the ideophones!

UPDATE: LEO AND DIANE DILLON

Since the illustrations by the Dillons are one of the best features of this book, I thought I would add here some resources to learn more about this remarkable husband-and-wife team:

• Leo and Diane Dillon at Wikipedia
• The Art of Leo and Diane Dillon (a blog dedicated to their work)
• interview with Leo and Diane Dillon in the year 2000 (and check out the gallery of their sci-fi illustrations there!)
• Leo Dillon's obituary in the New York Times
• video: Our Voice: Diane and Leo Dillon

UPDATE: Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper!

There is another book based on this same story as retold by Tololwa Mollel, a Maasai writer born in Tanzania who is now based in Canada: Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper!

Mollel stays very close to the version recorded by Hollis, although he replaces the jackal character with a fox, perhaps in deference to Western audiences who are more familiar with foxes. 

One of the fun twists in Mollel's version is how the frog and the caterpillar go off at the end together; the caterpillar says that he was just looking for a place to take a nap, and the frog likewise just wanted to take a nap (all the ruckus woke her up), so the final scene has the frog offering to take the caterpillar to wear they can both find some peace and quite for their nap. Here's the illustration by Barbara Spurll:

UPDATE: Warrior Son of a Warrior Son

I'll end this week with another book that provides yet another retelling of this same Maasai legend: Warrior Son of a Warrior Son by Melinda Lilly, with wonderful illustrations by Charles Reasoner.

While Aardema and the Dillons framed the story as a theater production, in this book the story frame is a grandmother telling a story to her granddaughter, which adds a nice gender dimension to the story, balancing the "warrior son" theme of the story as a story told among women. And just look at the gorgeous art by Reasoner. It's a Maasai story, so there are some cattle there too... perhaps listening to this animal story!

I also really like how Lilly uses the Maasai animal names, which she found in Hollis's bilingual Maasai-English version of the story. At the same time, she has also taken the story in a very new direction, providing backstory to the caterpillar and the rabbit, and to their houses! Then, after that backstory, the plot proceeds as in the traditional version. Just look at this illustration of Elephant trying to get the mystery creature out of rabbit's house: 

The story then has a different ending too... but I don't want to give it away. Read the book and see! Lilly also nicely brings us back around to the grandmother storyteller again at the end too.

So, each version I've looked at here by Aardema, Mollel, and Lilly, has taken the story in new directions, and so have the artists. I hope you will take a look and each one and see what you notice!