ABC 10. Princess of the Full Moon

For the next Anansi Book Club book in July (here's the July calendar), it's another book written AND illustrated by the author, and the author if Frederic Guirma, who is from Burkina Faso, although in 1970 when he published this book, the country was known as Upper Volta. And here is the book, a beautiful fairy tale, full of surprises: Princess of the Full Moon. I hope you enjoy the book and will share your thoughts at Twitter if you are so inclined; our hashtag is #AnansiBookClub.

I don't want to give away any spoilers, but I'll just let you know that when you meet the shepherd and his parakeet at the start of the story, things are not what they appear to be! 

One of my favorite things about this book is the role that the flute and the song played on the flute plays throughout the story; folktales that involve songs and singing are found all over the world, but they are especially important in African storytelling traditions. I wish we had the tune that goes with this song!

Wood chopper, wood chopper,

go tell my mother.

Wood chopper, wood chopper,

go tell my father.

Everyone lives at home,

but I live with death.

The author and illustrator, Frédéric Guirma, is a Mossi writer and politician from Burkina Faso. He was born in 1931 in Ouagadougou where the French had established a colony called Upper Volta; the country’s name was changed to Burkina Faso in 1984. When Upper Volta gained its independence from France in 1960, Guirma became his country’s first ambassador to the United States, and he later had a career as a United Nations diplomat. This photo shows him meeting with U.S. President John Kennedy:

As far as I know, he is still alive; here is a picture from an interview published in 2018:

And for today's addition to the post, I found a video! It is an interview with Guirma just a few years ago, also in 2018. My French is not up to the task, and the auto-English-captions from YouTube were garbled in many places but, still, there he is: this week's author, in a video! Frédérique Guirma DU 13 05 2018

I'm always grateful when there are notes from the illustrator about their work, and Guirma provides this wonderful guide to some of the images that decorate the book: "End paper masks one, two and three are worn during the ceremony in which aspirants are initiated into the secret society of the Gurunsi and Senoufo tribes. Mask one is Gurunsi and represents a genie; mask two is Senoufo and represents a wild boar; mask three is known as a Bobo, or monkey mask. Mask four is a funeral mask of the Mossi tribe and represents an antelope." Here is the antelope mask drawn by Guirma, and you can learn more here: Mossi Mask Traditions.

Guirma wrote the book in French, and the translation is by John Garrett; here is the cover of the French edition:

At the time of the book's publication in 1970, John Garrett was working as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger (he died very recently, in 2019: obituary), which borders Burkina Faso to the northeast:

As Guirma's story begins, the princess is refusing any suitor who has any kind of defect, even just a scar. This is a motif you can find in other African folktales. For example, here is the story of a woman who refused all suitors with scars or defects of any kind, so a leopard used magic to make himself the perfect man... but he was still a leopard! You can read that story here: The Leopard of the Fine Skin. It's a story from this book: Where Animals Talk: West African Folklore Tales by Robert Nassau, which you can also find at the Internet Archive.

I'll keep posting more information here throughout the week. Meanwhile Guirma's book awaits you at the Internet Archive, thanks to Controlled Digital Lending!

Princess of the Full Moon

by Frederic Guirma