ABC 12. How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have?

I can't believe we're already wrapping up the third month of Anansi Book Club! You can find out more at the website: Anansi Book Club. At the end of each month, there's a longer book to read with multiple stories, and the longer book this month is by one of my very favorite authors: Julius Lester! Here's the book: How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have? ... it's available for borrowing from the Internet Archive, just a click away, thanks to the power of Controlled Digital Lending.

In this book, first published in 1989, Julius Lester drew on both African and on Jewish sources for the stories, which reflects his own fascinating life journey. Upon learning that his great-grandfather was a Jewish man who had married a freed slave, Lester began learning about Judaism, and in 1982 he converted. You can read more about this at Wikipedia, and here: Iconic Black Jewish Writer Julius Lester Should Be on Every Parent’s Radar.

So, in this book, Lester has told 9 African stories, 2 Jewish stories, and also a story in which he combines African and Jewish folktales into a new story of his own invention. He provides notes and bibliography for his sources in the back of the book, and you can find most of his sources at the Internet Archive.

The illustrations are by David Shannon; here's his illustration for the story of Leopard, which is a Rabbit story too; if you look, you'll see Rabbit there too:

"How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have?" is a Ngoni story from southeastern Africa. Lester based his version of the story on a story in Geraldine Elliot's The Long Grass Whispers, which you can also read at the Internet Archive: The Number of Spots. The illustrations for that book are by Sheila Hawkins:

One of the west African stories that Lester includes is "Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky," based on a version in Paul Radin's African Folktales, which you can read at the Internet Archive also. Here is Shannon's illustration for this delightful story:

You might remember this story from another children's book: Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky illustrated by Blair Lent. Here's how he drew Sun and Moon:

Another one of the stories that Lester includes is a trickster tale type found in many versions throughout Africa: The Tug-of-War. In Lester's version, the Elephant and the Hippopotamus are the dupe of Turtle's trick, pulling against each other. Here's how David Shannon depicts the boastful Turtle: Tug-of-War.

This tug-of-war type of story also shows up in the Americas; for example, here is a version with the Rabbit as trickster playing Whale against Elephant in a Gullah story in Bo Rabbit Smart for True.

Lester also retells "The Bird That Made Milk," a Xhosa story from southern Africa. There are many different versions of this story, and the one that Lester is working with here has a "monster who eats children" motif that is blended in with the story of the supernatural bird. 

You can read Lester's source here in Radin's African Folktales: The Bird Who Made Milk. For a different version of the story, here's a story from an Ndebele storyteller in Zimbabwe that you can read in Alexander McCall Smith's The Girl Who Married a Lion: Milk Bird.

These are the other African stories in Lester's book: "The Monster Who Swallowed Everything," is a Basuto story from southern Africa;  "The Town Where Snoring Was Not Allowed" is a Mende story from western Africa; "The Town Where Sleeping Was Not Allowed" is a Hausa story from western Africa; "The Woman and the Tree Children" is a Maasai story from eastern Africa; "Why Monkeys Live in Trees" is another Ngoni story from southeastern Africa; and "What Is the Most Important Part of the Body?" is a Mano story from Liberia, combined with a traditional Jewish legend.

You can find various Julius Lester videos at YouTube, and I picked out this one because here Lester is talking about the close relationship he had with illustrator Jerry Pinkney:

I've blogged before about Lester and Pinkney's work together, most notably in their monumental retelling of the Brer Rabbit stories collected by Joel Chandler Harris: The Complete Tales.

They also did a version of John Henry together:

You can read more about Julius Lester at Wikipedia, and I'll finish up this week by mentioning some of the other Julius Lester books I have written about at this blog: 

Black Folktales

(illustrated by Tom Feelings; more by Tom Feelings)

The Knee-High Man and Other Stories

(illustrated by Ralph Pinto)

Meanwhile, Lester's versions of these African stories await you, just a click away at the Internet Archive:

How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have?

by Julius Lester