ABC 28: The King and the Tortoise

And it's here already: the December Calendar for Anansi Book Club as we finish up the year 2022, and you can also see all the Book Club posts so far this year  (and additional information also about previous months). We're starting off with an author very familiar to readers of this blog: it's Tololwa Mollel! And the book this time is a trickster tale: The King and the Tortoise.

The illustrations are by Kathy Blankley. Here you can see Tortoise with lots of thread... but it's not the kind of thread he wants!

This is a classic trickster story, and you get to see one animal after another trying at the king's task but failing... until Tortoise comes along! 

I don't want to completely give away the plot of Mollel's book, but here's a short tale from the Bulu (Fang) people of Cameroon that shares a similar motif with Mollel's Tortoise story. Thomas Green included this Tortoise tale in his Greenwood Library of World Folktales with bibliography; click on the image for a larger view:

Mollel has written about the tricky Tortoise before! In this story, we see Tortoise at his wise best. Sometimes Tortoise is more greedy than wise as in The Flying Tortoise: An Igbo Tale with illustrations by Barbara Spurll. You can find out more about that book in this post from back in July.

For today's update, I wanted to say something about the artist, Kathy Blankley, who later went by her married name, Kathy Blankely Roman. You can find out more about her work at her website, where her art is also for sale: KBRomanArt.com. I was really interested to learn that after she retired in 2010, she took up abtract art, and that is what she does now. Here is one of her oil-and-cold-wax creations; it's really beautiful! 

For today's update, I wanted to share two more Tortoise books for people who want to learn more about Tortoise and his tricks, and both of these books are just a click away at the Internet Archive:

Ijapa the Tortoise, and Other Nigerian Tales

by Harold Courlander and Ezekiel Eshugbayi

Yoruba Trickster Tales
by Oyekan Owomoyela
(the focus is very much on the Tortoise!)

For today's final update, I wanted to include a video from Tololwa Mollel so you could get a chance to hear his voice. I couldn't find a video of him reading from this book, but here's a video of him reading from his book Lands of the Night, which is also available at the Internet Archive!

Meanwhile, jump in and enjoy the story. I've avoided spoilers, at least so far! The book is just a click away at the Archive:

The King and the Tortoise
by Tololwa Mollel