ABC 31: Don't Leave an Elephant to Go and Chase a Bird

So here we are: the first Anansi Book Club book for 2023! This was one of my favorite projects from 2022, and I am excited to keep on reading more books this year! You can see the January Calendar at the website, and you can also see all the Book Club posts from 2022 here at the blog (and additional information at the website about previous months). 

I'm excited that we have a book by a brilliant writer and a wonderful illustrator to get things started: Don't Leave an Elephant to Go and Chase a Bird by James Berry with illustrations by Ann Grifalconi. And since I'm doing spider stories this week for #TricksterChaos, I'll let this be my trickster post for today too!

So, I'll have lots to say about this book and it's story, and also about James Berry and Ann Grifalconi, as I update this blog post every day this week. 

As James Berry explains in the introduction to the book, he has taken a traditional story about Anansi from Ghana and retold it in the Caribbean rhythms of his homeland, Jamaica. Berry was born in Jamaica in 1924 and relocated to England in 1948, and he went on to become one of the most famous members of this "Windrush generation" of West Indians living in the U.K.; you can find out more about Berry's remarkable life and career at Wikipedia. In 1990, Berry was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to poetry, so that makes him Sir James Berry! Here's a portrait from the British Library: 

Berry is best known for his poetry, but he also wrote prose, including several Anansi books. 

The Anansi story that Berry has told here starts out as a traditional "trading-up" type of chain tale, which is popular all over Africa. The stories are often told about tricksters, but they can also be told about other types of protagonists. You can also find "trading-up" chain tales in other parts of the world. Consider, for example, this ancient Buddhist jataka tale which starts from a dead mouse, trading up until the dead mouse becomes an immense fortune. In some types of "trading-up" chain tales the trickster is manipulating the situation to his advantage, as in this Anansi story: How Kwaku Ananse Won a Kingdom with a Grain of Corn. In Berry's story, Ananse is not tricking the people he interacts with; instead, he just happens to have what each character needs as he goes along the way -- but I do like the way that elephants in this story, when they meet Anansi, suspect that he might be trying to trick them; that's always a good operating assumption to have when you meet Anansi!

Then, what happens at the end of the story, is a different kind of twist, taking the story in a different direction than the typical chain tale... ending up with a proverb, as you can see in the title of the book itself: Don't leave an elephant to go and chase a bird. That is a proverb that can stand on its own, of course, but it is even better when combined with a story. There's no telling whether the proverb came first, or the story; you can see both types of phenomena, not just in African proverb and storytelling traditions, where a proverb ends up giving birth to a story and also where a story gets alluded to by a proverb. In either case, once a proverb-story is in circulation, people who are "in the know" can invoke the story just by stating the proverb. If you say "Don't leave an elephant to go and chase a bird," that conjures up Anansi in this story, much like saying "Slow and steady wins the race" conjures up the European version of the race between the tortoise and the hare (the African versions of that story, however, are something else entirely!). 

So, now you can see why I really love this book: it's got a chain tale AND it's a proverb-story. That means this book is pressing my two biggest storytelling buttons at once! 

Plus, the illustrations by Ann Grifalaconi are so much fun! Figuring out just how to draw Anansi can be very challenging: spider? human? something in-between? Grifalconi has chosen a stylized human-like way to represent Anansi; he definitely looks human-like, but at the same time he is not drawn like the other humans, as you can see in this scene where you can see Anansi and the blacksmith:

There's an artist's note at the beginning of the book where Grifalconi says she was inspired by a design she saw in Abrahams' African Folk Tales book (such an awesome book!), so I went to see if I could find it, and I think it must be this one:

I'm so glad when there is an artist's note with detailed information like that. I never would have been able to guess her inspiration, but now I can see it clearly!

You might recall that we a read a lovely book by Ann Grifalconi last year: The Village of Round and Square Houses. This is a book that she both wrote and illustrated, and you can see that it uses a quite different style:

That sticker on the cover is the Caldecott Medal! Grifalconi's book was recognized as "the most distinguished American picture book for children" in 2010. So, if you didn't get a chance to read that book with us back in June, take a few moments to read it now. It's a great story, and beautifully illustrated.

To finish up this week's post, I wanted to add some more Anansi stories from James Berry! This is actually one of my favorite Anansi books: Spiderman Anancy.

This book has 20 stories, told in Berry's absolutely wonderful style! The illustrations are by British-Nigerian artist Joseph Olubo:

Berry also published this Anansi children's book: First Palm Trees: An Anancy Spiderman Story.

This book has color illustrations by Greg Couch:

Berry is best known as a poet, and you can find many of Berry's other books at the Internet Archive too, including this book of children's poetry: A Nest Full of Stars..... which has illustrations by the late, great Ashley Bryan! 

So of course I wanted to include that also: Berry AND Bryan! Fans of Ashley Bryan will recognize his style right away:

So, I hope you enjoyed this week's story, and maybe you will want to explore more from James Berry and Ann Grifalconi too! And Ashley Bryan!

Don't Leave an Elephant to Go and Chase a Bird

by James Berry