ABC 37. Horses and Tortoises and Rabbits and Elephants...

It's time for the third #AnansiBookClub book of February, and you can see the February Calendar at the website, plus all the Book Club posts here at the blog. This week's book is actually an anthology, but a very short one, just 40 pages, and we'll do a more typical anthology for the final book this month. But first, here's the story anthology with a very VERY long title: Horses and Tortoises and Rabbits and Elephants and Birds and Hippos and Lions and Sisters and Frogs and Dogs and Hares and Jackals and Murder: Stories from Africa.

This book is the result of a community-based project from the African Women’s Network in Dublin, Ireland, featuring 10 stories written and illustrated by members of the collective. Most, but not all, of the stories are animal stories (as you can tell from the title), and each story indicates its country of provenance along with the name of the storyteller. The book is intended for use in elementary schools so that Irish children can learn about Africa and also for African children living in Ireland so that they can celebrate their heritage. It's a brilliant project, and I feel so lucky that the book somehow ended up at the Internet Archive, as it is not available from any traditional bookseller.

The variety of stories in this book is so much fun. The very first story, "The Learned Horse," is told by Jane Gatto from Kenya. It's a folktale that took shape in a Christian context, as you would expect in modern Kenya, which is a secular country but with a large Christian majority. There are many folktales where someone comes into possession of an object that is controlled by "magic" words... and, with a Christian twist, that is the story of this learned horse too!

I was also excited about the next story in the book, this time by Joan Maina, also from Kenya... it's the story of the race between the tortoise and the hare. In almost all African versions, the tortoise wins by a trick (the tortoise is one of the great tricksters of Africa after all!), and that trick is almost always a substition-trick, where the friends and relatives of the tortoise conspire to fool the speedy animal, which might be a rabbit, a deer, etc. In this story, however, the tortoise uses a different trick! Just see what happens: The Tortoise and the Hare. (You can click on the image for a larger view.)

I also like the way that this race is a race between romantic rivals, which is a theme that is almost always part of the "so-and-so was my father's riding horse" type of story, but which is less common in the slow-animal-wins-race type of story. So much good stuff going on even in this very tiny story!

And then look: in another story from Kenya, this one told by Joseph Muchina, it's another race, and this time the rabbit is the one who catches a ride! You can see him on the back of the cheetah there. What a great example of how the characters and events of a story can mix-and-match, so that sometimes an animal like rabbit is the trickster, as in this story, and sometimes the rabbit is trick (as in the previous story): The Clever Rabbit.

And here's another story from Jane Gatto of Kenya (she told "The Learned Horse" story above)... this is a famous African folktale, and there are some fun details in here; I especially like the birds dragging away the mattress at the end, ha ha. If you were in Helen Nde's Twitter Space this past Friday, you heard a version of this story during that session (it's online at the Internet Archive too! Why Tortoise's Shell Is Cracked). Here's Jane Gatto's version: The Birds' Party.

There's another of my favorite folktales in here too: the famous trickster story of the ungrateful animal who wants to eat his rescuer... in this case, a lion who was trapped in a cave! The trickster who makes everything right in the end this time is the jackal: The Lion in the Cave. It's a story from Zimbabwe told by Cheniwe Susan Mataka. Here's the lion trapped in the cave, and the lion definitely does not look happy in there (the artist has drawn the lion with a mane, but in the story, the storyteller makes the lion a she-lion, a lioness):

Plus you've all been wondering about the hippos on the cover of the book, right? I'll finish up this week's blog post with a link to that hippo story and another illustration. I don't want to give away any details, but suffice to say: if you are get advice from a person with supernatural powers, do what they say! Or else! Here's the story: A Wicked Man, another story by Cheniwe Susan Mataka of Zimbabwe. Yes, the hippo is in a bathtub:

So, that's it for this week's book and remember: all these stories await you, and more, just a click away at the Internet Archive. Enjoy!

Horses and Tortoises and Rabbits and Elephants

and Birds and Hippos and Lions
and Sisters and Frogs and Dogs and Hares
and Jackals and Murder: Stories from Africa