ABC 39. Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears

Not it's time for the first #AnansiBookClub book of March! You can see the March Calendar at the website, plus all the Book Club posts here at the blog. The book is a double-plus for me: it's a chain tale (also known as a cumulative tale), which is my favorite folktale genre, and there is art by the Leo and Diane Dillon! The book is Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: A West African Tale by Verna Aardema.

As you can see from the sticker on the cover, the book's illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon won a Caldecott Medal. 

There's even a cartoon version, and it's available at the Internet Archive. It's very funky 1970s animation, back before the digital age!

I'll update this post throughout the week with information about the author and about the illustrators, along with information about other chain tales like this one. Aardema cites an acquaintance, Marcia Vanduinen, as the source for the story; she does not provide any bibliography or information about how she might have changed the story as she retold it.

So, the chain in Aardema's book goes like this: Mosquito - Iguana - Python - Rabbit - Crow - Monkey - Owl, and when owl refused to hoot for the sun to come, the night went on and on which led to a crisis for all the animals. King Lion then worked his way back down the chain of events to find out that Mosquito was the cause of all the trouble.

I personally love stories like this, and you can find these types of chain tales all over Africa; they are also very popular in India. You'll find them in other parts of the world too but it is my strong impression that the chain tales you find in other parts of the world got their start (by way of a chain of storytellers!) in either Africa or India.

For a chain similar to the one in Aardema's book, consider this story from Nigeria in Buchi Offodile's wonderful anthology of West African folktales: The Orphan Girl and Other Stories. The story is Why Mosquitoes Buzz. The chain in that story is clearly related to the version that Aardema heard from her friend: Mosquito - Man Tapping Wine - Machete - Man's Wife - Python - Rabbit - Guinea Fowl - Monkey - Branch - Chicken - Rooster. When Rooster doesn't crow, the sun doesn't come, leading to a crisis of unending night which prompts King Lion to summon all the animals before the god Agbara in order to find out who is the cause of all the trouble. 

In both Aardema's version and in Offodile's version, the story is told in a cumulative style, with the whole chain being reproduced step by step during the trial. To me, that is the most fun type of chain tale!  Here is how the final accumulation goes in Aardema's version:

And here is the final cumulative version in Offodile's version; notice that the inanimate objects, Machete and Branch, get their own lines in the accumulation, unlike Aardema's version which has only the animal actors.

And by a very nice coincidence, in the book we read at the end of February for Anansi Book Club, African Animal Tales by Rogério Andrade Barbosa, there is a chain tale from Guinea-Bissau that is similar to this one, but also different, as you can tell right away from the title: The Considerate Fly. This chain starts with a Fly who notices a Snake coiled around a piece of firewood. She warns the Snake to slither away before the people notice her and kill her. The Snake flees into a Mouse hole, scaring the Mouse who runs between the legs of a Pheasant who shrieks and wakes a sleeping Monkey who falls onto the head of an Elephant, causing her to run and trample a Bird's nest in the grass, who angrily sets fire to the grass, which burns the feet of a passing Antelope, who runs to the water to cool his feet and startles the Maidens bathing in the water who complain to the Chief. The Chief then works backwards: Maidens to Antelope to Bird to Elephant to Monkey to Pheasant to Mouse to Snake to Fly. Because the Fly's intentions were good, the Chief does not punish her. The artwork for this book is by Ciça Fittipaldi, and here you can see the Antelope with the burning feet who startles the bathing Maidens:

And back to Aardema's book, I hope you will enjoy the great art by the Dillons: there are LOTS of characters in the chain of events leading from the Mosquito to the endless night, and the Dillons pack the pages with illustrations of all the different characters, as you can see in this two-page spread with the dark background because it is endless night, all because of that Mosquito:

And see how the Iguana has sticks in his ears? That's because he doesn't want to listen to the Mosquito's foolishness... and that is just how all the trouble begins.

As I mentioned above, the Dillons won a Caldecott medal for this book, and they won the Caldecott again the very next year for Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions, for which Margaret Musgrove wrote the text. 

The Dillons also collaborated with Verna Aardema on this lovely book of stories from southern Africa: Behind the Back of the Mountain: Black Folktales from Southern Africa.

To finish up this week's updates, I wanted to mention another book by Verna Aardema which also features a chain tale: Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain. This is a story from the Nandi people of Kenya, and here you can see the source story that Aardema started from. To adapt the story for a children's audience in English, Aardema has taken the rhyming style of "The House That Jack Built" (which is probably the most famous chain tale in English) and adapted the Nandi story to go with that rhyming style, building the chain tale around a young cowherd. The result is very different from the structure of the original story, so it's useful to be able to compare the actual source Aardema worked with to see the changes she made.

And yes, ALL these books just a click away at the Internet Archive too, thanks to the power of Controlled Digital Lending: enjoy!

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears:

A West African Tale

by Verna Aardema.