African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Bobby and Sherry Norfolk

When I was posting about African folktales, I included a book by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk based on a wonderful Anansi story, with illustrations by Baird Hoffmire: Anansi and the Pot of Beans. For today's post, I want to follow up on that with three more books by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk, each based on Anansi stories, and all illustrated by Baird Hoffmire.

The first one is Anansi and the Tug o' War:

You'll recognize this as one of the most widespread African trickster tales, sometimes told about Anansi, or Rabbit, or Tortoise, and with various big animals being tricked into the tugging. In this case, the story is about Anansi tricking Elephant and Killer Whale, as you can see:

The next book is Anansi Goes to Lunch:

This is another famous Anansi story, which explains how "spider" got such a narrow waist... it's all from being greedy of course! In this version of the story, he is trying to attend all the different lunches that the animals invite him to. Here's zebra, for example:

And the last one is Anansi and Turtle Go to Dinner:

This is yet another famous trickster-versus-trickster African folktale type... yes, Anansi manages to trick Turtle, but you know that Turtle is going to get his revenge!

So, I'll be back with more about storytellers Bobby and Sherry Norfolk tomorrow (if you're curious, you can find out more now at Wikipedia); for now, enjoy the stories!

 Anansi and the Tug o' War

by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk

Anansi Goes to Lunch

by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk

Anansi and Turtle Go to Dinner

by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk

Africa at the Internet Archive: Anansi Books

For Week 23 (!) of the African folktales project I'll be focusing on stories from western Africa, and I'll start with three books about Anansi, the trickster spider. These are three Anansi classics, retelling some of the most famous of Anansi's adventures and tricks.

The first book is by Melinda Lilly: Spider and His Son Find Wisdom: An Akan Tale.

The illustrations are by the marvelous Charles Reasoner, whose distinctive style you might recognize from earlier posts, and you can see more blog posts about Melinda Lilly and Charles Reasoner; they are two of my favorites!

The second book is about greedy Anansi: Anansi and the Pot of Beans by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk:

The illustrations are by Baird Hoffmire, and Grandma Spider is one of the characters, as you can see here: 

The third book is a fascinating experiment in storytelling as illustrated by Janice Skivington: How Anansi Obtained the Sky God's Stories: An African Folktale from the Ashanti Tribe; the story text is by Donna Lanette Washington. 

In this book, the pages have illustrations only. There are no words, but you can find the text of the story on a single page in the back of the book. The idea is to use the illustrations as storytelling prompts, for parents or teachers or some older reader to engage interactively in telling the story with a young reader. So for example, here is Anansi bringing the snake to the Sky-God. Because I know this story very well (having read many different versions of it from many different sources), I know I would enjoy telling the story to someone with this beautiful art to prompt me:

In addition to the text of the book in the back, you can also find out more information about the storyteller and illustrator:

So, enjoy! And I'll be back with more stories from western Africa tomorrow, all just a click away, thanks to the Internet Archive.

Spider and His Son Find Wisdom:

An Akan Tale

by Melinda Lilly

 Anansi and the Pot of Beans

by Bobby and Sherry Norfolk

How Anansi Obtained the Sky God's Stories:

An African Folktale from the Ashanti Tribe

by Donna Lanette Washington and Janice Skivington