African Diaspora at Internet Archive: Black Folktales

After those two books from Richard Dorson, I wanted to share another "classic" book of African American folktales: Black Folktales by the great Julius Lester.

The stories are organized by themes: ORIGINS: How God Made the Butterflies ~ Why Apes Look Like People ~ Why Men Have to Work ~ How the Snake Got His Rattles ~ LOVE: The Girl With the Large Eyes ~ The Son of Kim-Ana-u-eze and the Daughter of the Sun and the Moon ~ Jack and the Devil's Daughter ~ HEROES: High John the Conqueror ~ Stagolee ~ PEOPLE: The Old Man Who Wouldn't Take Advice ~ People Who Could Fly ~ Keep on Stepping.

You might have already guessed from the cover that the illustrations are by the brilliant artist Tom Feelings! Here's his illustration for the story of God and the Snake:

And here's an illustration from the famous legend of the flying Africans:

You might remember Tom Feelings' work from this earlier post which featured two books of African folktales with his illustrations: When the Stones Were Soft by Eleanor Heady and Tales of Temba by Kathleen Arnott.

And of course this is not the first time I've written about Julius Lester before; back in May when I first started this project, I featured this book by Julius Lester: How Many Spots Does a Leopard Have?

And I'll be back with more from Julius Lester tomorrow! Meanwhile, enjoy this classic collection of African American folktales, and the illustrations too!

Black Folktales

by Julius Lester

Africa at the Internet Archive: Jambo, Sungura!

I wanted to start out Week 34 (!) with two books of stories from eastern Africa by Eleanor Heady: Jambo, Sungura! Tales from East Africa and When the Stones Were Soft: East African Fireside Tales, both just a click away at the Internet Archive.

Heady traveled to Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania in the late 1950s with her husband, Harold Heady, a forester and ecologist. On those travels she collected stories from Swahili storytellers and later published three books based on those stories; the Internet Archive has two of them (and if they acquire the third, Safiri the Singer, I'll be sure to update this blog post).

The illustrations for Jambo, Sungura! are by Robert Frankenberg. 

The illustrations for When the Stones Were Soft are by Tom Feelings; these come from a pair of stories about why dogs came to live with men, and why cats chose to live with women:

You might remember his work from an earlier blog post; he did the beautiful artwork for Arnott's Tales of Temba.

He also illustrated these two beautiful books about Swahili words and numbers written by his wife, Muriel Feelings: Jambo Means Hello: A Swahili Alphabet Book and Moja Means One: A Swahili Counting Book.

You can find out more about Feelings in this Wikipedia article; here's a picture of him at work in his studio; he's one of my favorite illustrators. 

Enjoy! So much goodness inspired by the stories of eastern Africa awaits you:

Jambo, Sungura!

Tales from East Africa

by Eleanor Heady 

When the Stones Were Soft:

East African Fireside Tales by Eleanor Heady

Africa at the Internet Archive: Tales of Temba

Following up on yesterday's post about Bantu stories from Botswana, I wanted to share this book of Bantu stories by Kathleen Arnott: Tales of Temba: Traditional African Stories, just a click away at Internet Archive.

This is a really interesting storytelling experiment, as Arnott explains: "All these stories are retold folk tales of the Bantu-speaking peoples of Africa. The name of the hero has been changed to Temba in each case, and the stories have been arranged in a sequence which tells of his adventures from babyhood to manhood."

The illustrations are by Tom Feelings, and they are very nicely done. Here, for example, is the illustration for the story of "The Hyena's Egg":

This shows grandfather, a storyteller:

Arnott, both in 1914, was a missionary in Nigeria from 1939 until 1951. There she met and married a scholar of African languages who later became a professor of West African languages at London University. Living in England, Arnott began her career as a writer. She wrote primarily about Africa, but I also wanted to mention an anthology by Kathleen Arnott that you can also find at Internet Archive: Animal Folk Tales around the World. 

So, if you are in the mood for stories (I'm always in the mood for stories), these books by Kathleen Arnott await you, and I'll be back tomorrow with more stories from southern Africa.

Tales of Temba:

Traditional African Stories

by Kathleen Arnott