Africa at the Internet Archive: Cameroon and Nigeria

I have two beautiful children's books to share today, both inspired by traditional stories from western Africa, and both just a click away at the Internet Archive!

The first is Sense Pass King: A Story from Cameroon by Katrin Tchana.

The title itself is a great excuse to talk with students about the many varieties of English in Africa, and the importance of African language heritage in varieties of American English too, like AAVE and Gullah (I'll have more to say about that when I start writing about African American resources at the Internet Archive in February). The story is full of adventure; page by page, you get to see the heroine come into her own powers, surpassing the king.

The illustrations are by Trina Schart Hyman. This illustration shows the story's heroine with her animal helpers:

Tchana and Hyman have collaborated on other books. One of those, The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women, contains three different folktales from African (Egypt, Gambia, and Cameroon); here is an illustration for "The Marriage of Two Masters" (Gambia):

Another one of their books you can find at the Internet Archive is Changing Woman and Her Sister: Stories of Goddesses from Around the World, which includes two goddess from Africa: Isis (Egypt) and Mawu (Fon people of Benin). Here is Mawu:

And here is the frontispiece of the book; it shows "The Mother, who is the source of all goddess stories."

The second African folktale I want to feature today is In the Rainfield: Who Is the Greatest? by Isaac Olaleye.

Isaac Olaleye is a Nigerian writer, now residing in California (he's in his 80s, but I believe he is still with us!). Olaleye is also the author of fictional stories set in Africa, including Lake of the Big Snake: An African Rain Forest Adventure, Bitter Bananas, and Bikes for Rent!

The illustrations for this book are by Ann Grifalconi, a writer and artist that I've featured previously: Village of Round and Square Houses. The story is about the struggle among Wind, Fire, and Rain to determine who is the greatest of the three, and here's her rendering of the presence of fire in a gorgeous two-page spread:

And here is her rendering of Rain: wow!

So, children's books like these that develop a single story with vivid words and beautiful pictures are a great way to bring African folktales to life in your imagination... and you will find many more such children's books at the Internet Archive, with stories not just from Africa but from all around the world.

Sense Pass King: A Story from Cameroon

by Katrin Tchana

In the Rainfield: Who Is the Greatest?

by Isaac Olaleye

Africa at the Internet Archive: Village of Round and Square Houses

The post from yesterday was all about Caldecott winners, and I've got another Caldecott Medal book for today: The Village of Round and Square Houses, written and illustrated by Ann Grifalconi, which won Caldecott Honors in 1987:

The story was inspired by a trip Grifalconi made to Cameroon and a folktale that she heard in a village located in the foothills of one of the volcanoes of Cameroon; you can find out more about the Cameroon line of volcanoes at Wikipedia. 

The "story-within-the-story" of Grifalconi's book is about a volcanic eruption of long ago... and compare the 1986 disaster at Lake Nyos in the same region of Cameroon. In the village of Grifalconi's book, the people survived, but the village was changed forever:

Grifalconi wrote two more books about this same village: Darkness and the Butterfly and Osa's Pride, both of which are available at Internet Archive.

 
She also did the illustrations for James Berry's book, Don't Leave an Elephant to Go and Chase a Bird, which is based on an Anansi story from Ghana.

I really like the way Grifalconi has depicted Anansi in this book! He's not quite human but not exactly a spider either:

Ann Grifalconi was born in 1929, and died just last year, in 2020. You can find out more about her life and career at Wikipedia; here is her obituary in the New York Times. In addition to being an artist and writer, she was also a highly successful business woman and political activist; for example, she was a founding board member of New York Feminist Credit Union in the 1970s. I love her re-vision of Michelangelo: And God Created Woman in Her Own Image.

In this post, I've focused on Grifalconi's Africa-themed books, but she also wrote many other books, including some wonderful books on African American subjects; you can browse the Internet Archive for more:

So, welcome to the world of Grifalconi's art and her words; there is lots of enjoy and learn from here.

The Village of Round and Square Houses

by Ann Grifalconi