Summary:

This is a fun chapter book that is a collection of old tales about animals in Africa based on real African folktales. The book is comprised of eighteen different folktales, each one being about different animals or even one animal. Each story offers a little bit of humor and wisdom and a little insight into African culture and beliefs. They are a collection of stories that have been passed down from generations in the African culture through parents telling them to their children to teach moral lessons. Many of the stories portray animals and humans as living in a world as one, doing similar tasks such as caring for their families, homes and crops, and statues in the community. The stories even portray certain morals, beliefs and culture of many Africans in histories past.

Comments (opinions/arguments):

I really enjoyed this book because it is unlike anything I have ever read. I really liked the different stories that reflected another culture because it’s very rare as an American child to be told folktales from another country such as Africa. It’s fun to think about American culture folktales about princes and princesses and get to compare them to African ones about wild and crazy animals living among humans. The stories themselves were very interesting and each offered a different moral lesson that I found could be relevant to any child no matter what country or culture they come from. I also really enjoyed the illustrations because some animals were hard to imagine and the pictures help you to really grasp a sense of how other people portrayed them to look like. I also liked that each story incorporated at least a couple different pictures. The central messages of most of the stories pertained to daily life and how greed and vanity are usually looked down upon, where as having mite and bravery are praised. They also focus on teaching children that small creatures can do just as well if not better than large creatures. It shows them that size doesn't matter in the real world and no matter how big or small you are that you shouldn't be intimidated by anyone else. This can be a comforting thought to small children and make them more confident in the real world. ( )

These are wonderful tales of animals in Africa based on real african folk tales. ( )