Suitabook
How Stories Came to People
Ghanaian folktale
African Storybook: original book (opens in a new tab)CC BY 4.0Read Free: How Stories Came to People on African Storybook (opens in a new tab)
Credits & Licence
Originally published by African Storybook Initiative.
Author - Ghanaian folktale Illustration - Wiehan de Jager Language - English Level - Read aloud © African Storybook Initiative 2014 Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 Source www.africanstorybook.org Original source
author: Ghanaian folktale. illustrator: Wiehan de Jager.
Cover resized and converted to WebP; story unchanged. Suitabook’s guidance is a separate analysis.
Original Book on African Storybook: How Stories Came to People (opens in a new tab)- Reading
- Read the repeated challenges aloud, pausing to let the child predict Anansi’s next plan. At the animal-capture scenes, invite them to notice how the illustrations show each creature reacting.
- Themes
- Stories as something to share: Nyame keeps stories locked away; after Anansi obtains them, he shares them with his wife, animals and people. The closing line explicitly favours telling stories over keeping them locked away.
- Cleverness and trickery: Anansi uses concealed traps and misleading explanations to capture the animals Nyame demands. The plans succeed, but success alone does not establish how the tale judges the deception or its effects on the animals.
- Co-operation: When Anansi cannot think of a plan for the final animal, he asks his wife, whose idea they carry out together. Her contribution is explicit, but the story does not develop their partnership beyond this task.
- Worth knowing
- The plans involve trapping animals, including a leopard in a pit, hornets in a gourd and a snake tied to a stick; the pictures show their distress.