bilbopooh's Full Review: Gail E. Haley - A Story, a Story: An African Tale
When I was younger, I used to watch Reading Rainbow regularly, so when I checked Gail E. Haley's A Story A Story out of the library, it wasn't long before I recognized it as something I had seen on LeVar Burton's literacy-fostering program. With a bit of investigation, I discovered that this hadn't been one of the stories read aloud, but it was recommended by one of the children in the "Don't take my word for it..." segment. The story that was read in that episode was Verna Aardema's Bringing the Rain to the Kapiti Plain, another African tale, this one a progressive poem about a boy who relieves a deadly drought. I can still hear the reading of that story in my head, so I know I've encountered A Story A Story before on that very episode.
Like many Caldecott-winning books, it is based on a folktale. This one is from Africa and concerns the origin of spider stories, which focus on a small or weak individual who defeats his enemies through his superior wits. In this tale, Ananse, the very old, very frail Spider Man, who is able to spin webs with his hands, climbs up on a web ladder of his own making to see Nyame, the Sky God, and request all of the stories that he possesses. So Nyame laughingly sets him the task of capturing a leopard, a hornet and an elusive fairy. He never expects the old man to deliver. But this man is determined!
This story reminds me a bit of Liza Lou and the Yeller Belly Swamp, a story by Mercer Mayer in which a little girl must outwit a series of monsters. No one is granting her grand request for doing so, but usually she tricks the monsters into doing something for her before they take off running into the jungle. Only one of the three creatures Ananse delivers to Nyame directly threaten him, but all are dangerous, so tangling with them takes quite a lot of bravery.
The writing style in this book is unusual, full of African words like Osebo (the leopard), Mmboro (the hornet) and Mmoatia (the fairy). Moreover, certain African storytelling conventions are used, most notably the repetition of phrases in order to strengthen their meaning. The illustrations, which use bold colors and thick outlines, making each object stand out clearly, have a highly stylized look to them.
If you are a fan of Spider Stories specifically or their counterparts in other folktale traditions, check out A Story A Story and marvel at the daring feats of surprisingly capable Ananse.
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