The Baboons Who Went This Way And That Folktales From Africa

A man with a tree growing out of his head? A woman with children made of wax? A bird that can be milked? With more stories from his original celebration of African folktales, The Girl Who Married A Lion, let Alexander McCall Smith once again take you to a land where the bizarre is everyday and magic is real.

Though Africa is a huge continent filled with different cultures, African folktales share some characteristics. One is a love of nature, specifically animals. The other is a respect for cleverness. These two characteristics meet in the tales of Anansi the Spiderman and the Jackal. Both are tricksters who often get the best of their fellow beasts. Readers will love becoming acquainted with these two characters' exploits as well as other famous, engaging, and often funny African tales. Fact boxes and illustrations enhance each story.

An African fable about a baboon who, in an effort to protect himself from the sun, follows the foolish advice of a friendly chimpanzee. Provides a list for adults of storytelling activities.

Africa has a wonderfully rich store of folk tales that have been passed down from one generation to the next. There are stories about how the world came into being, stories that tell of the relationships between human beings and between man and his environment, and of the lessons to be learned from everyday experience. The tales are like the fairy talkes told all over the world, but they have a strong African flavour that is as real as the smell of rain on hot earth. The Best of African Folklore takes the reader into an enchanted world where animals can talk and humans are often changed into different forms, where magic is commonplace and reality is turned delightfully on its head. Despite numerous setbacks, things usually turn out all right in the end. Wicked and greedy people (and animals) come off worst and the good receive their just rewards. The gods are stern but fair, and every story has a moral for those who are wise enough to see it.

An old tortoise devises a plan to square things with a baboon who has tricked him.

The 27 stories collected from the Ndebele people of Zimbabwe demonstrate the wealth and variety of traditional African folk tales.

This collection of folktales from South Africa has been put together the author says, not for scholarship but for a love of the sunny country where he was born. Some stories originate from Dutch sources, and some have several versions. Most are tales told by the bushmen.

This handbook offers the most comprehensive, analytic, and multidisciplinary study of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the African Diaspora to date. Preeminent scholars Akintunde Akinyemi and Toyin Falola assemble a team of leading and rising stars across African Studies research to retrieve and renew the scholarship of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the Diaspora just as critical concerns about their survival are pushed to the forefront of the field. With five sections on the central themes within orality and folklore – including engagement ranging from popular culture to technology, methods to pedagogy – this handbook is an indispensable resource to scholars, students, and practitioners of oral traditions and folklore preservation alike. This definitive reference is the first to provide detailed, systematic discussion, and up-to-date analysis of African oral traditions and folklore.