The Many tales of the Tricksters: A Celebration of African Folklore

On this last day of Black History Month I thought of this wonderful children's book of outstanding stories of African folklore. The stories consist of taking animals brought to us in a most witty, and humorous way. I visited the library some time ago, and I found an interesting book of African, African American, and West Indian culture. It is Virgina Hamilton’s children's book entitled "A Ring of Tricksters: Animal Tales from America, the West Indies and Africa."

After reading this wonderfully written children’s book. I found the anthologies of stories to be witty, funny, charming, and eloquently executed. Overall, Ms. Hamilton has published an outstanding piece of literature here.


The stories of the trickster are well-developed stories of wisdom, and trickery, leaving the young reader with heartfelt thoughts of wits, humor, a good sense of morality, and laughter. Tales of the trickster are emanated from African culture, they are fables and allegories of wise insects, and animals depicted as human beings that outsmart and often take advantage of the very foolish, and their adversaries. The famed stories of Anansi, the spider and Bruh Rabbit are a splendid series of African and African American cultural heroes of folklore.

As previously mentioned Virgina Hamilton is the author of "A Ring of Tricksters: Animal Tales from America, the West Indies, and Africa." The illustrator is Barry Moser. The illustrations are wonderfully drawn with pen and ink, and painted with watercolor and gauche. The colors are brilliant earth tones of green, brown, purple, cadmium yellow, orange, red, and gray on white backgrounds. There are 111 pages in this book and 13 delightful tales of the Trickster.

The Story

"The Cat and the Rat"

The cat and the rat is the story of two friends that find a piece of cheese to share, but these two guys can’t decide who should get the bigger piece of cheese. They called on Bruh fox to judge and help them decide which one will get the bigger piece. Bruh fox’s decision wasn’t easy so he brought his scale and weighed the cheese, but according to the fox the cheese didn’t weigh evenly so he took a small piece for himself and told his friends “now the cheese weighs much better.” 


After the fox weighed the cheese and took a small piece for himself the cat and the rat watched fox lean his head back and forth, and show his teeth as he weighed the cheese again cutting a bigger piece for himself and putting the small piece back on top of the cheese the rat and the cat brought him. The rat asked the fox what are you doing? the fox told the cat that this cheese doesn’t weigh in right. The fox then told the cat and the rat that the cheese is now weighing in right after cutting an even bigger piece for himself. The cat questioned and challenged the fox. When Bruh cat and Bruh rat challenged the fox, the fox became angry and growled at Bruh rat and cat. The fox then lunged at them, scaring them, and causing them to run away, leaving their cheese with this “slippery” fox.
 

In this story of the "Cat and the Rat" Bruh cat and rat learned something. They learned finders keepers losers, weepers. Never call in a bigger rogue to add, subtract and divide for you. There’s less honor among thieves.


Contents of Book


The Story Ring of Trickster Tales-A note from the Author 9
Tricksters-American 13
Buh Rabby and Bruh Gator 15
Buzzard and Wren Have a Race 25
The Cat and the Rat 33
Bruh Wolf and Bruh Rabbit Join Together 39
Tricksters- West Indian
The One, Anansi 47
Magic Anansi 53
Cunni Anansi Does Some Good 59
Tricksters - African 53
Cunnie Rabbit and Spider Make a Match 75
How Chameleon Became a Ride 85
Old Mister Turtle Gets a Whipping 94
The Animals Share 97
About the Tales 105

Final Thoughts


As you can see, this children's book is wonderfully comprised of an outstanding anthology of written tales of African folklore. Children at ages 8 to 13 will enjoy the many interesting tales of the trickster. I believe this book will be most beneficial for elementary, and junior high school teachers to have in their classroom libraries.
Author, Virgina Hamilton eloquently combines a wonderful diversity of cultural allegories of folklore leaving the reader with laughter, heartfelt lessons of morality, and wisdom. As for the font, it is bold and medium in size reading will be visually effective for the reader. Children will enjoy these stories visually for its cartoonish appearance  of talking animals, animals dressed as human beings, and their depicted slyness of wit, charm, and funny tales of deception.


"A Ring of Tricksters Animal Tales from America, the West Indies, and Africa"
Fiction
ISBN 0-5904737-3
Published 1997