This week I read, West African Folktales. I really enjoyed the stories of Anansi, the
trickster spider. In a lot of the
stories Anansi would trick other humans or animals in order to get what he
wanted. However, in some of the stories,
Anansi became very selfish. I thought it
was neat that the author of these tales used that selfish characteristic to
teach Anansi a lesson. Even though
Anansi was known for tricking people, his selfishness often caused him to be
tricked. My favorite story in the
reading was Thunder and Anansi. Anansi
happened to find a magical pot that would supply him endless food. His selfish character caused him to hide the
pot from his family who was starving.
When they found out, they tried to show him a lesson, which made the pot
melt away. Anansi then tried to trick
the man who gave him the pot into giving him something new. Instead of being tricked, the man tricked
Anansi. I am glad that Anansi was
tricked because it gave him an opportunity to learn from his selfishness. My least favorite story was, The Moon and theStars. This story was very hard for me
to follow. It contained a lot of
different characters and did not flow very well in my opinion. It began with Anansi and his son killing a
deer. Then a fire-breathing dragon came
into the story and captured them. They
escaped by building a ladder made of bones and then climbed to the Heavens and
then became the sun, moon, and stars.
When thinking of stories I do not put together these elements that were
used. However, it is an interesting take
on how the sun, moon, and stars appeared.
I think this unit would be a great unit for other readers to
choose. It consisted of many different
aspects and characters that provided me more knowledge with stories about
animals, tricksters, and humans. The
notes on the unit are also very helpful and I think the background is
interesting because the stories come from Ghana, which has several different
ethnic groups.
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