“Stories can be told to entertain, instruct, remind, or just help communicate.”

Author: Donna L. Washington
Title: A Pride of African Tales
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004.

Grade Level: 2-5

Summary: A collection of six African Stories from Ghana, the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, and Cameroon told in the storytelling style.

Strengths: This collection offers a great diversity of stories from fables to trickster tales to cautionary tales. Each tale is vivid, exciting, and promotes some sort of moral solution to the problem. I truly enjoy the diversity of types of tales as well as where the stories originate from. The beautiful water color paintings truly help these African tales come to life.

Concerns: I think each story must be read and evaluated before being read to children, since all of the stories may not be appropriate for younger readers. While the children may enjoy the stories instances of animals eating other animals or humans as well as other situations that may cause confusion for young children are found in these stories so teachers, parents and librarians need to be aware of the stories before reading them to small children.

Classroom use: These stories would be a great introduction to storytelling, particularly African stories. It would be ideal for children to hear these stories in the storytelling technique, which help students truly appreciate these tales for how they were meant to be heard.

(image from Amazon.com)