Drawing on the rich vein of traditional African stories featuring the spider Ananse, Ghanaian author Adwoa Badoe and Malian illustrator Baba Wague Diakite bring young readers a marvelously witty and entertaining collection of ten tales about this legendary spider swindler. The tales deal with important issues that everyone faces justice, money, marriage, vanity, self-respect, and more but couch the heavy lessons in lively folktales. Ananse sometimes succeeds; other times he makes a fool of himself and is ashamed but never for long. Many elements of these stories can be found in other...

Baba Wague is only four years old when he is sent to the tiny Malian village of Kassar, West Africa, to be raised by his paternal grandparents, according to the family tradition. He is most unhappy about this at first, but under his grandmother s patient and wise tutelage, he comes to love his close-knit village community, as he listens to his grandmother s stories, learns about his own history and traditions, and experiences many hilarious and sobering adventures along the way. He learns how to catch a catfish with his bare hands, learns the true meaning of the appearance of a snake in the...