Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folktales

I flipped through this book to decide if I wanted to read it (despite a quote by Bill Cosby on the cover... yuck,) and the beginning of the book immediately hooked me. The first pages feature a map that marks which part of Africa each story comes from. The Table of Contents also indicates the origin of each story-- i.e.- "The Enchanting Song of the Magical Bird" (Tanzania). It also features some background on Nelson Mandela's life and his history with apartheid, as well as a Forward written by him, explaining that, "This collection offers a handful of beloved stories, morsels rich with the gritty essence of Africa, but in many instances universal in their portrayal of humanity, beasts, and the mystical."

As you read, each folktale has a show more small blurb that highlights the message, the origin, the recorder, and/or the illustrator. This helps the reader anticipate what the setting and the meaning might be before starting, especially for young readers. Some of these prefaces also note the evolution of these stories, including some elements that might be different in different versions of the story (like that the characters in one story might be a chameleon and a lizard OR a tick and a hare, depending on which retelling you hear.) Most of the stories are told through the perspectives of African animals, though there are also stories featuring humans and other characters, including the Moon as a character in "The Message"! A final element of the book that I loved was that it used traditional African language, lyrics, poetry, etc. throughout. "The Snake with Seven Heads" starts with "Sukela ngantsomi. Chosi." which means, "Once upon a time... Tell the story." and it ends with "Phela phela ngantsomi" or "The story is finished." show less

This audio anthology of folktales is one of the best things I've listened to all year. I really loved all the different narrators, and the plentiful music. I also liked that the stories didn't last too long, so if you zone out for a minute to pay attention to driving you don't have to wait very long to catch the beginning of a new story.

I found it really interesting how different the stories were from what I imagined "African folk tales" to be. There are slightly more modern ones and ones that are heavily Muslim - influenced, and ones that I could have sworn I'd heard before in a European context. Fascinating.

This is pretty much what the title says: a collection of African folktales. I listened to the audio.

I don't always do well with short stories, as I often find them too short to get really interested. Combine that with an audio, where it's easy to get distracted, and I really missed a lot. I did enjoy the stories that I managed to pay attention to the majority of. Two that stood out for me were about animals and the environment (which shouldn't be a surprise!).

What I particularly enjoyed about the audio was the music and songs that were added in. The songs were mostly part of the stories, but all the songs were replayed at the end, as well. The stories were all written (or rewritten) by different people and they were all read by show more someone different. I recognized the voices of Whoopi Goldberg and Alan Rickman, but the rest of the narrations were done by other actors, such as Matt Damon, Forest Whittaker, Gillian Anderson, Scarlet Johansson...). show less

Do not read this, listen to it.

Besides the veritable buffet of Hollywood A-listers from various ethnic backgrounds providing narrations, there's beautiful music and songs in the interludes between stories and in the stories themselves. I've derived much enjoyment from the imaginative and enthusiastic performances from the narrators, most of whom possess great skills with accents. Even if you don't recognise a couple of the narrators' names, odds are you'd recognise their faces.

Whoopi Goldberg and Hugh Jackman's performances were outstanding though most were above average.

Urban legends, origin stories, fables, parables, myths, magic, time travel, African versions of well-known fairy tales, clever and devious characters, and emotionally show more touching stories - what more could you want?

Well, the publisher has donated 100% of its takings from the audio to Nelson Mandela Children's Fund and Artists for New South Africa who work with children affected by HIV/AIDS.

Introduction - Desmond Tutu

★★★☆☆ The Ring of the King (Mythical African kingdom) - Alan Rickman
Slightly iffy narration. Very clever story. I laughed at the end.

★★★★☆ Asmodeus and the Bottler of Djinns (South African English) - Whoopi Goldberg
Excellent and highly enjoyable narration. Another clever story.

★★★★★ Mpipidi and the Motlopi Tree (Botswana) - Matt Damon
Beautiful singing. Heartwarming story of a boy who finds and takes care of an abandoned baby girl.

★★★☆☆ Natiki (Namaqualand, South Africa) - Parminder Nagra
An African version of Cinderella.

★★☆☆☆ The Mantis and the Moon (San, South Africa) - Forest Whitaker
A mantis tries to capture the moon.

★★☆☆☆ How Hlakanyana Outwitted the Monster (Nguni, South Africa) - Sean Hayes
How Hlakanyana outwitted the hare was more interesting than him outwitting the monster.

★★☆☆☆ The Message (Namibia) - Charlize Theron
Greed leads to the garbling of a message of comfort and hope into one that compounds grief and desolation.

★★★☆☆ The Wolf Queen (Cape Malay) - Benjamin Bratt
A girl requests a silver dress, then a gold one, then a diamond dress to put off having to reject the sultan's marriage proposal as she was already in love with another. She eventually shapeshifts with the help of a wolfskin.

★★★☆☆ The Snake Chief (West Africa/Zululand, South Africa) - Scarlet Johansson
Never make bargains you don't intend to fulfil, especially if it involves gifting a family member to a stranger, the snake. Luckily it was a Frog Prince story - the snake turns into a human because a virtuous girl had accepted him.

★★★★☆ King Lion's Gifts (Khoi, Southern Africa) - Ricardo Chavira
How the animals came to look and sound the way they do. The King Lion bestowed gifts such as suits and laughs upon them.

★★☆☆☆ Words As Sweet As Honey from Sankhambi (Venda, South Africa) - Debra Messing
How monkeys gained their muscular physique.

★★★☆☆ Sakunaka, the Handsome Young Man (Zimbabwe) - LeTanya Richardson Jackson
Great narrator. A selfish mother depriving her son of a wife for fear of losing him to another woman. Sad that the mother had to die. Why couldn't she live with or near her son after he'd married?

★★★★☆ Wolf and Jackal and the Barrel of Butter (Cape Dutch) - Hugh Jackman
Awesome narration. Poor wolf didn't know he'd been hoodwinked by the Jackal.

★★★★☆ The Guardian of the Pool (Central Africa/Zululand, South Africa) - Gillian Anderson
A daughter uses her mother's multiple sacrifices to keep her child alive to give her the strength to take a risk to save her mother's life. Another Frog Prince story.

★★★☆☆ Sannie Langtand and the Visitor (South African English) - C.C.H. Pounder
Excellent narration. Time travel. Dragonflight. Flying carpets.

★★★★☆ The Sultan's Daughter (Cape Malay) - Blair Underwood
Excellent narrator. Lovely story and moral; doing a kindness when there is no chance of reward.

★★★☆☆ Van Hunks and the Devil (Cape Dutch) - LeVar Burton
Urban legend explaining why there's smoke around Table Mountain.

★★☆☆☆ The Clever Snake Charmer (Morocco) - Samuel L. Jackson
Great narration. Not as clever as I'd hoped, except for the tiny donkey. He just gives vague answers to riddles and questions posed by the king.

★★☆☆☆ The Enchanting Song of the Magical Bird (Tanzania) - Jurnee Smullett
Children sometimes see and hear truths where adults hear only lies.

★★☆☆☆ The Hare and the Tree Spirit (Xhosa, South Africa) - Sophie Okenado
A girl is struck dumb after unknowingly she was cursed by an old woman who'd tripped over the girl's rubbish. A hare hoodwinks a man into providing him fresh green meals, until he feels guilty and makes good on the deal he made by helping the girl regain her voice.

★★★★☆ The Mother Who Turned to Dust (Malawi) - Helen Mirren
A unique human origin story.

★★★★☆ Fesito Goes to Market (Uganda) - Don Cheadle
Telling the difference between those who take advantage of you and those who genuinely need help, and overcoming great difficulty to succeed. Great narration.

Niggling downsides to the audio are: narrators are not introduced nor is the origin of the each tale, the stories are in a radically different order to the paperback and not all of the stories in the paperback are bundled into the audio. Ten are missing, five of which can be found on Audible for which I paid an extra £7:

★★★★☆ The Cat Who Came Indoors (Zimbabwe) - Helen Mirren
Even if you're not a cat lover, you'll like this origin story of the cat-human relationship.

★★★★☆ The Lion, the Hare, and the Hyena (Kenya) - Alan Rickman
Don't try to break up a relationship in order to befriend one of your victims, it could turn out badly for you.

★★★☆☆ Spider and the Crows (Nigeria) - Don Cheadle
Greed can make friends into enemies and leave you rich but without allies.

★★★☆☆ Mmadipetsane (Lesotho) - Alfre Woodard
Excellent narration. A disobedient girl dances with danger by encroaching on a monster's territory despite warnings from her mother, until her luck runs out.

★☆☆☆☆ The Cloud Princess (Swaziland) - Matt Damon
Stockholm Syndrome. Princess wants to marry her captor. He follows her back to her kingdom where the king tries several times to have him murdered until he decides to return to his home. The princess follows and their gifted with a village of people who worship them.

The others found only in the paperback are:

➛ The Great Thirst (San, South Africa)
➛ Mmutla and Phiri (Botswana)
➛ Kamiyo of the River (Transkei, South Africa)
➛ The Snake with the Seven Heads (Xhosa, South Africa)
➛ The Hare's Revenge (Zambia)

*Read as part of The Dead Writers Society's Around the World challenge. show less

After learning about Nelson Mandela it would be interesting to bring in this book to share with children. It includes amazing African folktales with lions, snakes and tricksters. It was amazing to realize that folktales that are told really do include the environment around them. Rarely do African folktales include princesses. Most of them talk about loins and snakes.

Narrated by celebrities. How appropriate to be listening to this while the World Cup is going on in South Africa. I don't seem to do well listening to short stories because sometimes my mind would drift and I would have to listen to it again. But in general, the celebrity readers (Alan Rickman, Charlize Theron, Samuel Jackson, Whoopi Goldberg among many) seem to enjoy their presentations and make the stories come alive. The audio ends with full versions of the songs that appear in some of the stories.

I purchased this audiobook for my university library's collection because it won Audie Awards in 2010 for Audiobook of the Year and for Multi-Voiced Performance.  I've grown to really like multi-voiced audiobooks, so I figured this audiobook would be a winner all the way around, especially since I was looking for something short before starting a longer book for an upcoming day with six hours of driving.

Unfortunately, I was somewhat disappointed in this book - mostly because of irritations in the audio quality.  The 22 folktales are read by various celebrities, and some readers are better than others.  A number of them have a very annoying quirk of letting their voices drop to a whisper in some parts and boom out in others, which show more doesn't always work well in an automobile when road noise competes.  I had the same issue with the musical interludes - while the songs are great for providing a taste of the different musical styles in Africa, some are played at ear-bursting volume. It's also difficult, with the package design, to read the names of some of the narrators and titles of some of the stories, because the listings are in small print and are placed BEHIND the plastic holders for the relevant CDs.

There is a PDF available on the third disc which has a map indicating where each tale originated.  There's also a brief description of each tale and its background, along with an illustration, followed by a section on the authors (which in the case of the traditional literature tales, would be retellers).  The PDF also has the website for the audiobook, which includes extensive biographies of each of the celebrity narrators, as well as some comprehension quizzes, discussion questions, and coloring pages that can be downloaded (since this is supposedly an audiobook for children, although I think it's more appropriate for older children and adults).  A second PDF has track listings, song lyrics (five of the interlude songs are played in full on the last CD), and a helpful glossary, while a third PDF has complete track information.

I was surprised to learn that five additional tales (which apparently are in the print version of this book) are available for download by separate purchase.  At $2.27 each at Audible, I passed.

My gripes aside -  there are some very good stories in this audiobook, and most of the celebrities read them with good emoting.  My favorite was "King Lion's Gifts," a pourquoi tale that explains why certain animals look or sound the way they do.  Never heard of the reader of this tale - Ricardo Chavira - but he was quite good, especially at expressing Lion's aggravation with the other animals.  There are also fables, myths, African versions of classic folktales, literary fairy tales, and a number of trickster stories on the three discs.

The celebrity narrators all donated their time, and the audiobook publisher (Hachette Audio) donated all its profits from its sales to ANSA (Artists for a New South Africa), which in turn donated 20% to the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund.  So, definitely worth a listen.

© Amanda Pape - 2018

[This audiobook was borrowed from and returned to my university library.] show less