Anansi the Spider: a tale from the Ashanti

By Gerald McDermott

This book is a great way to introduce mythology into the classroom.  Almost every child knows at least a little about Greek gods or traditional Native American folklore, but it is rarer to come by students who know more about the mythology and folklore of other cultures (that is, of course, unless they come from those cultures).  This is the tale of Anansi the Spider, a folk-hero to the Ashanti people of Ghana, West Africa.  You'll have to read the book to find out all of the details, but it is a folk tale of how the moon came to be in the night sky.  It uses fairly basic language that would be easy for younger readers to understand, but one of the things I really like about it is that the prologue uses very rich and discriptive language to explain a bit about the Anani and the Ashanti people.  For younger readers, this would have to be read to them, but I really believe that it is important for early readers to be exposed to more complex language, since it helps with vocabulary and meaning construction.  And more importantly than that, it explains the Ashanti culture in such a beautiful form that could not be properly conveyed if it were simplified into "easy" reading.

I also really like the illustrations to this book, because I think they visually express a lot about the culture beyond just learning about the Ashanti and reading the folktale.  Their bold and "tribalistic" images tell us a lot about traditional art forms in that culture.  Overall this book offers a very nice package of information about the Ashanti culture: the folk story, background information about the culture, and visual representations of their art.  I think this would be a really great book to use in a larger unit about folklore and how it is carried on and conveyed in cultures around the world.