Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti

Rating

On the plus side, we got a moon out of it.

It's an Ashanti folk tale from Ghana in Africa. Basically, Anansi has six children, each of whom has an overly specific skill. Then he gets into danger, and their skills are all conveniently highly useful. After they save him, he finds a glowing globe in the forest and wants to give it to whichever one helped him the most, but can't choose. So he gives it to the God of All Things, who puts it in the sky, where it becomes the moon.

It's very common in fables and myths, that idea of a set number of people with specific talents that all come in handy in a very contrived situation. It happens in The Seven Simeons, and it happens in The Five Chinese Brothers. Pretty standard. Nothing amazing, nothing bad.

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Publication Year
1972
Age Range
4-7
Number of Pages
35
Number of words on a typical page
25