Anansi crawls inside a melon and eats so much he's too fat to get out of it. He has a fun time tricking all the animals, even the king, into thinking the melon can talk.

Anansi crawls inside a melon and eats so much he's too fat to get out of it. He has a fun time tricking all the animals, even the king, into thinking the melon can talk.

Elephant works industriously in his garden while that trickster spider Anansi watches, yearning after the melons he is too lazy to cultivate himself. When Elephant goes inside for a rest, Anansi eats his way into the ripest melon, but gorges so much that he is too fat to get out again. Convincing Elephant that his voice is that of the melon, that the melon can in fact talk, the trickster is carried along to the king, with a growing procession of animals accompanying him on his journey. When his sarcasm earns the king's ire, the melon is smashed and Anansi released...

Anansi and the Talking Melon is the second picture-book about this famous West African trickster figure that I have read from author Eric A. Kimmel and illustrator Janet Stevens, following upon their Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock. It pairs an amusing cumulative tale with expressive artwork that perfectly captures the humor of the story. The ending here, in which Elephant vows never to listen to talking melons again, only for Anansi, hidden inside a banana he is eating, to commend his choice, had me laughing out loud. It was such a pleasant and amusing ending to the story that I raised my rating from three to four stars. My only criticism of the book, and it is the same I made for Kimmel and Stevens' earlier book, is that no source material is given for this retelling, something I really look for in folkloric works. Recommended to Anansi fans, and to folklore lovers in general. ( )

Anansi, the spider, has got some tricks up his sleeve when he decides to mess with an elephant one day. Anansi decided he was going to eat one of the elephants melons because they looked so good and he was too lazy to plant one of his own. However, after Anansi got into the melon he could not get out. Anansi tricked all of the others in town into thinking the elephant had a talking melon, but he was just having fun messing with everyone. This story was a great story to read, and students would probably get a good laugh out of it. This book could also open up discussions about right and wrong, and if the students thought what Anansi did was right or. wrong. Anansi never gets punished in the end, but maybe he should for the trick he played on everyone. Overall, it was a great book and I would absolutely read it to a class of students. ( )

The few Anansi folktales that I have read are some are the quirkiest books I’ve read in a while. This one is particular is fairly strange but nothing compared to the other I’m reviewing later. This is so great for younger readers for how differently these are retold. Anansi is a great character for younger kids to live through, especially considering how flawed he is as a person. He isn’t necessarily bad, but mischievous and kids would be able to tell that he isn’t the greatest role model. I would defiantly recommend this to children. ( )