African Tales: The Lion’s Deceit

My kids have a special love for tales from Africa – South Africa in particular, because that’s where my dad has lived and worked – but they enjoy many different African tales.  We were recently sent a copy of The Lion’s Deceit by Mpho Otukile to review.

A lazy lion goes against his real nature by tricking other animals to get some food without hunting.  Will the lion get away with his plot?

In this story, the lazy lion decides to lay low in his den and send out word (via the fox) that he is sickly.  One by one, the animals come to visit the sick lion, draw closer as he moans and groans, and are snapped up to be his dinner.  Eventually, the jackal is the one who realizes that although there are plenty of prints leading up to the lion’s den… there aren’t any leading away from it!  He spreads word to the rest of the animals and the jig is up.  The lazy lion has to return to hunting!

My kids enjoyed the story quite a bit, and we had a nice time talking about the moral of the story, as they saw it.  (“You can’t get away with being lazy!”)  It also stirred up a renewed interest in African tales and we pulled out several of the other books on our shelves.  That led to a great afternoon of comparing the various stories and picking our favorites.  KarateKid especially loves the always-clever jackal, and loves that he’s featured in this story.

Now, I’ll be honest: The Lion’s Deceit is obviously published by a small publisher; the illustrations are done on a computer and are a little off-putting to me, and the words are printed in a white-and-orange font.  (You can preview two pages of The Lion’s Deceit here.) The book itself is physically hard to open all the way flat, and some of the illustrations and occasionally bits of text are hard to make out down in the spine.  Even though we enjoyed the story, it’s not a very pleasing book in a physical sense.

However, I do really support what the author is doing.  From the book:

Mpho Otukile comes from Botswana, in the Southern part of Africa where she grew up listening to stories told by the village elders at night while sitting around an open fire.  As much as she was entertained, these stories also instilled some moral lessons about life.

The author now lives in Winnipeg, Canada and is writing these stories to pass them to her daughter and other children.

I have several good friends (and family!) who are published authors or are trying to get published.  I would much rather see stories coming out in any form; a slender paperback with computer illustrations is better than not hearing the story at all.  Mpho Otukile founded a small publishing company, Village Life Books, just to get these stories out there, and I support her efforts!  From her website:

Storytelling in Africa is maintained by oral tradition. The stories play a very important role in the lives of the children. They help solve problems and teach moral values. Without grandparents and elders to tell the stories, the stories are often lost.  Village Life Books provides a means to preserve these stories in a modern way.

We will certainly keep The Lion’s Deceit in our collection of African tales.  I look forward to the next release from Village Life Books (The Elephant’s Pride in 2012).  I would encourage any of my friends who might enjoy this tale to support Ms. Otukile and independent publishing in general by purchasing the $9.99 book directly from her website or from Amazon.  You can also pick it up from CreateSpace, where you can use coupon code 2LU4EXJM to get 10% off.

This review was sponsored by MamaBuzz and Village Life Books, who provided me with a copy of The Lion’s Deceit to review.  Thanks!

Tags: africa, fables, kids' book review