A couple years ago, we reached out to Sindia Foster and the rest of the Elomwe team, asking if they had stories they would like us to make books about. The story they gave us was this traditional tale about a trickster chameleon and a hapless rabbit. Rabbits feature heavily in many stories from this area, usually as a mischievous character who gets what he deserves at the end of the story.
According to Little Zebra Books director, David Ker, “We don’t just choose stories that we like, but we actually ask the language projects that we are working with to give us stories that we can illustrate.” This value lets us make books that are familiar, relevant, and loved by the children who receive them. Both this story and the other Elomwe folktale about a man named Nakehi have been hugely popular with reading groups all over Mozambique. Because of their popularity, we’re hoping to produce sequels to both titles: another Nakehi story, and another Elomwe folktale about rabbit.
This book is also available on the African Storybook website.
You can find the English version here.
If you look at the English book’s information, you can see all the other languages it has been translated into under “Translations and Adaptations”.
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