Brother Anansi and the Cattle Ranch (Readalong) [Audio Cassette]

James De Sauza (Author), Anna Olivarez (Editor), Harriet Rohmer (Designer)

Book Description

Age Level: 4 and up | Series: Readalong

A bilingual folk tale in which Brother Anansi persuades Brother Tiger to go into the cattle-raising business.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Spanish --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Children's Book Press (CA); Har/Cas edition (December 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892390638
• ISBN-13: 978-0892390632
• Product Dimensions: 13.9 x 8.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,974,131 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mischievous Tricksters ..., January 27, 2011

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: El Hermano Anansi y El Rancho de Ganado / Brother Anansi and the Cattle Ranch (Hardcover)

... have had a place in the literature, oral and written, of people of all times and places: Coyote and Raven for Native Americans, Norse Loki, Monkey in China, and Anansi the Spider, originally from Ashanti folklore of West Africa but transported in the slave ships to the Caribbean and to the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua, where this story was collected. Like those other trickster, Anansi can be helpful or destructive, benevolent or malevolent. In this bi-lingual folk tale, Anansi deliberately sets out to 'get the better' of Brother Tiger, who has won money in the lottery. Anansi persuades Tiger to invest in a cattle ranch, from which they will both profit, For a while, the partners share equitably, each living with his family on opposite sides of a river. Eventually, however, Anansi decides that it's time to display his cleverness and cheat the gullible Tiger ...

I'd have to dredge up my anthropology and Jungian psychology notes from college to try to explain why these stories about sly, amoral tricksters are so universal and perennial. I might have trouble convincing parents in my community that such stories are 'healthy' for small children. Honestly, I'm not sure they are, though perhaps they were cautionary for people in less complex societies than ours. This book seems to me unapologetically sinister, both the text and the pictures, though Anansi's con-game is amusingly clever and Tiger accepts his victimization in good humor, as par for the course. Perhaps my voice revealed my discomfort when I read this book to my little son; in any case, he didn't seem to like it and never chose it to be read again. That's why it gets only three stars here. Reading Spanish books to my son wasn't about 'teaching' the language; it was about sharing our responses to stories in either Spanish or English. If a parent and a child have nothing much to say to each other, two languages are no better than one.