Reviewer Maria Savva : Maria is a lawyer and writer from the UK. She has published four novels and three collections of short stories and she is currently editing her fifth novel. She is also a resident author/moderator for BestsellerBound.com. You can find out more about Maria by following on her WEBSITE.
Author: Innocent
Emechete
ISBN:978-1-4520-8189-2
Publisher: Authorhouse
A collection of 16 stories featuring animals as the main characters. It is advertised as a children’s book, but I have a few reservations about that.
The author has
explained in the introduction to the book that these are traditional
African animal stories told to him by his father, and they contain
moral messages in the hope of preparing children for the ‘real
world’.
The sixteen stories contain various animals as lead
characters, but the main character Mazi Mbe (Mr. Tortoise) seems to
have a role in most of the stories. Mazi Mbe is an odd
character. He is often described by the narrator as a character
who is not well liked by the other animals in the kingdom, and is
known for his deception and trickery; yet the animals seem to almost
revere him at times. Many of the other animals believe what he
says without question, trusting him easily, which doesn’t really
add up.
The author has explained
that this ‘ambiguity’ in Mazi Mbe’s character teaches children
that there are some people like that in the world, i.e. they will
appear to be trustworthy but will be deceptive. Personally, I
found Mazi Mbe’s character a bit confusing, and would worry that
this type of character could send mixed messages to children as to
what is right and what is wrong.
In my opinion, there is too much
violent imagery in this book for it to be classified as a children’s
book. Granted these stories may have been told to children
traditionally, and it is interesting as an adult to learn about
different cultures and how storytelling evolved, but I would not
personally recommend this book as a gift for children.
I think the book would be
of interest to students of literature and to people who are
interested in learning about the history of storytelling in different
cultures.
The thing that really lets
this book down is the lack of editing. The sentences are
longwinded, often making parts of the stories confusing. There
are quite a few instances where the author has used ‘his’ instead
of ‘her’ and ‘he’ instead of ‘she’ and vice versa.
The book is on the whole too wordy; the author could have cut the
word count of most of the stories by half and still said what he
wanted to say. Another thing that might have improved the book
would have been to have more of an order to the storytelling.
For example, Mazi Mbe dies in one of the stories, but then appears
again in some of the following stories. Also, in one story we
are told that Mazi Mbe has lost both of his parents, then in a story
following that we are told that his father is dead but his mother is
still alive. Furthermore, in the first story, when we are
introduced to Mazi Mbe for the first time, he doesn’t come across
as a particularly unlikeable character. It may have been better
to start the collection with a story where Mazi Mbe showed his true
colours, so that the reader would then know what sort of character he
is and be able to sympathise with the other animals more easily when
they plot against him.
The moral messages in the
book are difficult to follow, even as an adult. I am not sure
how a child would understand them. For example, Mazi Mbe cuts
off a lizard’s tail in one story as revenge for the lizard stealing
some salt from him, and the story seems to be saying that this
equates to the character ‘getting even’ with him. I’m not
sure that physical injury and theft are really the same thing.
To
conclude, this is a great book if you’re an adult interested in
learning about popular stories in different cultures. I would
not recommend it for children as it might give them nightmares!