The Adventures of Spider by Joyce Cooper Arkhurst Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

These are West African Folktales.

This book is great. I enjoyed reading it. It does have what I think would be the feel of listening to someone tell a few West African Folktales. I like it that they say spider is “just like a naughty little boy.” Spider is clever, mischievous, greedy, loves to eat, hates to work, and he plays a lot of tricks. It as the introduction says can be like us or like me.

These are fun stories. Each one teaches a lesson. I sat and read this book straight through. They are fun tales.

The pictures are fun. They are so appropriate for the subject. They remind me of what I think a folktale from West Africa would look like. He uses only a few colors on some. Those colors repeat on different picture pages. I like the colors and how they are dispersed. I also like that every once in a while they throw in a drawing without any color.