That Anansi is such a scoundral!!

After boring into one of Elephants melons, he eats himself too big to get out!! So, Anansi waits to get thing again...Only, he's bored! So he decides to amuse himself at Elephant's expense... and Hippo's...and Warthog's...Well, you get the idea.

This is a cute story about a trickster spider. Janet Stevens' illustrations are, as always, excellent. Anansi is not just a regular spider. Stevens gives him expressions and a personality. You wind up laughing with Anansi's pranks. Very well done!

I would definitly recommend this book. I read it to a group of young school age kids - 5-9. They could kinda tell where the story was going, but were more than willing to sit for the ride.

My 5 year old son LOVED the mischief Anansi got into and understood the lessons that were being taught. It is written in a way that younger kids can understand and the illustrations are great!

Anansi the spider bores his way into one of Elephant's melons and thus begins the great trickery of some of the greatest animals in the Animal Kingdom. I used this book with the second grade class and we loved the human characteristics of the animals and all the funny things Anansi says while he is in the melon. It is a great book to act out in the puppet theater and we had great fun taking on the roles of the elephant, monkey, spider and other surprised and astonished animals.

I had the blessed chance to meet Diane Skafte and found her to be such a warm and spiritual woman. She has the air of some ancient prophetess herself; which made her book all the better. The best parts of this book is Skafte's imagining of what an ancient scene would look like (for example--what a petioner to the Oracle might think or experience before, during, and after their oracular experience). She helped me see that God and the "gods" speak to us all the time through various means. The only thing keeping me from giving her book the full 5 stars, is it begins to bog down toward the end as she gets muddled in left-wing environmentalism. But overall, a good book.

This is a wise and luminous book. The author, an expert on the ancient history and lore of oracles, is also a most engaging writer, a skilled psychotherapist, and an extraordinary woman who knows firsthand the mysterious realms of which she writes. She writes with grace, providing suitable warnings of potential pitfalls but, overall, creating a friendly, respectful atmosphere in which one feels safe to explore these deeply sacred realms. For many generations, oracular images and insights were simply an accepted part of our journey as humans. Dr. Dianne Skafte restores to us the wonder of that numinous connection.

Marvelous book--highly recommended. Deftly avoiding the extremes of either sterile skepticism or superstition, Dr. Skafte makes her case for the value of oracular consciousness, a capacity we all share. A while back I went to a lecture given by her to the Jung Society of Claremont; asking us to visualize why we'd come, she distributed envelopes at random to the audience. Introverted Steppenwolf that I was, I'd come to be in the presence of "my kind," the folks who concern themselves with "the deep stuff," and to explore whether I should "raise my voice"--I actually thought of it in those words--and contribute more to my chosen field of endeavor, that of psychology, depth psychology in particular. I was therefore gratified (but not shocked: the Tarot and I Ching are old friends of mine) to draw forth from my envelope a highly appropriate image: a howling wolf. The accompanying Commentary read, in part: "Wolves are deeply bonded to their own kind...Don't go it alone in this matter. Something calls out for connection. Answer in kind, and you will be answered." -- Craig Chalquist, M.S. (designer of Cain's Self-Exploration Site)