A poor man repeatedly loses his magic animals through the trickery of his friend.

Anansi the spider plans to trick Turtle into catching a fish for his dinner, but Turtle proves to be smarter and ends up with a free meal. Explains the origin of spider webs.

Includes four traditional tales told by the Hausa, Angolan, Masai, and Bushmen people of Africa.

Many African stories are called "Spider stories". This book is about how that came to be. And it tells that long, long ago there were no stories on earth for children to hear. All stories belonged to Nyame, the Sky god. Ananse, the Spider man, wanted to buy some of these stories, so he spun a web up to the sky and went to bargain with the Sky god. The price the Sky god asked was Osebo, the leopard-of-the-terrible-teeth, Mmboro the hornet who-stings-like-fire...

Have you heard the one about the skull who borrowed body parts to pass himself off as a complete human so he could trick the village beauty into marriage? Well, what about when Frog and Snake's daughters had a play date? Okay, okay. But surely you've heard the story about the crocodiles who held a vote on whether or not to eat a man that had saved one of their lives? NO? Wow. Have we got some stories for you.

Though delighted that an orphan boy has come into his life, an old man becomes insatiably curious about the boy's mysterious powers.

After Spider refuses to help the villagers plant the vegetables, he is in for a surprise when he goes to pick some for himself.

Twelve trickster tales that show the migration of African culture to America via the West Indies.

A collection of twelve folktales from different parts of Africa.