This was my daughter's favourite book when she was three and four years old. She memorised it so that she could appear to be "reading" it. She talked endlessly about it and needed Mummy to dramatise it with her endlessly, reciting it word for word as she acted it out. She's now 23, and still remembers her experience with it clearly. Only recently she was bemoaning the fact that somehow we lost this book over the years. She desperately wants to have a copy and relive those memorable childhood moments. We never knew that Eric Kimmel eventually wrote several other Anansi tales in the same simple magical language ... this was, for her, "the book."
Anansi loves to get things for free. When he finds a rock that makes knocks you out for a while he decides to play this trick on all his friends to get the food they worked hard for. One friend gives Anansi a surprise.