The Spider Weaver: A Legend of Kente Cloth - Softcover

Musgrove, Margaret

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1627200606 ISBN 13: 9781627200608

Publisher: Apprentice House, 2015

Synopsis

The story in this book is widely known among the weavers in Ghana and dates back to the mid-seventeenth century during the time of King Oti Akenten. Today, kente cloth is worn all over the world, but most often by heads of state in different African countries. Even now, certain patterns are reserved for the Ashanti king. If anyone is wearing a pattern the king has chosen, they must immediately remove it and select another kente. In the United States of America and other countries with people of African descent, kente is often worn as a statement of pride in African heritage. Students frequently wear a strip of kente on their gowns when they graduate. Some fraternities and sororities have their Greek letters and colors woven into kente strips. Machine-woven kente is less expensive than the handmade cloth, but it is also less refined, and the colors are less vibrant. Kente is a beautiful, expensive cloth. People almost never cut the strips of kente to make shirts or skirts. Instead, they wear one strip alone or many strips sewn together, making yards of kente cloth to drape around the body. Many patterns woven in kente cloth have significance. All of the traditional old patterns have meanings which, for the most part, are proverbs. "One man cannot rule a country" is one of the translations. When heads of state and other dignitaries visit Ghana, often original kente designs are made for these visitors. In the Ashanti region of Ghana, you can still see yellow, red, and blue threads laid out to dry in the sun. There are fine, handmade looms and asase-ntoma - apprentice weavers - who learn to gather their own dyes and process yarns for weaving kente. And like their masters, and their masters' masters before them, they are told the story of how a beautiful spider shared her weaving secrets with two resourceful, expert weavers.

About this title

Review:

Weavers in Ghana all know the story of the remarkable spider that showed two enterprising weavers a brand new way to weave beautiful patterns into their cloth. These weavers, named Nana Koragu and Nana Ameyaw, are walking through the jungle one day on their way home to their Ashanti village, when they come across what seems like a "small miracle"--a spider web with a wondrously intricate design. Awestruck, the friends decide to bring this treasure home with them to study. Alas! The web collapses at their touch, and is ruined. But all is not lost. At Ameyaw's wife's suggestion, the weavers return the following day and watch as the amazing Master Web Weaver, a large yellow and black spider, spins her magic for their benefit. Inspired by their skillful teacher, Koragu and Ameyaw begin imitating the spider's weaving dance on their looms to create a new woven cloth called kente-nwen-ntoma, worn to this day by kings and regular people alike.

Margaret Musgrove is the author of Ashanti to Zulu, which won the Caldecott Medal for illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon. Her knowledge of African traditions and stories stems from her many visits to West Africa over the years. Artist Julia Cairns lived in Africa for 10 years, working on landscape paintings in the Okavango Swamps in northern Botswana. Readers will be reluctant to tear their eyes away from her stunning illustrations. (Ages 5 to 9) --Emilie Coulter

From Publishers Weekly:

Bursting with colors as vibrant as kente cloth, this picture book's brightly patterned endpapers quickly set the tone for Musgrove's (Ashanti to Zulu) artful retelling of an Ashanti tale. Here, she dips into the folklore of 17th-century Ghana to relate how two master weavers learn from a clever spider how to weave the beautiful cloth for which the region is famous. While hunting one night, Koragu and Ameyaw stumble upon a web in a banana tree. "Never before had either of them seen such a wondrous design!" Eager to study it more closely, the two men try to bring it home and inadvertently destroy the web. Ameyaw's wife counsels, "Though you cannot find the same web again, perhaps you can find the same weaver," and sure enough, they track down the spider, who shows them her weaving dance: "Dip! Twist. Turn and glide." The men then redesign their looms and imitate the spider's technique, with stunning results. Musgrove's lucid prose is as crisp as the designs on the weaver's cloth, while Cairns's (Off to the Sweet Shores of Africa) watercolors conjure a lush and verdant forest setting. The artist punctuates the cool greens of the leafy backdrop with dashes of red and yellow, and her flattened perspective and characters displayed largely in profile add a folk-art flair. An afterword explains more about the significance of kente cloth. Ages 4-up.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Apprentice House
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1627200606
• ISBN 13: 9781627200608
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 50
• Illustrator: Boulandi Bat Favitsou