Moonlight Stories from West Africa, 2nd Edition

In Yoruba culture, adults tell folk tales to young people, especially during the full moon. Under moonlight, adults and children sit in open village squares and tell stories. The high point of the storytelling is when the storyteller and listeners reason together to find some lessons from the stories. This is the informal way that morals, principles, and life lessons are passed down and learned.The Tortoise is a prominent character in Yoruba folk tales. The Tortoise is almost always...
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In Yoruba culture, adults tell folk tales to young people, especially during the full moon. Under moonlight, adults and children sit in open village squares and tell stories. The high point of the storytelling is when the storyteller and listeners reason together to find some lessons from the stories. This is the informal way that morals, principles, and life lessons are passed down and learned.The Tortoise is a prominent character in Yoruba folk tales. The Tortoise is almost always portrayed as a trickster, a phony, or a dubious personality. Mr. Oni tells these Tortoise stories so that the youngsters can learn true character and good habits. If the kids can learn from the mistakes of any of the characters, it might prevent them from making those mistakes themselves.Peer pressure, bullying, anger management, risk taking, humility, individuality, self-control, respect, intuition, and such themes are covered without necessarily using those terms. The Moonlight Stories from West Africa is helpful for teaching and learning social skills and important life lessons through storytelling, without reference to any religion.Each chapter in the book is enriched with review questions/checking comprehension and different graphic organizers for students¿ activities, such as, character evaluating worksheet, character analysis web, attribute and legacy web and story worm graphic organizer for sequencing. Mr. Oni is a retired schoolteacher who spends his retirement as a volunteer storyteller in schools. He is a naturalized US citizen but was born and bred in Nigeria, West Africa. On Wednesday mornings every week for sixteen weeks, Mr. Oni visits PS 001 during second period. He goes to Room 302, Ms. Tom¿s class, where the third grade students are waiting for him. Mr. Oni tells the Tortoise stories he remembers from his childhood in Africa in Ms. Tom¿s class. For the storytelling sessions, Mr. Oni sits in Ms. Tom¿s rocking chair while the students sit on the rug at the back of the room¿.After each story, Mr. Oni tells the students to look for at least three important lessons from each story, one of which will be the main lesson.