The Night Has Ears African Proverbs

Ashley Bryan says, "My mother had a proverb for any situation, attitude, or event." Many of us have had the same experience. But have you ever heard, "As a crab walks, so walk its children" or "A log may lie in the water for ten years, but it will never become a crocodile"? These are two of the twenty-six African proverbs Ashley Bryan has chosen to illustrate in this book.Having grown up with proverbs, it was no surprise to Mr. Bryan when he began reading African literature to find African proverbs along with African stories. The proverbs grew out of the lives and experiences of the varied African peoples.Each proverb here is credited to a specific tribe, yet, as Ashley Bryan explains, most were known in other tribes as well. And in fact, all are true for people everywhere. We may not see crabs often, but we understand about crab children, and even people who do not have crocodiles nearby know that they do not begin as logs. This is a book to treasure for its rich universal wisdom and its gloriously evocative illustrations.

Ashley Bryan was born in New York City and now lives on a small island off the coast of Maine, where he writes and illustrates books most of the year. A former teacher at Dartmouth College, he has compiled, written, and illustrated many books for Atheneum, mainly African folktales such as The Story of Lightning and Thunder and collections of spirituals such as All Night, All Day: A Child's First Book of African-American Spirituals. His book Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum, received the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, and Lion and the Ostrich Chicks was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book.