Book talk: Why the sky is far away

Bibliographic Information:
Gerson, Mary-Joan, and Carla Golembe. Why the sky is far away: a Nigerian folktale. Little, Brown and Company, 1995.
Folk tale/Myth, AD670L

Intended Audience:
Pre-K, Kindergarten, 1st - 2nd grade

Key passage:
"In the beginning, the sky was very close to the earth. In that time, men and women did not have to sow crops and harvest them. ... Anybody who was hungry just reached up, took a piece of the sky, and ate it."

Approach:  Scene-based. Main character is the setting, the sky. Hand motions and voices for the individual characters. Loud booming voice for the sky when it angrily talks to the humans.

Notes for Booktalk: Keep names pronounced properly, focus on stressing action words when speaking. Explain folk tale/origin myths.

The talk: Write the script of your book talk here. You can use full prose or a clear enough outline that can be easily followed by the rest of us.

"In the beginning, the sky was very close to the earth. In that time, men and women did not have to sow crops and harvest them. ... Anybody who was hungry just reached up, took a piece of the sky, and ate it."

This is the story that explains why the sky is far away, retold by Mary-Joan Gerson. It is a Nigerian folk tale that explains how certain things in our world came to be. It is an etiological myth, a story that explains how something came into existence.

This is a great book to introduce the idea of folk tales to pre-kindergarteners to 2nd grade students. Often they will ask 'why' to aspects of the world they experience. This will show them these questions have been asked throughout the ages.

Why the Sky is Far Away will introduce the children to the idea of conservation and the dangers of wastefulness in an easily understandable way. The story follows the sky and it's interaction with the human world. We switch to the character of Adese, a vain and proud woman, who ends up abusing the gift the sky had given us.

This book is also a way to introduce stories from other cultures. As a folk tale from Nigeria, the students can hear about how another culture explains how parts of the world came to be.

If you're interested in other African folk tales, I suggest How the Zebra Got His Stripes and How Giraffe became so Tall retold by Andrea Florens.

Thank you for listening to my book talk.

"We now see, as the wise [people] did then, that the future of nature and its gifts rests in our own hands."

Video: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bxp1ys6gy6hxR0NQX0lKdkhLMnM