I can't recommend this one highly enough - I enjoyed almost every single bit of it.  Everyone did a great job with narration, and the stories were all good, and some of them excellent.

My hands down favourite was King Lion's Gifts narrated by Ricardo Chavira.  Honourable mention goes to The Mother that Turned to Dust narrated by Helen Mirren; it is a timely, sad and excellent story, but it ran a bit long and thus lost a bit of its impact.  The Guardian of the Pool wasn't special story-wise, but Gillian Anderson's voice was mesmerising.

The music was a great complement and when stories required a native tongue, a native speaker lent their voice, and it was perfect.  My copy of the audiobook had rather abrupt transitions between stories, but that's not news with a lot of audio editions.

If you like folktales, this one is definitely worth a listen.

Do not read this, listen to it.

Besides the veritable buffet of Hollywood A-listers from various ethnic backgrounds providing narrations, there’s beautiful music and songs in the interludes between stories and in the stories themselves. I’ve derived much enjoyment from the imaginative and enthusiastic performances from the narrators, most of whom possess great skills with accents. Even if you don’t recognise a couple of the narrators’ names, odds are you’d recognise their faces.

Whoopi Goldberg and Hugh Jackman’s performances were outstanding though most were above average.

Urban legends, origin stories, fables, parables, myths, magic, time travel, African versions of well-known fairy tales, clever and devious characters, and emotionally touching stories – what more could you want?

Well, the publisher has donated 100% of its takings from the audio to Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and Artists for New South Africa who work with children affected by HIV/AIDS.

Here’s a rundown of the folktales:

Continue reading →

Hey look! It has a website!

I wasn't quite sure what this one was going to be like, but it was an unexpected delight.

 I listened to it on audio, and I highly recommend experiencing it this way.  Each story is read by a different narrator, from Alan Rickman (he reads the first story and I couldn't get over my shock that Snape was reading an audiobook) to Levar Burton (Reading Rainbow Geordie!!) to Whoopie Goldberg.  I thought the actors were strange choices--personally, I would have used South African actors or whatever--but several of them are very good.  I now want to see if Whoopie Goldberg ever narrated any other audiobooks, because she was fantastic.  Oh, and Bishop Desmond Tutu does an intro!

The stories themselves are well-written and entertaining (enough so that I wish I could figure out who wrote them).  The tales vary in theme from "Fesito Goes to Market", an adorable adventure of a young boy who ends up with a very overloaded bicycle, to "The Ring of the King", an extremely entertaining trickster tale, to Mpipidi and the Motlopi Tree, a cute "just so" style tale.  In the audio version, the stories are interspersed by  beautifully performed songs, including about five minutes of songs at the end.

Anyway, a lovely audiobook for a great cause.