Kirkus Interviews Janice N. Harrington about Her New Picture Book
“To write the story, I knew that I had to find more about the original storytellers. [Alice D.] Cobble gives minimal clues, but additional sleuthing about the mission at Monieka where Cobble worked showed the storytellers were probably Nkundo. I turned then to early dictionaries of Christian missionaries and the work of Mabel H. Ross and Barbara K. Walker, scholars of Nkundo folklore. I also used my knowledge of West African storytelling, which shares many similarities with the storytelling of the Nkundo—the use of ideophones, patterned repetitions, audience participation and stories as vehicles for proverbial sayings.”
