Anansi Goes Fishing

by Eric A. Kimmel

Book Overview

Anansi the Spider likes to eat fish but is much too lazy to catch one himself--so he decides to trick Turtle into catching one for him.

When Anansi asks Turtle to teach him how to catch fish, Anansi thinks tricking Turtle into doing all the work for him will be easy. But Turtle is not as easily fooled as Anansi thought. Young readers will light in Janet Steven's bright and lively illustrations and laugh watching Anansi's plan backfire.

Based on tales originating in West Africa and familiar in Caribbean culture, the five-book Anansi the Trickster series is full of slapstick humor and mischief. Eric A. Kimmel's imaginative energy combined with Janet Steven' expressive illustrations create the perfect silly stories for fun-loving kids.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 082340918X
• ISBN13: 9780823409181
• Release Date: March 1992
• Publisher: Holiday House
• Length: 32 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 10.3" x 9.8"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

The trickster gets tricked!

Anansi, lazy spider, plans to trick Turtle out of his fish. Unfortunately, everybody knows what sort of a person Anansi is, and Turtle tricks him first. Well, truth be told, it's pretty funny to see how Anansi manages to outwit himself. Sure, Turtle facilitates it, but this is a prime example of how being lazy doesn't work if you don't also think. (And if you want to go deeper, the end of the story shows how if you constantly trick people, nobody believes you when you're the wronged party.) Really funny book, and there's probably a moral in there somewhere.

We love Anansi!

All the books in the Anansi series are fun! We love to read them to our children for many reasons: They learn something (at least somewhat) useful, they're enjoyable for them AND they're enjoyable for us! The kids love to see how someone will trick this lazy spider! The first time we found this book was in a library, and it was a 'book on tape' set. If you can find this, we recommend it, too, as the reader is very funny! :) In this book, Anansi wants a fish just like his friend the turtle has just caught. And what fun it is to see the logic turtle uses to get Anansi to do all the work while turtle 'gets tired'! We love this book! It is good clean fun! :)

Kids love tricksters!

Anansi is lazy and he likes to play tricks! This time, turtle outsmarts Anansi. Anansi does all of the work while turtle gets tired. The kids in my class ask to listen to this book and the other Anansi tales, retold by Eric Kimmel, over and over again. This one takes a little bit more thinking to figure out what the tricks are.