Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears

• Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears
• author: retold by Verna Aardema ("no author website") based on a West African Tale
• illustrators: Leo Dillon, Diane Dillon  "no author website"
• medium: "The art for this book was prepared in full color using watercolors applied with an airbrush in both fine spray and spatter technique, pastels rubbed on by hand, and india ink.  The cut-out effect was achieved by actually cutting the shapes out of vellum and frisket masks at several different stages."
• year of publication: 1975
• publisher city: New York, NY
• publisher: The Dial Press
• 0-80376089-2
• Caldecott Medal recipient, 1976

Annotation: Mosquito tells a tall tale to Iguana about seeing farmer digging giant yams.  Iguana ignores mosquito's lie and a chain reaction happens involving various jungle creatures leading to tragedy.  When lion investigates the crime, will justice be served?

Personal thoughts:  Aardema and the Dillons' book is a wonderful resource for discussing consequences and the results of ones actions with children.  Themes of justice and investigation are also present. When King Lion intervened, they looked backward to solve the mystery of the crime.  It played out like a courtroom drama.  Cause and effect is examined during the investigation.  The animals reactions to each other were presented so skillfully and I felt strong affection to each of their different personalities.  They had different characteristics that seemed to resemble the people of a village.

***Repetition is used when explaining events.

"So, it was the crow

who alarmed the monkey

who killed the owlet--"

-later-

"So, it was the python

who scared the rabbit,

who startled the crow,

who alramed the mokey,

who killed the owlet--"

***Onomatopoeia is used to describe the animals actions and works to accentuate an African sound:

"The first likely place (the python) found was the rabbit hole, and in it he went, wasawusu, wasawusu, wasawusu."