Musgrove, Margaret. The Spider Weaver: A Legend of Kente Cloth. Illustrated by Julia Cairns. Blue Sky, 2001. ISBN 0-590-98787-9. $16.95. unp. * Pre-3 PB NF Reviewed by Sandra Tidwell The native Ashanti people of Ghana wear colorful hand-woven clothes with intricate designs. The Spider Weaver is the seventeenth-century legend of how these people came to weave such beautiful cloth called kente (ken’tee) cloth. Koragu and Ameyaw, while returning to their village after hunting for food, see a “miracle”-a web with a “wondrous design.” In attempting to take the web home to study, they destroy it. Saddened, they return home. Afiya, Ameyaw’s wife, suggests they find the creature who made the web, even though the design the creature makes might be different from the one they originally saw. Koragu and Ameyaw return to the forest and find the spider weaver, a large yellow and black spider. They realize that its web is its home. Respecting the spider’s creation, they watch all day as it spins its web. “The beautiful spider [has shown] the weavers how to weave new, intricate designs. What a wonderful teacher she [has been]! What a wonderful gift she [has given] them!” Returning to their village, the men preserve the designs they have learned; the colorful patterns have been passed down through the generations to our day. This beautiful book shares a wonderful message about learning from nature. Humans can learn from nature. In turn, they can become “givers,” sharing their talents with others. Cairn’s bright, colorful illustrations match perfectly the ethnicity and time period of the legend. This book could be used in preschool story-hour settings, social studies units on the native people of Africa, or elementary classes on science and nature. The author has also included a useful pronunciation guide and afterward.
