Considering I do not know the African American proverbs I assumed this book would maybe, tell a story? This book gave lessons on every page with a quote of what someone has said. A lot of them were very confusing. For example, "Take the drowning child from the water before scolding it." Now a question I raised; in an early childhood setting why would we say the words drowning? Why would we have images in the story of an adult pulling a child head first from a river? ( )

This book was very confusing to me because I do not know what an African proverb is. But reading the introduction helped me know what the author will be sharing about and what proverbs are. The whole book has one proverb per page with an amazing illustration. She does both serious and humorous proverbs. Each imagery on the page goes along with the proverbs and gives the reader a chance to think about what the proverb can be about. Many of the proverbs were very confusing and did not make sense to me, so it can confuse younger kids as well. However, I did like her creativity on the illustration and have the reader guess what the proverb can mean to them. ( )

A Jean Karl book illustrated by Ashley Bryan, "The Night Has Ears: African Proverbs" compiles 26 African proverbs--each one credited to a specific tribe. Each individual beautifully illustrated pages add emphasis to the proverb to which it belongs. For example, a picture of people in dancing near a drum is a depiction of the following Ashanti proverb: "If you cannot dance, you will say, the drumming is poor". A wonderful book for discussion in curriculum for young adults, or to be read aloud with children.

More examples of a proverbs include:

Zulu Proverb: "The house of the loud talker leaks" (ill. people standing in a home covered with holes that leak water)

Swahili Proverb: "Do not try to fight a lion if you are not one yourself" (ill. a lion adorned in a dress is standing in front of a larger, more realistic lion without clothing).