Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky By: Elphinstone Dayrell (Multicultural or International Literature)

Why the Sun and the Moon Live in the Sky by Elphinstone Dayrell is an old African folktale. It is a story about how the sun and the moon came to be in the sky. I really enjoyed reading this book and can remember as a child reading similar stories about how mountains came to be. In this book the sun and moon are married and are good friends with the water. The sun always goes to visit the water, but the water can never come to visit the sun because they do not have a house big enough. The sun proceeds to build a bigger house. The water then comes to visit but there is so much of the water that it just keeps filling up the house and the sun and the move keep moving higher and higher. They move on to the roof of the house and the water just keeps filling it up until eventually the sun and the moon are left in the sky. This book is a great way to incorporate multicultural literature into the classroom. Students can get different ideas about what stories were told in different cultures, in this case Africa. They can use these to compare them to ones we see here in America as well as other cultures. This book was also a winner of the Caldecott. The pictures are great and very different from most other books I have seen. They really capture the African folktale culture!