Riddle Tales / Readers Theater

I'll be doing a Readers Theater workshop in July as part of the MYFest project sponsored by the great people at Equity Unbound, and this will be the fifth year (!) that we are doing readers theater! We started back in 2022 just as an experiment, and we've done it every year since then. You can see some of our scripts here: Scripts.LauraGibbs.net. I hope to be doing a lot of work with readers theater this year, including plays in Latin (that is something new for me)... and the reason I am writing about all this here is because I decided to choose riddle tales as the theme for our readers theater this summer!

I think that will be a great choice, because riddle tales offer a wonderful opportunity for audience involvement, which is the goal of readers theater. Can the audience guess the riddle on their own? Or will they have to wait and see what happens? I really like the idea that the play's narrator can challenge the audience that way in the flow of the events, giving them some time to think and ponder on their own to see what they can figure out. The goal is not to shout out the answer, though, because you don't want to spoil the ending for people who haven't figure it out (yet). Instead, the goal is just to pause and let the audience know that they might be able to guess the answer on their own! And the narrator can even nudge them with clues and hints, the way that riddles can have clues and hints too, not just a "gotcha!" answer.

So, to get ready to do this, I rounded up what books I could find that feature riddle tales. This is what I found: please let me know if you have other suggestions to add to the list! The items in bold are linked to the Internet Archive where they are available for borrowing, and I am pleased to say that all but 2 of the books are available!

1. Abrahams, Roger. Between the Living and the Dead. (A folkloric index of over 400 riddles that tell stories; this is the only book on the list that is not a book for young readers.)
2. Dundas, Marjorie. Riddling Tales from Around the World.
3. Jaffe, Nina and Steve Zeitlin. The Cow of No Color: Riddle Stories and Justice Tales from Around the World.
4. Jaffe, Nina and Steve Zeitlin. While Standing on One Foot: Puzzles Stories and Wisdom Tales from the Jewish Tradition.
5. Mbe, Taffy Thomas. The Riddle in the Tale.
6. Shannon, George. Stories to Solve.
7. Shannon, George. More Stories to Solve.
8. Shannon, George. Still More Stories to Solve. 
9. Shannon, George. True Lies: Tales for You to Judge.
10. Shannon, George. More True Lies.

Here are some of the books with their lovely covers, and I'll be writing up blog posts about each one as I go looking for riddle tales that lend themselves to readers theater!

Book: Ji-nongo-nongo Means Riddles

Cultures across Africa have riddling traditions, and there are some nice African riddle books for children. Here is one by Verna Aardema (who wrote several books of African folktales for children), with illustrations by the great Jerry Pinkney, and it's just a click away at the Internet Archive: Ji-nongo-nongo Means Riddles.

This book draws on riddle traditions from across Africa, with forty riddles as found in about a dozen different tribal traditions; you can find information about the sources used in the credits section at the front of the book. The title comes from the Kimbundu language of Angola, and refers to a traditional Angolan guessing game.

Lots of the riddles have to do with animals, just as so many proverbs are also about animals, and these riddles often have a proverbial value to them. For example:

    Who has a house too small for guests?

    The answer is..... the tortoise. 

This Yoruba riddle plays with the physical fact of the tortoise's shell, but it also resonates with the greedy selfishness of the trickster tortoise in Yoruba culture; being hospitable is not one of the tortoise's qualities. And if the tortoise does invite you to dinner, you better be careful!

The illustrations are in Pinkney's beautiful, distinctive style; here's a page that accompanies some of the animal riddles:

And one of my favorite proverbs in the book gets its own full-page illustration:

    What can the buffalo do that two strong men can not? 

I'll put the picture here so that you can think about it; the picture gives you a clue, and you'll find the answer below the picture.

The answer: Grow horns!

And here's another one with a nice proverbial quality to it:

    What is it that even the ostrich with its long neck and sharp eyes cannot see?

Again, I'll put the answer down below the illustration so you can ponder...

The answer: The future!