Tololwa Mollel 1952–

Writer

First Book Retold Maasai Venus Story

Trickster Stories Showed Power of Wit

Returned to Tanzanian Childhood for Inspiration

Adapted Stories for Performance

Selected writings

Sources

In many modern cultures, the practice of handing down history through the oral and pictorial traditions of storytelling is giving way to the flashy special effects of Hollywood movies, the lessons learned in television sitcoms, or the unsubstantiated truths that can be downloaded from the Internet. Numerous old folk and native stories have been lost as popular culture has failed to integrate them into modern entertainment. However, several artists and authors have taken it upon themselves to preserve these stories and rejuvenate them for contemporary young audiences, including children’s storybook author Tololwa Mollel. Since 1992 Mollel has been reinventing African tribal tales and creating original stories that he hopes will teach children about varying cultural backgrounds as well as focusing thematically on traditional morals and values. As Mollel said in an on-line Kids Care Club interview, “I think folklore plays a role in providing children as they grow a basic literary vocabulary and means with which to perceive the world and human behavior. It also provides them entertainment and a means of socializing them into the mores and values of the community.”

Even though Mollel now makes his home in Canada, he was born in the Arusha region of Tanzania on June 25, 1952, to Loilangisho and Sa-raa (Eleiser) Mollel. Early in his life, Mollel was sent to live with his grandparents who tended a coffee farm in northern Tanzania. It was here that he was introduced to two very important influences, storytelling and religion. His grandparents made sure that Mollel and the other children living with them had access and constant exposure to biblical stories in order to foster a love of literature and Christian values. They also very heavily valued education and reading. In an article on Mollel on the University of Alberta website, it stated that Mollel would run home from school, “to share the thing he had read at school. Mollel’s grandfather would listen intently, probing for details.” Mollel says that it was these first conversations with his grandfather that sparked within him a “love of storytelling that has never left.”

First Book Retold Maasai Venus Story

Mollel attended the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania to pursue a bachelor’s degree in literature in theater. He accomplished this goal in 1972 and proceeded to further his education by attending the University of Alberta in Canada. Mollel decided to focus on his talents in the fields of theater and performance, and

At a Glance…

Born on June 25, 1952, in Arusha, Tanzania; married Obianuju Olisa in 1978; children: Lese, Emeka. Education: University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, BA, literature and theater, 1972; University of Alberta, Canada, MA, drama, 1979, PhD, drama, 2001 -.

Career: University lecturer, director of children’s theater and actor in Tanzania, 1979-86; writer, storyteller and lecturer in Canada, 1986-; Edmonton Public Library, writer-in-residence, 2000-.

Memberships: Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators, and Performers; Society of Children’s Book Writers; Writers Guild of Alberta; Alberta Legion of Encouraging Storytelling.

Awards: Pick of the Lists, citation, American Bookseller Association 1991-92, 1993-94; Notable Book citation, American Library Association, 1991-92; honorable Mention, California Children’s Media Awards, 1992; Florida Reading Association Award, 1993; Nominated for the Ontario’s Silver Birch Award, 1993; A Bank Street College Children’s Book of the Year, 1994; Canadian Library Association Honor Book, 1995; Writers Guild of Alberta Award for Children’s Literature, 1995; African Studies Association Children’s Africana Award, 2000; Coretta Scott King Honor Book, 2001; nominated for the Bill Martin, J. Award by Kansas Reading Association Award, 2001; R, Ross Annett Award for Children’s Literature, 2001; Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People Award, 2001; Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Book Award, 2001.

Addresses: Home —Edmonton, AB, Canada. Agent —Joanne Kellock, Kellock & Associates Ltd., 11017 Eightieth Ave., Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G OR2.

received his masters degree in drama in 1979. Afterward he returned to Tanzania and was employed as a university lecturer in the field of drama. He was also a director and actor at a children’s theater. As Mollel continued to work and produce plays, he lived meagerly and saved his earnings in the hopes of returning to Canada. It would take him seven years, but finally in 1986, Mollel returned to Canada, this time not as a student but as an emigrant. He continued to lecture in Edmonton, Canada to make ends meet, but fostered his love of storytelling that he had been able to express while working in the Tanzanian children’s theater. In the late 1980s, he turned to writing as an outlet, and wrote a few short stories for children that were published by various magazines.

Then, in 1991, Mollel published his first major children’s book, The Orphan Boy. The Orphan Boy embodies an old folktale about the planet Venus, called Kileken by the Maasai, which comes to Earth in the guise of an orphan boy to assist a lonesome feeble man. At first the old man assumes that the orphan boy Kileken is out to take what little he has, but discovers quickly that Kileken’s only wish is to perform chores to assist the old man. The old man agrees and Kileken takes on all of the responsibilities of the household and the yard, completing tasks faster then any human being could. The man grows stronger and richer with the help of Kileken and eventually starts to accept the boy as his son, showing him love and compassion. However, the old man is unable to accept Kileken’s powers without explanation and confronts Kileken about them. Kileken cautions the old man against questioning his good fortune, telling him that he will lose all he has gained if he were ever to learn the source of Kileken’s powers. The old man, still unable to trust his new son, follows Kileken in secret as he goes to do his chores, hoping to discover his secret. The old man, however, is discovered by Kileken who suddenly turns into a star and flies off into the night sky never to return. The old man returns to destitution and loneliness because of his inability to trust.

Orphan Boy, illustrated by Paul Morin, was well received by critics, parents, and children alike. In its first year of publication it garnered the Governor General’s Award, the Parents Choice Storybook Award, the Amelia Howard-Gibbon Award, the Elizabeth Cleaver Award, and made both the Canadian Library Association and American Booksellers Association’s notable book lists. As to the success of the book, Mollel said on the University of Alberta website, “All children love folktales because of the larger-than-life-characters in them.” Even more importantly however, for Mollel is what children can take from a novel like Orphan Boy. He told the Kids Care Club that he hoped his stories, “will carry them (children) beyond stereotypes about Africa that are very much a part of the popular culture and consciousness in North America.”

Trickster Stories Showed Power of Wit

Mollel pushed forward throughout the 1990s, writing eleven more illustrated children’s books. Some of them, like Orphan Boy, were adaptations of African tribal tales. Others, like My Rows and Piles of Coins, were original tales that Mollel based on his life growing up in Tanzania. Yet each story, according to Mollel, was an attempt to not only teach children, but also to make them think. “I believe storytelling humanizes children…. It makes them think of those things that make us distinctly human: questions of right and wrong, questions of justice,” he told the University of Alberta website.

In order to promote this type of reasoning and questioning in his young readers, Mollel employed the help of a familiar character type in folktales known as the trickster. The trickster character is one who normally is challenging the status quo in some fashion in order to provoke change. This change is not always for the better, but usually for the betterment of the trickster character. Mollel felt that the trickster character is vital to the growth of characters in all folk and tribal tales, for it is they who force characters to question why things are the way that they are, and to discover more about the world around them. The trickster figure is also important in the technical aspects of storytelling, for as he told Raymond E. Jones in an interview for the St. James Guide to Children’s Writers, “Something has to make things happen in a children’s story, and the trickster makes things happen.”

Mollel’s second major children’s storybook, Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper!, is a perfect example of how Mollel utilized the trickster to promote awareness of the world around specific characters and to invoke thought in his young audience. In this tale, another retelling of a Maasai tribal story, Mollel focused for the first time on the power of wit and logic to examine the situations that one faces in everyday life. The story begins with a hare who leaves the cave that she lives in to go to hunt for food for her dinner. When she returns to her cave, she finds that something has taken root in her home, a vicious monster who claims that it eats rhinos for lunch and elephants for supper. The hare, understandably scared, searches out help to reclaim her cave. Each animal that she approaches for help is bigger then the last, but each animal turns away from the cave in fear of being eaten by whatever is in the cave. The situation seems hopeless and the hare almost gives into the fact that she will have to start to look for a new home. However, when a frog, who has been disturbed by the coming and going of larger and larger animals, steps forward into the cave—apparently unafraid of the monster within—and shouts to the monster that she eats monsters. Moments later, a small caterpillar, the main trickster in this tale, emerges from the cave, revealing that he was merely using the echo of his voice off the cave walls to give him the appearance of a large monster so that he could keep the hares house.

Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper! introduced a very important theme in Mollel’s work, that assumptions and reality are often very separate things. All of the animals in Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper! made the assumption that there is a monster in the cave because the voice from the cave claims that it eats large animals, when the reality of the situation was nothing of the sort. Mollel wanted to illustrate to his readers that it is up to them to discover the world and that they should never take any situation at face value. By using logic and wit, the frog in Rhinos for Lunch became a trickster himself, invoking change in the world by challenging the opinions of the masses, but with favorable results. This is another theme that Mollel wanted to transmit to his readers, that any person, small or large, could make a difference in the world if they were willing to step up and try. The frog was by no means the largest animal that faced the problem of the monster in the hare’s cave, he was just the one who was willing to think about the situation and figure out how to change it for the better.

Mollel visited these themes time and again in his works, such as in The King and the Tortoise where a traditional African trickster, the Tortoise, is able to outwit a clever king who thinks he has an unsolvable puzzle and is declared, “the cleverest creature in the world.” In a much more gripping tale, Shadow Dance, a young girl, Salome, finds a crocodile stuck in a gully after a flood and is convinced to help the crocodile to safety even though she has been warned by her elders that crocodiles are crafty and dangerous creatures. Sure enough, once free, the crocodile overpowers Salome and is intent on eating her. Only by using her quick wit, is she able to play on the crocodile’s ego and convinces the crocodile to prove to her that he was actually stuck in the dry gulch where she originally found him. When the crocodile maroons himself once again, Salome runs away, having learned a valuable lesson. In these various tales, Mollel looked at wit from many different angles, showing his audience that wit and logic can do many things for them such as getting them what they want, making them well liked and well received, and can even save their life. But tempered with all of this was another message in Mollel’s novels: that often one must heed the wisdom that is passed down by others, as is done in stories, or face the consequences of going it alone. Salome would have never needed to rely on her wit had she listened to her elders in the first place.

Returned to Tanzanian Childhood for Inspiration

As Mollel became a more established children’s author, he began to shift from the retelling of tribal tales, to creating his own tales based on his early years in Tanzania. He hoped to explore what it meant to grow up in a traditional oral community surrounded not only by a large extended family, but also a community that served as a second family. Mollel realized that many children, especially in western European countries and much of North America, would not have an understanding of how other cultures, such as many in Africa, relied upon the family institute not just for monetary support and well being, but also for history, development of skills, discipline, and various educational lessons. In the Kids Care Club interview he stated that he hoped that by reading his books, “children will gain a specific understanding and appreciation of a small part of the vast and complex African world.”

In an attempt to bring this different view of family and the life of a child to a more Euro-centric audience, Mollel started with a simple tale called Big Boy in which a young boy is constantly told that he is not big enough to handle the activities that his older brother does. The young boy, Oli, decides to leave his family so that he can do whatever he wants, and what follows is a dream sequence in which a magical bird grants him his wish to be big. The consequences of the wish however are disastrous as Oli becomes a giant and begins to wreck the land and lives of people around him. Oli begins to see that he has a place within his family and community, and when he tries to go beyond his place in a rushed foolish fashion, he only hurts people and himself. When Oli wakes from the dream, he is found by his family who take him home without question. To hammer home the point that every position in the community has its advantages, Oli is carried home by his mother, for he is still young enough and light enough to be carried, unlike his older brother who must walk the way home. Mollel used this simple story to illustrate the ways in which many African communities are rooted to the idea of working together for the common good. Everyone played an important role in the community, and when one person tries to shirk their role, the whole community pays for it. Along with these lessons come the knowledge of how important Oli discovers he is to his family, which Mollel knows is a lesson many children find hard to accept sometimes.

Many of Mollel’s books in the late 1990s and early 2000s would follow in the vein of Big Boy. Kele’s Secret, a story directly inspired from Mollel’s time spent on his grandparents’ farm in Tanzania, expands on what life is like for young Africans living in rural communities. It also showed the impact that young people can have on family life, for the main character, Kele, has a special almost magical talent for finding the eggs that the hens hide after they lay them, providing both food and money for the family.

My Rows and Piles of Coins was one of Mollel’s first novels not to have an element of the fantastical in it, but to focus more on the daily life of an average young boy who is attempting to save money for a bicycle. This book has been hailed by critics as one of Mollel’s best, because the core message is the reason the young boy wants a bicycle: to help his mother carry their wares to town every morning to sell and so that he can run errands while his parents work. When the boy does eventually get his bicycle without having to pay for it, (his father gives him his old bicycle), the boy buys a cart instead so that he can carry even more, lessening his mother’s load. Mollel hoped to draw his audience’s attention to the importance of the well-being of the family by one so young, once again solidifying the idea that all members of the family and community make a difference.

Adapted Stories for Performance

In 2000, while continuing to publish stories for children, Mollel turned his attention back to theater by adapting some of his stories for the stage. Instead of having professional troops perform these plays, Mollel would personally visit schools in the United States and Canada and direct students as they produced and performed his material. In Minneapolis, he helped the Sheridan School put on a performance of Subira, Subira, a story of a young girl who takes on the responsibility for her younger brother after the death of her mother. In Edmonton he assisted students in producing Song Bird, about a girl who goes to rescue the family cattle herd from a monster. He also helped to adapt A Promise to the Sun for the Concordia University summer youth project.

In the summer of 2000, Mollel took on one of the largest theatrical projects of his career with the Children-In-Dance company of Calgary. The company, which was celebrating its twentieth anniversary, wanted a special original production to present to the public and enlisted the help of Mollel on many fronts. The process started with Mollel and a writing workshop in which he and 50 children wrote out the story line that would be used to structure the dance. Mollel then worked closely with the choreographers to get the correct moves down to properly display the emotions of the story line while musical composers added a score based on the choreography. Finally, in the fall of 2000, The Visit of the Sea Queen was performed by the Children-In-Dance company to rave reviews. Another original piece, entitled The Twins and the Monster was performed on stage by a professional troop of actors with an accompaniment by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.

Mollel lectured at various colleges in and around Edmonton where he lived with his family, and has been the writer-in-residence for the Edmonton Public Library. In late 2001 Mollel returned to school, attending the University of Alberta to pursue a doctorate degree which he started a few years before. His doctoral dissertation investigates how children’s imaginations are stimulated by folk and tribal tales and how this translates to societal changes. Yet even though he is exploring storytelling from a scientific and educational viewpoint, he still feels that there is a mystical quality to the whole process. As he told the University of Alberta website, “As a writer, you never know what makes the narrative right. It has to come by itself, almost like magic. Sometimes you feel it doesn’t quite connect with them, so you go home and make a few adjust ments. And then, on the next reading, their response just comes alive.”

Selected writings

The Orphan Boy, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1991.

Rhinos for Lunch and Elephants for Supper!, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1991.

A Promise to the Sun: An African Story, Toronto and Boston, Little, Brown, 1992.

The Princess Who Lost Her Hair: An Akamba Legend, Mahwah, New Jersey, Troll Associates, 1993.

The King and the Tortoise, Toronto, Lester, and New York, Clarion, 1993.

The Flying Tortoise, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1993.

Big Boy, Toronto, Stoddart, and New York, Clarion Books, 1995.

Ananse’s Feast, New York, Clarion Books, 1997.

Dume’s Roar, Toronto and Buffalo, New York, Stoddart Kids, 1997.

Kele’s Secret, Toronto, Stoddart Kids and New York, Lodestar, 1997.

Kitoto the Mighty, Toronto, Stoddart, 1998.

Shadow Dance, New York, Clarion Books, 1998.

Song Bird, New York, Clarion Books, 1999.

My Rows And Pile of Coins, New York, Clarion Books, 1999.

Subira, Subira, New York, Clarion Books, 2000.

To Dinner, For Dinner, New York, Holiday House, 2000.

Sources

Periodicals

Publishers Weekly, February 1, 1991, p. 80; March 16, 1992, p. 79; March 8, 1993, p. 78; August 1, 1994, p 78; January 23, 1995, p 70; May 12, 1997, p. 76; January 25, 1999, p. 95; August 16, 1999, p. 83; January 17, 2000, p. 56.

On-line

Contemporary Authors Online, Gale 2003, Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich,: The Gale Group, www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC

Kids Care Clubs, www.kidscare.org/kidscare/june01mollel.html

St. James Guide to Children’s Writers, 5th ed. St. James Press, 1999. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich,: The Gale Group, www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC

Tolowa M. Mollel, www.yabs.ab.ca/authorbios/mollelt.html

University of Alberta, www.report.ualberta.ca/stories/arts/tellme.htm

—Ralph G. Zerbonia