Pistes d'exploration

Locate Kapiti Plains on a map of Kenya. Estimate how long it would take to get there and confirm your hypothesis through research.

Would you like to go on an African safari? Which animals would you like to see? List the animals in the illustrations. List them in alphabetical order.

Discuss the characteristics of folk tales such as this one. Predict what Ki-pat will use his bow and arrow for.

Discuss the impact of monsoons and droughts. Compare the weather in Kapiti Plains with ours here in Québec.

Try standing on one leg like Ki-pat and his son. Why do they stand this way? How old was his son when he started watching the herd? How long do you think they spend tending the animals? Why do the animals need to be watched?

Practise reading the text as a class or divide into groups to read sections of the text aloud. 

Retell the story as a class. Each student (or pair) takes a sentence to retell in a cumulative way. Be dramatic. Exchange sentences and retell it again. 

List the animals from the Kapiti Plain. Add them to your personal dictionary with a short definition or picture to remember them. 

Use this story as a model to write a cumulative story about a climatic situation such as bringing the snow in December, the sun in May or a rainbow in June. 

Compare the weather in Kapiti Plains with ours. Discuss the impact of monsoons and droughts. Compare to the impact of snow and rainstorms in Québec.

The Jacket I Wear in the Snow

Mots-clés

Folklore , African folk tales , animals , cumulative stories , droughts , pourquoi tales , stories in rhyme , weather

Commentaire descriptif

This Kenyan folk tale rhythmically tells of a young man named Ki-pat who brings the rain back to the Kapiti Plain following a drought. The rich, verdant savannah is home to many African animals: zebras, giraffes, storks, buffalo and more. “But one year the rainswere so very belated,That all of the big wildcreatures migrated.” A marvellous cumulative poem ensues, gaining momentum through repetition and anticipation, until Ki-pat “changes the weather” by shooting an eagle’s feather into a storm cloud, releasing the rain. The lyrical House-That-Jack-Built format is sure to delight young audiences with its singsong quality and language that is positively irresistible: “This is the grass,all brown and dead,that needed the rainfrom the cloud overhead.” The colourful, whimsically painted illustrations match the text perfectly in a naïve folk art style. A wonderful jumping off point for discussion about the inter-dependence of weather, plants, animals and humans, this is delightful and beautiful storytelling. As evidence of the continuing circle of life, after the rain, Ki-Pat finds a wife and has a baby boy who grows up to be a herder, just like his father.