The land is dry, the juicy fruits on the tree are too high up for the animals to reach. Even strong elephant and tall giraffe cannot help. Then bunny has an idea: maybe wise turtoise could help. Good idea. But stop – this task is for the big ones. Old elephant, tall giraffe and strong lion, however, come back empty-handed each time … The famous Tingagtinga artist John Kilaka has retold and illustrated this traditional African story.

The author and illustrator

John Kilaka was born in the southwest of Tanzania in 1966. As a child he loved to draw on the blackbord of the school; which angered the teacher for two reasons – he was distracting his classmates and using up the school’s precious supply of chalk. At the age of twenty, he moved to Dar es Salaam where he studied the art of Tingatinga painting with Peter Martin. Today, John Kilaka is one of the most important representants of Tingatinga art. He has published four picture books with Baobab Books, all of them have been translated into many languges. John Kilaka has not only been collecting stories from Tanzania but he has travelled throughout Africa and Europe and participated in many story telling programs.