This darling fable is similar to the Three Little Pigs, but is set in Namibia, South Africa with three little dassie sisters, Mimbi, Pimbi, and Timi and a big bad eagle instead of a wolf. The sisters are finally moving away from home. They are going to travel far away together to build their new homes right next to one another.  Each sister selects a different material to build her home; one uses tall grass, another uses sticks, and the third uses stones. The eagle approaches each of the dassie sisters and flaps and claps his wings to blow her house down. The illustrations are detailed paintings filled with realistic looking scenery, while the characters' clothing provides very vibrant color contrasts. The pictures are boarded quite uniquely with what looks like African bracelets made from wire, beads, and thread woven into colorful designs. Outside of the primary picture and boarder are smaller painted pictures, made to look like scraps of fabric, and one to three small ovals which provides  additional details to the main picture (usually, another animal looking at the dassie  sisters going about their business).

This colorful fable has two primary morals that you can point out and discuss with your little one. The first moral is patience and quality; the stone house took much more time and labor to build that the other two, but it was also the strongest and safest. Had the third dassie sister not been willing to take her time and put in the work for a quality home, she would have been captured by the eagle and put into his nest for a snack as well. The second moral of the story is 'greed'. The eagle lost out on getting to eat any of the dassie sisters because he was too greedy to settle for just one or two. As soon as he caught the first one, he though two would be more satisfying, and as soon as he caught two, he wanted the third.  Had he not been greedy about having them all for lunch, he would have ended up with at least one dassie sister. Instead, the two he caught escaped while the eagle was unsuccessfully hunting the third dassie sister.

My three year-old friend Sam loved it when I got theatrical while reading the eagle's lines, "I'll flap! And I'll clap! And I'll blow your house in!" Sam flapped and clapped right along with me the second and third time the line came up, giggling the whole time.

 

--Audra