The Cake and Custard Bookshop The Cake and Custard Bookshop Category:  Children Publisher: Carole Anne Carr ISBN-10:  0955981824 Type: Fiction Pages: 80 Copyright: 23rd September, 2009 ISBN-13: 9780955981821 An original African folk tale, written during my years spent in Central Africa, with repetitions to help beginning readers and illustrated by the author. Suitable for children aged 5 to 7 years. Brave Little Boy Good-For-Nothing must go to the rain-keeper’s hut to bring back the rain-cloud and save his village from drought. Fierce crocodiles guard the rain-cloud, but with the help of his friend the Shongololo, the lion and the moon-moths, he rescues the animals that go bump in the night, sets free the moon, and becomes Little Boy Good-For-Something. Excerpt Little Boy Good-for-Nothing and the Shongololo (illustrated by the children from an Infant school). In a small thatched hut, in a far away village in Africa, there lived Little Boy Dakarai and his Grandmother. Little Boy Dakarai helped his Grandmother. He swept the floor of the hut, and he washed the food bowls. He looked after the chickens. Grandmother was worried. There had been no rain for days and days. She looked for the rain-cloud across the far Chizarira Hills. But all Grandmother could see was the hot scarlet sun digging his fingers in the dry, sandy soil. ‘If the rain does not hiss and burst on the mealy-meal-pods in the vegetable patch, we shall go hungry,’ Grandmother said. ‘Dakarai, go down to the vegetable patch and see if the mealy-meal-pods are ready to eat.’

Book Review - Little Boy Good-for-Nothing and the Shongololo
I enjoyed reading your story very much. It has a range of wonderful characters, especially the Shongolo who is a powerful helper and can't count his own feet. There's plenty of suspense, with the rhythms and repetitions of folk tales, and the African background comes across vividly.