unit 10: Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Earss

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears

🌸Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: A West African Tale is a picture book by Verna Aardema and illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon told in the form of a cumulative tale written for young children, which tells an African legend. In this origin story, the mosquito lies to a lizard, who puts sticks in his ears and ends up frightening another animal, which down a long line causes a panic. In the end, an owlet is killed and the owl is too sad to wake the sun until the animals hold court and find out who is responsible. The mosquito is eventually found out, but it hides in order to escape punishment. So now it constantly buzzes in people's ears to find out if everyone is still angry at it.

The artwork was made using watercolor airbrush, pastels, and India ink. The cutout shapes were made by using friskets and vellum cut shapes at different angles.^[1]

The book won a Caldecott Medal in 1976 for the Dillons.^[2] It was the first of their two consecutive Caldecott wins; the second was for Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions.^[2]

🌸Development of the Story

• Conflict: The mother owel wakes the sun so that the dawn can come.

• Turning point: (a) stick

                           (b) greeting good morning

*Summury:

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears is the story of a mosquito who whispers a tall tale into the ear of an iguana. The iguana, not wanting to hear such nonsense, plugs his ears with sticks. The iguna fails to hear the python call to him. The python assumes that the iguana is angry with him and plotting some mischief. This causes the python to hide in a rabbit hole which disturbs the rabbit. This chain of events goes until a baby owl is killed as a result of the confusion. The King Lion tries to resolve the problem of who killed the baby owl, and the antics of the animals are then unraveled. The end of the story finds the animals angry with the mosquito, who was responsible for causing all of the chaos in the first place. To this day, the mosquito buzzes in people's ears as if to say "Zeee! Is everyone still angry with me?"

🌸 Cultural diversity

Cultural diversity is the quality of diverse or different cultures, as opposed to monoculture, the global monoculture, or a homogenization of cultures, akin to cultural decay. The phrase cultural diversity can also refer to having different cultures respect each other's differences. The phrase "cultural diversity" is also sometimes used to mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole. Globalization is often said to have a negative effect on the world's cultural diversity.