Cronkite and the Ebony Tree

Nelda LaTeef ’81 brings joy to children ages five to nine—and also to Walter Cronkite and Chris Evert. LaTeef’s first children’s book, The Hunter and the Ebony Tree, was published earlier this year. Tennis champion Chris Evert calls it “a truly satisfying read,” and venerated CBS anchor Walter Cronkite calls it “lovely,” according to praise on the book jacket. LaTeef is happiest, however, with the praise of her five-year-old nephew: “He says it’s his favorite.”

LaTeef took a circuitous route to the world of children’s books. She worked briefly in a law firm, got her MBA and wrote her first book: Working Women for the 21st Century: Fifty Women Reveal Their Pathways to Success, which featured Evert. LaTeef then established a women’s textile company called Pillow Talk, which made linens and pillowcases for cultural institutions. She sold it after seven years, and became the director of development of the Foreign Policy Association, a non-profit that seeks to educate the public about foreign policy.

Once again, she began to write. She says it was the stories she heard 20 years ago while during thesis research in West Africa that compelled her to shift gears professionally and write for kids. “The Zarma people have a saying: ‘One who hears something good must repeat it.’” She had been reading nightly to her three-year old niece and five-year old nephew, Lauren Petra and Harris Ned LaTeef, and came up with the idea of doing an anthology of folktales. “But if you put the tales together there’s no room for illustration,” she says. “And the perfect bridge between cultures is art.”

LaTeef chose to recount one story, a tale of a young woman whose father wishes her to marry the strongest man she meets. The woman convinces him instead that her suitors should perform a task: she will agree to marry whoever can get their arrow to stick in the trunk of the ebony tree. The story, she says, “teaches the importance of careful planning and good friends. In it, strategy is more important than strength.”

LaTeef used her own strategy in the retelling. She enlarged upon the woman’s role, having her create the contest instead of passively observing. “I kept the main ideas. From there, I took poetic license.” Although she happened on it in her 20s, LaTeef’s serendipitous discovery of the story was in part the result of her childhood travels.

Her father was a U.S. Foreign Services officer who, with his wife, transposed a family of two sons and two daughters from Asia to Europe to Africa and back. “We were the first Americans to drive by land from the Republic of Niger to Timbuktu,” recalls LaTeef. “We got lost along the way and arrived after three days of traveling, only to run straight into a family of tourists from New York.” Her four years in Cambridge were the longest LaTeef had ever spent living in one place.

LaTeef became a social anthropology concentrator at the beginning of her junior year. With a grant from the department, she went to Senegal to conduct thesis research on the effects of technological development on Senegalese women’s lives. She snuck in a side trip to visit friends she had made during her family’s earlier three-year stint in the Republic of Niger. It was there that she heard her stories, from the mouth of a woman griot (storyteller) who sat under the shade of a 30-foot-wide acacia tree.

LaTeef spoke no Zarma and the woman spoke nothing else, but a friend stood and translated while LaTeef scribbled furiously into the notebook she always carried around. “A griot is more than just a performer. She’s the keeper of old words, the library of a village,” says LaTeef. As an anthropologist, LaTeef was fascinated. Griots have particular importance in a society such as the Zarma’s, which has a literacy rate of only 10 percent. LaTeef was fascinated by the beauty of the oral tradition and the sheer sound of the woman’s voice. “She could make the most amazing noises, like purrs—I would immediately write it down.”

She contrasts her writing to other children’s books she’s read. “You have to be explicit about the moral in the ending; that’s what I like about folktales. You leave with something there. There are so many children’s books where you finish reading them and come away saying, ‘What was the plot, what was the story?’”

“Folk tales are so wonderful because they really bridge cultures; they instruct as well as entertain. From the furthest corner of the globe, everything is accessible,” pronounces LaTeef.

“Whether you live in an adobe hut or a skyscraper in Chicago, all humanity loves a good narrative.”