Fair Trade! The Market Bowl by Jim Everbeck

Mama Cecile sang to Yoyo, teaching her to make bitterleaf stew.

It's a tiresome process, chopping the bitterleaf very fine, grinding the pumpkin seeds, chopping and adding all the other ingredients in order, and stirring and simmering the stew until it is just right.

But Yoyo bragged that she could make her own, not bothering with all the chopping, grinding, measuring, and stirring while it cooked.

Mama Cecile takes one look at Yoyo's lumpy, gooey stew and chastises her for being so lazy.

"Better leave that for the goats!" she tells her daughter.

Loading up her pot of stew to sell in the market, Mama Cecile reminds Yoyo that she must always bless her food and never refuse a fair offering price, or the grumpy god Brother Coin will see to it that no coins will every make their way into their market bowl again.

Yoyo pays little attention to Mama, sneaking her strange-looking stew into their wagon as they head for the market town.

In the marketplace, Mama Cecile's excellent stew sells out quickly for the going price of 50-50, and the coins collect in her bowl with her blessing. But as Mama packs up, Yoyo sees another hungry customer approaching. She pulls out her sorry-looking stew and offers to sell it to him for the regular price.

"I give you 10-10." says the buyer.""An insult! says Yoyo firmly. "50-50."

A rumble of thunder rolls across the sky.

And from that day on, Mama Cecile brought home a full pot of her unsold bitterleaf stew. There were no coins for the market bowl. Mama Cecile did not know how they were going to live.

Only the goats were happy.

But Yoyo had a plan. She carefully made a pot of bitterleaf stew fit for a god, following Mama Cecile's directions this time, and took her mother's market bowl and the stew to the marketplace, determined to find Brother Coin. She located him inside a dark and scary cave and set the fragrant stew outside the door.

A divine belly rumbled.

Entering, Yoyo spoke bravely,

"I offer this humble dish to your magnificent spirit!"

"Bitterleaf stew!" said Brother Coin, smacking his lips.

"Bless this dish!" he muttered.

And as the greedy god downed the whole dish, Yoyo snatches back her mother market bowl, now blessed, and to this day Mama Cecile's market bowl is always filled with coins and her cookpot goes home empty... sold out...

... At a fair price.

And, presumably, only the goats are unhappy, in this traditional trickster tale from Cameroon in Africa, Jim Everbeck's The Market Bowl (Charlesbridge, 2020), which has a clever girl and a lesson in fair trade to boot, along with colorfully costumed characters in his mixed-media illustrations. A recipe for ndolo, a map of Africa, and a brief description of Cameroon is appended, with further downloadable information for classroom social studies units.