Many African stories are called "Spider stories". This book is about how that came to be. And it tells that long, long ago there were no stories on earth for children to hear. All stories belonged to Nyame, the Sky god. Ananse, the Spider man, wanted to buy some of these stories, so he spun a web up to the sky and went to bargain with the Sky god. The price the Sky god asked was Osebo, the leopard-of-the-terrible-teeth, Mmboro the hornet who-stings-like-fire and Mmoatia the fairy whom-man-never-see. This book is about how Ananse paid the price.