Unwilling to share his feast, Ananse the spider tricks Akye the turtle so that he can eat all the food himself, but Akye finds a way to get even.
Ananse’s Feast: An Ashanti Tale
Greed
Why the Sky Is Far Away: A Nigerian Folktale
The sky was once so close to the Earth that people cut parts of it to eat, but their waste and greed caused the sky to move far away.
The Monkey Bridge
A human king learns wisdom and compassion from a monkey king willing to make a great sacrifice for the good of his subjects.
The Stone Lion
Two Tibetan brothers are rewarded appropriately by a stone lion, one for his generosity and one for his greed.
The Magical Starfruit Tree: A Chinese Folktale
A stingy peddler is chastised for his miserly ways by an old beggar with magical powers.
Luba and the Wren
In this variation on the story of “The Fisherman and His Wife,” a young Ukrainian girl must repeatedly return to the wren she has rescued to relay her parents’ increasingly greedy demands.
Playhouse
Rene asks her father and mother to build her a playhouse, a play barn, a play cow, and more, until finally her parents decide that they’d like to have a play Rene.
The Crows of Pearblossom
Originally published: New York: Random House, 1967.
Sun and Moon
This Korean version of Little Red Riding Hood is a pourquoi for the sun and moon creation. The boy and girl become the sun and the moon after the life-threatening tiger is killed. The tiger is as greedy as the wolf in western version of Little Red Riding Hood.
Magic Spring
Once upon a time, in a small village in Korea, there lived a childless old couple. They worked hard and lived good, simple lives, wanting only a baby to love and care for. But their rich, greedy neighbor sneered at their patched-up clothes. And when he saw the old man chopping wood he’d taunt him: “Ha! Old Man, where is your son to help you?”
Then one day, a mysterious bluebird leads the old man to a magic spring that makes him young again. But that’s only half the magic, as the miraculous power of the spring brings justice to the greedy neighbor, and a child for the couple from the least likely place of all.