 The silk-cotton tree occurs frequently in the stories, and is also found in African-Cuban folk tales; finally, there are many similarities in the dishes described by Dadié and the Creole cuisine of New Orleans and other places around the Gulf of Mexico.According to the translator, Karen Hatch, and a critic, Evelyn Uhrhan Irving, these stories are "twice removed from the original oral tales", since they were first transmitted from orality to print, and then from French to English.Nonetheless, according to Irving, "these are delightful, linguistically vivid tales".