Andrew Fusek Peters 
The Story Thief [PDF ebook] 

This retelling of a traditional African folktale explains how we came to have stories in the world.
Nyame the sky god has a special treasure – in a big, brass chest are all the stories ever told. Anansi, the cleverest of spiders, sees that down on Earth, the people are bored. Unfortunately, she can »t spin a tale, but she can spin a web. So she makes a ladder up into the sky, determined to bring back the stories, whatever it takes.