Beastly Tales
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Authors
Seth, Vikram
Issue Date
1994
Type
Book, Whole
Language
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Alternative Title
Abstract
There seem to be many editions of this simple book. Here we have a 1999 printing of a book I had found earlier in its 2000 printing. Now it is a book I find in New York. Then it was a book I found in Malta. As I wrote then, here is a paperback reprinting of a book I found in hardback some years earlier. It is one of three fable books I found in my first hour on Malta. The illustrations are enlarged in keeping with the larger format of the book. I will repeat pertinent comments from there. Ten well told, witty tales in verse include two slightly expanded from Aesop but with different contemporary twists. The eagle dies of grief over the beetle's continual destruction of his eggs wrought out of vengeance for the beetle's old friend, the hare. And the female hare ends up losing the race but winning all the press acclaim. The other tales come two each from India, China, the Ukraine, and "the Land of Gup." "The Mouse and the Snake" from China is a good fable with an ironic ending comment. "The Cat and the Cock" from the Ukraine uses repeated lines very well but has the misspelling "seranade" (70). In #9, the frog manager ruins the nightingale and never knows it. One black-and-white line sketch with each story, two with the last.
Description
Citation
Publisher
Phoenix House