A Twist in the Tail: Animal Stories from Around the World
Loading...
Authors
Hoffman, Mary
Issue Date
1998
Volume
Issue
Type
Book, Whole
Language
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Here are ten animal stories with bright contemporary artwork. Several of them play with traditional fable themes. About the Stories on 68-69 gives the background of each story after commenting on the frequent twists which they involve. The first tale is an Anancy story that ends with everyone happy. Then, in what Hoffman calls a variant of TH, the crab gets the fox to accept a tail-weight for their race together. Of course he is the weight and is right with the fox when the fox stops out of breath. The version here of The Bright Blue Jackal is different from those I have known. This jackal maintains before his fellow jackals that he is the same jackal as before but transformed by the Goddess of the forest to be its king. He goes on to tell all the other animals that he is a new kind of animal. Eventually his fellow jackals deliberately trick him into revealing himself. I am not sure that this version works, but its water image is wonderful! The art may be at its best in The Magpie and the Milk, which features ground-level views of all the interactions and a very bedraggled magpie. The Pelican and the Fish does a variation on this story from Kalila and Dimna as I know it. Here the crab chokes the fish still alive out of the pelican. The Fox and the Boastful Brave redoes the Renard story of playing dead and then tossing food all along the road. This version develops the story nicely into a comment on the folly of boasting. Creatures seem not to die in these stories; Hoffman can find happy endings. Note the pun in the book's title.
Description
Citation
Publisher
Henry Holt and Company
License
Journal
Volume
Issue
PubMed ID
DOI
Identifier
3776 (Access ID)