Wisdom Tales from Around the World
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Authors
Forest, Heather
Issue Date
1996
Type
Book, Whole
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Abstract
This book represents the kind of effort I would like to make sometime in my life, to collect a limited number of excellent stories. The sweep is broad here, and that breadth is probably both the book's strength and weakness. One nice feature of the book is that it does not avoid values. A story like that of John Newton (83) is explicitly about a conversion with a huge impact on the lives of many Blacks, both slaves and those who would have become slaves. On the shadow side, some stories may be too overt or obvious. Among my favorites are The Tiger's Whisker (103), A Dispute in Sign Language (42), and Paca and Beetle (131). Several traditional tales are told differently. Thus the talkative turtle (13) was lonesome, as the geese learned when they visited him. This turtle's downfall was that he answered the people It was my idea. A clever old rabbit was the first victim to be offered to the lion according to the one victim a day contract (23). Whose Dream Is This? (33) appears also in Demi's Reflective Fables (1988). The stag with the spindly legs got free before the hunters arrived (47). In BC (49), the oldest mouse congratulates the clever inventor of the belling idea and asks Are you brave enough to put the bell on the cat? Also included from the fable tradition are two other Jataka tales, two other Panchatantra stories, and UP (48). I recommend this book to story-tellers and story-lovers.
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Publisher
August House Publishers