Far East Stories for Pleasure Reading

Title

en_US Far East Stories for Pleasure Reading

en_US Pleasure Reading Series

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US This book has a dust jacket (book cover)

en_US By Edward W. Dolch, Marguerite P. Dolch, and Beulah F. Jackson

Creator

en_US Dolch, Edward W. See all items with this value

Contributor

en_US Dolch, Marguerite

Date

2016-01-25T19:03:24Z

en_US 1997-06

en_US 1953

Date Available

2016-01-25T19:03:24Z

Date Issued

en_US 1953

Abstract

en_US Far East here includes China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Tibet, and India. There are eighteen stories, each with a simple full-page illustration featuring orange coloring. The early Chinese and Japanese stories here involve a good deal of magic, with ogres and dragons. Two of the stories are particularly touching. The first encompasses the first two selections here (1, 11). The emperor's daughter finally finds a suitor who can give her a blue rose, since she loves him so much that she declares that this white rose is blue. And the boy who paints cats draws a huge screen full of them, and they slay the ogre who has ravaged this temple (31). The Mirror That Made Trouble (71) has fun with a family's first experience of a mirror. The two Tibetan stories on the stone lion (81, 89) are a good comment on greed. The Maker of Puppets (99) is the wistful Indonesian story of a man who watches a (chess?) game and returns to find that time has passed and it is now decades later. Another Indonesian tale qualifies as a fable, I believe. It features the mouse deer who falls into a lime pit (109). He starts to announce that only those in the lime pit will be saved on this day when the world is coming to an end. And anyone who sneezes cannot be allowed in the pit. After he gets several large animals into the pit with him, he sneezes and is thrown out! The Stone Crusher (119), another fable, goes through a progression like that in The Mouse's Marriage. Whatever the stone crusher wishes to be, he becomes. In succession he becomes a rajah, the sun, a cloud, the wind, and a mountain--in each case learning that the next is stronger than he. As a mountain, he learns that the stone crusher is stronger than he is. So now he is a contented stone crusher. The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal (127) and The Mice That Ate the Iron Balance (137) are traditional fables from India. This is the first time I have seen a balance made the subject of the story's controversy. The last pair of stories tell of the brave potmaker who happened, while looking for his donkey, upon a tiger who had heard an old woman proclaim in a storm that the dripping was attacking her worse than any elephant or tiger. In the dark, the potmaker mistook the tiger for his donkey, and the tiger mistook the potmaker for a dripping. The result: the potmaker became rich and famous for subduing a fierce tiger! Soon the potmaker was summoned to command a great army being attacked. He ends up being tied to a fierce horse, holding a tree in his hands, and riding through the enemy camp. The enemy army gives up without a fight!

Identifier

en_US 4282 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/79557

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US Garrard Publishing Company

en_US Champaign, IL

Subject

en_US PZ8.1.D7 Far 1953 See all items with this value

en_US Far East See all items with this value

en_US Title Page Scanned See all items with this value

Type

en_US Book, Whole