A Twist in the Tail: Animal Stories from Around the World

Title

en_US A Twist in the Tail: Animal Stories from Around the World

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US This book has a dust jacket (book cover)

en_US First American edition

en_US Mary Hoffman

Creator

en_US Hoffman, Mary See all items with this value

Contributor

en_US Ormerod, Jan

Date

2016-01-25T16:50:41Z

en_US 2000-06

en_US 1998

Date Available

2016-01-25T16:50:41Z

Date Issued

en_US 1998

Abstract

en_US 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.

Identifier

en_US 805059466

en_US 3776 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/79123

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US Henry Holt and Company

en_US New York

Subject

en_US PZ8.1.H6725 Tw 1998 See all items with this value

en_US Title Page Scanned See all items with this value

Type

en_US Book, Whole