2011 The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Eric Carle. Softbook with caterpillar handle. $4.95 from Black Swan Books, Oakland, Dec., '19.
Here is a book of eight pages that counts its way through the caterpillar's meals until, on the last page, one finds "beautiful butterfly." I am not sure that this is the text of Carle's original fable, which, I gather, has become justly famous. It has stimulated a variety of copies and versions. Here is one of the more surprising versions! The first page even rustles and crinkles!
2001 The Value of Friends/The Best of Friends. Oakland: Jataka Tales for Children: Dharma Publishing.
This CD-Rom, produced together with a coloring book containing the texts, presents the stories in two booklets with these same titles, published in 1990 and 1989, respectively. There are several voices, music, and good sound effects. The LC blurb for "The Value of Friends" is accurate: the hawk and his family are made aware of the value of friendship when their friends the osprey, the lion, and the tortoise save them from hungry country folk. In "The Best of Friends," a Great Being, in the form of a woodpecker, frees a lion from a bone caught in his throat. They encounter each other later when the woodpecker is hungry and the lion has just made a kill. The lion dismisses the woodpecker. The latter will not, however, get revenge, as he tells a sky fairy. He explains that "He helped the lion in order to end his pain, not to gain a reward." The woodpecker adds that he counts as friends everyone he meets.
