What's the Hurry, Fox?: And Other Animal Stories - Hardcover

Hurston, Zora Neale; Thomas, Joyce Carol

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060006439 ISBN 13: 9780060006433

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2004

Synopsis

Acclaimed anthropologist, folklorist, and novelist Zora Neale Hurston traveled the back roads of the rural South, collecting stories from men, women, and children in Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana so that the spirit and richness of the oral storytelling tradition could be shared and preserved. What's the Hurry, Fox? is a sampling of stories from Every Tongue Got To Confess, Ms. Hurston's third volume of folktales collected from the Gulf statesin the 1930s. They have been carefully adapted and shaped by National Book -- and Coretta Scott King Award–winning author Joyce Carol Thomas to appeal to the sensibilities of young readers. Caldecott Honor -- and Coretta Scott King Award-winning artist Bryan Collier adds his unique vision with collages that capture the rich heritage and rural community setting of the stories that are Ms. Hurston's legacy to us.

About this title

About the Author

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) was a novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist whose fictional and factual accounts of black heritage remain unparalleled. Her many books include Dust Tracks on a Road; Their Eyes Were Watching God; Jonah's Gourd Vine; Moses, Man of the Mountain; Mules and Men; and Every Tongue Got to Confess.

Bryan Collier is the illustrator of rosa by Nikki Giovanni and Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by Doreen Rappaport, both Caldecott Honor Books, and the Coretta Scott King Honor Book Visiting Langston by Willie Perdomo. He also wrote and illustrated the Coretta Scott King Award-winning Uptown. Besides illustrating children's books, Bryan donates his time to painting murals in his Harlem, New York, neighborhood.

Joyce Carol Thomas is an internationally renowned author who received the National Book Award for her first novel, Marked By Fire, and a Coretta Scott King Honor for The Blacker the Berry and for her first picture book, Brown Honey in Broomwheat Tea. Her picture book I Have Heard of a Land received a Coretta Scott King Honor and an IRA/CBC Teachers' Choice Award and was an ALA Notable Book. Her other titles include The Gospel Cinderella, Crowning Glory, Gingerbread Days, and A Gathering of Flowers. Ms. Thomas lives in Berkeley, California.

From Booklist

PreS-Gr. 3. Zora Neale Hurston was a pioneer collector of folklore in the rural South in the 1930s, but her retellings, written in heavy dialect, aren't accessible to children. Using simplicity, humor, wit, and a colloquial style true to the spirit of the originals, Thomas has adapted some of Hurston's rich pourquoi tales, and Collier's double-page-spread pictures combine painting and collage to show the animal characters' sly human machinations. The stories are very short, leaving lots of space for storyteller and audience. "Why the Waves Have Whitecaps" is a sad and angry tale about Water and Wind in a fight on the coast, and the title story is a wry variation on a trickster tale. Perhaps most haunting, however, is "Why the Dog Hates the Cat," a story of good friends who quarrel, with Collier's beautiful images showing the characters together and then alone. Thomas includes Hurston's sources for the stories, among them, ordinary people such as "M. C. Ford, age 55, gardener, Florida." The audience will hear his voice. Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060006439
• ISBN 13: 9780060006433
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Collier Bryan