Aesop's Funky Fables - Hardcover

French, Vivian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0241136202 ISBN 13: 9780241136201

Publisher: Penguin Uk, 1999

Synopsis

This is a re-telling of Aesop's classic moral tales - some well-known and some almost unknown. It is full of rhythm, rap and humour and supported by vibrant and subversive illustrations.

About this title

About the Author:

Vivian French was best known at school for being extremely weedy, and for talking a lot. She continued her attachment to words by becoming first an actor, then a story-teller and finally a writer of children's books ... she's not sure how many she's written (she's not good at maths), but it's somewhere around two hundred. Many of them are for sevens and under, but she does write for older children too - and also non-fiction, which she says is very exciting because you find out so many things you never knew about. At the moment Vivian is writing books about Princesses, Draglins, Egyptians and Chocolate - oh, and a frog obsessed sorceress. (If she's not working on at least five books at the same time she worries she'll never be asked to write again.) She does rather too much travelling in order to swap ideas about books and writing with children and adults, and this often makes her late delivering the books she's meant to be writing. (If any publishers are reading this, she's very sorry!) She lives in Edinburgh, and has four grown up daughters ... and she's a lot less weedy. She still talks a lot, though.

From Publishers Weekly:

This British import adds a catchy, contemporary kick to Aesop's moral tales. The fables vary in form, including rhymes and monologues as well as narrative; they share, however, an unbridled use of sound effects, as in the start of "The Fox and the Crow": "Once upon a time there was a fox/ (Fox fox fox fox fox fox fox)." When the dog of "The Dog and the Bone" sees his reflection in a stream, the text takes his single-minded, greedy viewpoint: "Dog saw dog./ Dog saw dog with bone./ Rich red juicy meaty just the thing./ 'GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!'/ said dog./ 'MINE!' " In contrast, the first sentence of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is entirely matter-of-fact: "To begin with, the boy liked looking after the sheep." French's (A Song for Little Toad) impressive range of voice reveals a keen ear for dialogue and description: the characters are virtually audible; the scenes seem to perform themselves. Black-and-white spreads alternate with full color. Paul's (Winnie in Winter) caricatures are not so much "funky" as frantic, and their garish quality is exacerbated by a clumsy book design. However, the high-octane tales, in their verve and originality, constitute storytelling at its entertaining best. Ages 7-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Uk
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0241136202
• ISBN 13: 9780241136201
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80