Fat Cat: A Danish Folktale - Hardcover

Margaret Read MacDonald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0874836166 ISBN 13: 9780874836165

Publisher: August House, 2005

Synopsis

Have you ever heard the saying, Your eyes are bigger than your stomach? Well, Cat's stomach is bigger than a lot of things. He is always hungry, and living with culinary-inclined Mouse, who makes thirty-five pies in one day, just makes it worse. Fat Cat swallows everything in sight, including the washlady and her washtub, a troop of soldiers and their swords, even a king and his elephant! But when Cat swallows Mouse and her sewing basket, that's the last straw. Tiny Mouse cuts to the heart of ....

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Read MacDonald Bio:

Margaret Read MacDonald is a professional storyteller, award winning author and highly respected consultant who travels the world telling stories and conducting workshops for educators. Her most popular workshop “Playing with Stories” has been offered in over 70 countries. She has been invited to storytelling and literary festivals in Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand and Singapore. In addition, Dr. MacDonald teaches storytelling to classroom teachers for the Lesley University Creative Education through the Arts program. For years, she also taught storytelling as an Adjunct Professor with the University of Washington Information School.
Dr. MacDonald is the author of over 60 books on folklore and storytelling topics, including many award winning folktale picture books. She has been telling stories since 1964 in her work as a children's librarian, and she holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University along with an M.Ed.EC. (Educational Communications Masters) from the University of Hawaii and a Master's of Library Science (MLS) from the University of Washington. She is well known for her ability to create texts that delight the ear and are easy for teachers to share. Teaching with Story contains 20 of these useful stories that can be used by teachers with their students.
Prior to writing Teaching with Story, she has published a number of popular resource books including: The Storyteller's Start-up Book, Twenty Tellable Tales, and The Storyteller's Sourcebook: A Subject, Title and Motif-Index to Folklore Collections for Children. All three books are widely used in courses teaching the art of storytelling and as resources for librarians, classroom teachers and professional storytellers.

Julie Paschkis Bio:

Julie Paschkis is a painter, textile designer, and award winning illustrator and author of books for children. You can see her love of pattern and folk art in all of her illustration work. All of her visual work tells stories. The many children's books she has illustrated include folk tales, poetry and biographies. She also blogs with 3 other children's book creators: Books Around The Table at Wordpress.

From School Library Journal

K-Gr 4-MacDonald uses short, rhythmic sentences and repeated refrains to keep this tale of a greedy cat that lives with a mouse flowing. One day, he eats 35 pies. Then with a "slip slop, sluuurp," he proceeds to eat a wash lady and her laundry, some soldiers and their swords, the king and his elephant, and, finally, the mouse and her sewing supplies. Of course, Mouse cuts her way out and the others follow. After that, Cat eats more sparingly and others treat him with respect. Paschkis's folklike artwork has an open, uncluttered look. Individual objects curve along and around the pages on white backgrounds, lending focus to the feline as he becomes progressively larger after devouring each new morsel. One exception to this pattern is the spread that shows everything in the cat's stomach, all on a black background. It's dark in there! A page of notes explains the source of this story. Pair it with Jack Kent's The Fat Cat (Scholastic, 1971), a more humorous version, to show how different illustrated retellings can be.

Kathleen Simonetta, Indian Trails Public Library District, Wheeling, IL

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: August House
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0874836166
• ISBN 13: 9780874836165
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32