It Could Always Be Worse: A Yiddish Folk Tale (Michael Di Capua books)
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
The Judge: An Untrue Tale (Sunburst Book)
by Harve Zemach
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Creeping closer day by day--
Its eyes are scary,
Its tail is hairy...
I tell you, Judge, we all better pray!
Anxious prisoner after anxious prisoner echoes and embellishes this cry, but always in vain. The fiery old Judge, impatient with such foolish nonsense, calls them scoundrels, ninnyhammers, and throws them all in jail. But in the end, Justice is done--and the Judge is gone. Head first!
Harve Zemach's cumulative verse tale is so infectious that children won't be able to avoid memorizing it. And Margot Zemach's hilarious pictures are brimming with vitality as well as color.
The Little Red Hen: An Old Story
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
This little red hen is a hard-working single mother who gets no help from the goose, the cat, and the pig. When she asks who will help her, the refrain "Not I" rings out loud and clear. (Is this a little too close to home?) So she harvests and threshes the wheat herself and hauls it to the mill with her chicks trailing behind. She bakes a fine loaf of bread and when it's ready to eat, she doesn't choose to share it with the lazy goose, cat, and pig. Ha! This tale is a fun way for children to learn about the importance of helping others, and sharing, too. Margot Zemach's detailed, vivacious illustrations make this edition an all-time favorite. She is the author and illustrator of It Could Always Be Worse, a Caldecott Honor Book, and was awarded the Caldecott Medal in 1974 for her illustrations in Duffy and the Devil, written by her husband Harve Zemach. (Ages 3 to 6)
The Three Little Pigs: An Old Story (Sunburst Book)
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
The Cat's Elbow: and Other Secret Languages
by Alvin Schwartz
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Presents instructions for speaking thirteen secret languages, including Pig Latin, one of the best known and easiest codes to learn, and Boontling, developed by people in a California town.
Eating Up Gladys
by Margot Zemach
from Arthur A. Levine Books
The Chinese Mirror
by Mirra Ginsburg
from Voyager Books
Duffy and the Devil (Sunburst Book)
by Harve Zemach
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Duffy and the Devil was a popular play in Cornwall in the nineteenth century, performed at the Christmas season by groups of young people who went from house to house. The Zemachs have interpreted the folk tale which the play dramatized, recognizable as a version of the widespread Rumpelstiltskin story. Its main themes are familiar, but the character and details of this picture book are entirely Cornish, as robust and distinctive as the higgledy-piggledy, cliff-hanging villages that dot England's southwestern coast from Penzance to Land's End.
The language spoken by the Christmas players was a rich mixture of local English dialect and Old Cornish (similar to Welsh and Gaelic), and something of this flavor is preserved in Harve Zemach's retelling. Margot Zemach's pen-and-wash illustrations combine a refined sense of comedy with telling observation of character, felicitous drawing with decorative richness, to a degree that surpasses her own past accomplishments.
The Princess and Froggie
Whenever the princess's problems seem insoluble, Froggie helps her out of her difficulties.
Los Tres Cerditos: Un Viejo Cuento
by Margot Zemach
from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
This much beloved story has inspired a visual interpretation that has the look of a classic.
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