Fairy Tales and Fables

Fairy Tales and Fables
Gyo Fujikawa ~ Grosset & Dunlap, 1970

Since we're talking Gyo this week, I'll share this one, too. My son's best friend has an older sister who often suggests books for them to read, and the current obsession via big sis is The Sister's Grimm series. You guys know we're audio book nuts in this house, so if the boy hasn't been obsessively listening to The Graveyard Book over and over, we've been following the tales of sisters Sabrina and Daphne as they become fairy tale detectives.

While listening, I'm often having to go back and find original fairy tale stories to help fill in the make-believe background that my son might be unfamiliar with.

Giant storybooks like this usually do the trick.

All the favorites are here. Red. Cinderella. Three Pigs. Jack. Midas. Goldilocks. The lady who gets a sausage stuck to her nose. 50 stories in all, lovingly illustrated by sweet Gyo.

...from The Three Wishes

Soon the man lost his patience and exclaimed, "I am tired of hearing about sausage! I am tired of hearing you speak! I wish that the sausage were stuck to your nose!"

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the sausage was hanging at the end of his wife's nose.

"Now see what you've done!" cried the wife. "You have wasted another wish by your foolish tongue! And she tried desperately to remove the sausage from the end of her nose, but it would not come off.

There's all kinds of yum in this book, which intersperses black and white ink drawings with full color paintings. Gyo was American-born of Japanese descent and though she passed in 1998, many of her books are still available, including this one that was reprinted in 2008 by Sterling. And, of course, vintage copies abound!

Also by:
A Child's Garden of Verses
A Child's Book of Poems
Let's Grow a Garden
Baby Animals
Oh, What a Busy Day!
Our Best Friends
Come Follow me

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