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The Elephant's Friend and Other Tales from Ancient India

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The Elephant's Friend and Other Tales from Ancient India

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Overview

"Funny, wise, and entertaining from first page to last." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Step back into ancient India as Marcia Williams brings her inviting comic-book style to eight animal folktales that continue to enchant children today. Drawing from three books of best-loved Indian folktales— the Hitopadesha, the Jatakas,and the Panchatantra —this graphic storybook collection, alive with kidfriendly illustrations, is infused with humor and warmth.

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ISBN-13:	9780763670559
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	02/25/2014
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	1,136,647
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 10.40(h) x 0.20(d)
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Whimsical, illustrated retellings of eight folktales... By breaking the plots down into comic booklike panels and relying on the symbols of sequential art, Williams makes these potentially unfamiliar tales accessible and fun for young readers... Matching the comic-book format, a sly thread of humor consistently runs through these tales... An enchanting addition to any folktale collection.
—School Library Journal

Funny, wise, and entertaining from first page to last.
—Publishers Weekly

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

Funny, wise, and entertaining from first page to last.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Whimsical, illustrated retellings of eight folktales... By breaking the plots down into comic booklike panels and relying on the symbols of sequential art, Williams makes these potentially unfamiliar tales accessible and fun for young readers... Matching the comic-book format, a sly thread of humor consistently runs through these tales... An enchanting addition to any folktale collection.
—School Library Journal

With beautiful, intricately detailed artwork in a playful comic-book style, Williams retells eight Indian animal folktales.
—Booklist

The illustrations, employing a vibrant, hot-pink-dominated palette, are rendered in gouache and ink; Indian-style patterns texture backgrounds and borders. Elements of visual humor are scattered throughout, and readers will enjoy seeking out the finer funny details.
—Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

A grand introduction to these venerable, entertaining stories.
—The Horn Book

The colorful comic book illustrations immediately engage the reader in Williams’ retellings of favorite ancient Indian folktales...The vibrant jewel tones in the illustrations are reminiscent of the traditional Indian sari and pictures and page borders are playful and detailed.
—Library Media Connection

From the Publisher

Williams turns to the classic stories of India in this companion to Ancient Egypt: Tales of Gods and Pharaohs (2011), with which it shares a comic book–style aesthetic. Food emerges as a frequent theme in eight stories of haves vs. have-nots and eat-or-be-eaten interactions: in one story, a hungry tiger persuades a man to cross a river to retrieve a lost bangle (“Here I come, my dear spicy friend,” says the tiger, meeting the man halfway). Williams frames her vibrant cartoon panels with thematic borders, the best of which features the ramblings of a loquacious turtle whose motormouth is his (literal) downfall. Funny, wise, and entertaining from first page to last. Ages 8–12. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

K-Gr 3—Whimsical, illustrated retellings of eight folktales. Though readers may not recognize these particular stories, well-known themes are all here, such as trickster characters (a rabbit convinces a lion to leap into a well to attack his own reflection in "The Foolish Lion"); tales of friendship (a dog and an elephant form an unlikely bond in the title story); and cautionary tales about greed (in "The Golden Swan," a woman plucks all the feathers from a bird, only to find them worthless in the end). By breaking the plots down into comic booklike panels and relying on the symbols of sequential art (a rain cloud over an elephant's head denotes anguish, action lines imply movement), Williams makes these potentially unfamiliar tales accessible and fun for young readers. Appropriately, characters are cartoonlike, with exaggerated facial expressions and postures. Busy, patterned backgrounds and intricate page borders rendered in brightly hued gouache and ink let these stories retain a traditional Indian tone. The text within the narration boxes and speech bubbles is concise. However, matching the comic-book format, a sly thread of humor consistently runs through these tales, such as a hungry crocodile breaking the fourth wall to quip, "Maybe I could eat a reader instead." Williams never skimps on the quirky details, and there's plenty to notice here on second and third readings. An enchanting addition to any folktale collection.—Mahnaz Dar, formerly at Convent of the Sacred Heart, New York City

School Library Journal

Eight animal tales highlighting the value of cleverness and the hazards of greed are retold in Williams' signature breezy style. In the most familiar, "The Monkey and the Crocodile," she exonerates Crocodile (partially, at least) by endowing him with a nagging wife who demands Monkey's heart. In other tales, a golden bangle tempts an unwary traveler into the jaws of a "Scrawny Old Tiger," a kind "Golden Swan" ends up completely plucked after giving a feather to a needy but ungrateful woman, a canny rabbit convinces a "Foolish Lion" that a reflection at the bottom of a well is a rival lion, and, in the title story, a close if unlikely friendship that develops between a royal elephant and a stray dog survives a separation attempt. Grouped in sequential panels teeming with expressively drawn cartoon figures and framed within finely patterned borders, the illustrations glow with bright colors and brisk energy. Dropping in the occasional multisyllabic proper name for atmosphere and adding further zing with waggish side comments ("Maybe I could eat a reader instead!" mutters Crocodile's disappointed wife), Williams relates each fable economically and keeps the tone lighthearted even in the face of fatal consequences. Readers, wary or otherwise, could do far worse than dive into these witty, spirited renditions. (no source notes) (Graphic folktales. 8-11)

Kirkus Reviews

The Elephant's Friend and Other Tales from Ancient India

The Elephant's Friend and Other Tales from Ancient India

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