Materials from Germany
It’s a tale as timeless as storytelling itself: two children, lost in the woods, stumble upon a candy house that isn’t all that it seems. From Hansel’s trail of bread crumbs to Gretel’s ingenious triumph over the witch, the details of this familiar fairy tale enchant children year after year. Now, in an update on her classic retelling, Caldecott Honor winner and New York Timesbestseller Susan Jeffers brings Hansel and Gretelto life for a new generation.
The Pied Piper pipes a village free of rats, and when the villagers refuse to pay him for the service, he pipes away their children as well.
As World War I draws to a close in 1918, German citizens are starving and suffering under a repressive regime. Sixteen-year-old Moritz is torn. His father died in the war and his older brother still risks his life in the trenches, but his mother does not support the patriotic cause and attends subversive socialist meetings. While his mother participates in the revolution to sweep away the monarchy, Moritz falls in love with a Jewish girl who also is a socialist. When Moritz’s brother returns home a bitter, maimed war veteran, ready to blame Germany’s defeat on everything but the old order, Moritz must choose between his allegiance to his dangerously radicalized brother and those who usher in the new democracy.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume 5, Issue 1
Living with his mother in a Berlin apartment house, Rico, a young boy with ADHD, enjoys playing detective games but when his friend Oskar suddenly disappears, possibly taken by a serial kidnapper, Rico determines to use his skills to find his friend.
Hounds and hares are like cats and mice. At least, that’s the way it is in Great Bone, a little village beside the river. Harley Hare and Hugo Hound see each other at school every day, and they’re interested in the same things. But they never talk to each other because the Hare and Hound families can’t stand one another. When the annual Big Race takes place on the meadow, Harley and Hugo find themselves racing neck to neck, until a terrible thunderstorm breaks out. Hugo is terrified of the storm and the lightning. Harley panics when they discover they are lost. It turns out that between them, they know just what to do. And, working together, they not only save themselves, but become heroes of the day as well.
In this rollicking retelling of “The Bremen Town Musicians,” a creaky old jack mule, a droopy hound dog, a ragged rooster, and a bony cat, all unwanted and no longer loved, set out for Bourbon Street in New Orleans to play bebop and make their fortune. Presently they encounter a band of thieves in a shack by a bayou, and though things don’t turn out quite as expected, they end up mighty fine just the same. A bluesy dialect that begs to be read aloud, vivid imagery, and distinctively comic illustrations infuse the adventures of these four determined friends with the flavor of rural Louisiana and the rhythm of New Orleans jazz. Glossary.
Elaborates on the tale of “The Pied Piper,” told from the point of view of a boy who is too ill to keep up when a piper spirits away the healthy children of a plague-ridden town after being cheated out of full payment for ridding Hamelein of rats.
Elaborates on the events recounted in the fairy tale, “Rumpelstiltskin,” in which a strange little man helps a miller’s daughter spin straw into gold for the king on the condition that she will give him her first-born child.
This book presents two tales from the Brothers Grimm, combined with Mr. Fox’s highly unusual interpretations of them.
Charlotte the sheep proves her courage once again when the rest of her flock, including Wolfi and his gang of pretend wolves, trembles in fear at the sound of howling in the forest.