Farmer Falgu’s trips never go smoothly. In the fourth book of the popular series, he is on his way to the annual kite-flying festival with his daughter, Eila. But…. Whoosh! She loses her kite to the strong wind. Will our clever Farmer Falgu come up with a solution to make his daughter happy? Chitra Soundar’s beautiful tale is complemented by Kanika Nair’s colorful illustrations that bring alive the kite flying festival of Rajasthan.
Edgar the mouse is frustrated when his architectural and artistic creations, made from tasty leftovers, are gobbled up by other mice, until he finds the perfect solution.
Brief folktales in which there is a mystery or problem that the reader is invited to solve before the resolution is presented. How can a thirsty crow drink from an almost-empty pitcher? How does arresting a stone help a judge find a boy’s stolen money? This artfully illustrated book presents fourteen intriguing mysteries from world folklore. Each brain-teasing tale is followed by a simple explanation of the solution, while notes at the back of the book describe the origins of these classic mysteries.
Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with four small children, is faced with a terrible problem. She must move her family to their summer quarters immediately, or face almost certain death. But her youngest son, Timothy, lies ill with pneumonia and must not be moved. Fortunately, she encounters the rats of NIMH, an extraordinary breed of highly intelligent creatures, who come up with a brilliant solution to her dilemma. And Mrs. Frisby in turn renders them a great service.
After many futile attempts to plant a tree in honor of his new baby sister, a young Haitian boy discovers the perfect solution.
There is an old saying that good things come in small packages. In this story from Italy, storytellers Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss show us that good things also come in furry packages. When a merchant finds himself in a land that is overrun by rats, he realizes that he has the most priceless gift in this country, namely his ship’s cats.
When the terrifying Iroko-man tries to take a woodcarver’s first-born child as partial payment for bringing fertility to his village, the father must find a clever solution.
Four hens live on a chicken farm. A little rooster lives there, too. “What a nice little rooster you have here,” everyone says when they come to visit. Indeed, it seems so for a while. But then the rooster begins to take more food for himself, and the hens get less. When the hens try talking to him about fairness, they’re not prepared for his reaction. The rooster turns into an egotistical barnyard bully, and the hens are worse off than before. Finally, the oldest hen puts her foot down: “We can’t go on like this. We must do something.”
The ladies of Iceland have a problem: the birds lay their eggs in nooks on the sides of steep cliffs, so the ladies have a very difficult time getting any of the eggs for baking. They go to town to buy chickens to lay eggs for them instead. For a while, everyone is happy, and there are plenty of eggs to bake plenty of yummy things. But the ladies’ problems are far from solved, for the more time the chickens spend with the ladies, the more they begin to act like them too, until eventually they stop laying eggs all together. Now this is a problem indeed, but the clever ladies will find a solution.
Little Reina persuades her mother to let her go to the beach with her uncle and cousins, but she has to promise to not go near the waves. It becomes intolerable for her to keep that promise as her cousins frolic in the water–and then she finds a solution to her problem.