Can't Scare Me!
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
From celebrated legend Ashley Bryan, a lavishly depicted cautionary tale of fearlessness and many-headed monsters.
There was a little boy who knew no fear...
Nope, no fear at all. Not even when his grandma warns him of the giants—the two-headed giant and his three-headed brother, that is. Because this wild, fearless boy isn’t scared of any many-headed giants at all!
So one day, he slips away. He just takes off and leaves his grandma behind. After all, what does he care? He’s got his mangoes, and the sunshine, and his flute. And he isn’t scared one bit.
But our boy isn’t really bad, you know; just wild. And soon he misses his grandma. So he turns around, and runs right into—those monsters. He’s about to discover that he may indeed have something to fear…their terrible, horrible singing voices!
This trickster tale from the French Artilles will have readers toe-tapping and trying out their own singing voices.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Bryan's folktale-style story, a boy is certain he's above the rules, but he doesn't suffer the usual comeuppance. Instead, he makes fools out of his enemies and earns his grandmother's admiration. "Tanto, tanto, I'm wild and I'm free./ Grandma's stories can't scare me," he crows, slipping away from his mother despite Grandma's warnings about a two-headed giant and his three-headed brother. The tune the boy plays on his flute emboldens him further, and Bryan repeats it often ("Too-de-loo-de-loo-de-loot!") as narrative punctuation. The boy stays calm when the three-headed giant catches him in a sack and tells his cook to fatten him up. Sure enough, the child's flute and quick thinking are enough to outwit his captors. It's the giant's screechingly bad rendition of the boy's tune that truly scares him: "His singing voice was worse/ Than any threat to eat him." Bryan's paintings have the warmth and substance of Diego Rivera murals, while the giants vibrate in phantasmagoric shades of magenta and lime. There's never any doubt that the boy will prevail, and there's something classically Homeric about his exploits. Ages 4 8.
