Grandma and the Great Gourd
A Bengali Folktale
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Once upon a time, in a little village in India, there lived an old woman. Everyone in the village called her Grandma. One day, Grandma received a letter from her daughter, who lived on the other side of the jungle. "Please come and visit me," said the letter. "I haven't seen you in so long. I miss you."
And so, Grandma begins a perilous journey to the far side of the jungle. Can she use her keen wit to escape the jungle animals and make it safely home?
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni's sharp, rhythmic retelling of this Bengali folktale is complimented perfectly by Susy Pilgrim Waters's brightly colored, captivating illustrations.
Grandma and the Great Gourd is a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2013
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Little Red Riding Hood has only a wolf to contend with, but Grandma lives in India, where the forest hides a fox, a bear, and a tiger. Grandma talks the three predators out of eating her during her first trip ("I'll be a lot fatter on my way back from my daughter's house because she's such a good cook"), but she has to innovate on her way back. Grandma rolls herself home in a giant gourd, singing cheerfully, until she meets the attentive fox: "One hundred and one times I've sneaked into villages to steal chickens, but I've never seen a singing gourd!" he exclaims. Although Divakaruni's (The Conch Bearer) retelling starts slow, it soon gathers momentum. Like '50s textile patterns, debut illustrator Waters's silkscreenlike spreads render Grandma and the jungle creatures as two-dimensional cutouts; bold, stylized silhouettes of plant and tree motifs play off one another like dense jungle shadows. Grandma's witty resourcefulness and the opportunity to compare cross-cultural story traditions make this a useful resource and a good readaloud. Ages 5 8.
