Boy Who Cried Wolf

"Nothing ever happens here," the shepherd thinks. But the bored boy knows what would be exciting: He cries that a wolf is after his sheep, and the town's people come running. How often can that trick work, though?

B.G. Hennessy's retelling of this timeless fable is infused with fanciful whimsy through Boris Kulikov's hilarious and ingenious illustrations. This tale is sure to leave readers grinning sheepishly.

"Nothing ever happens here," the shepherd thinks. But the bored boy knows what would be exciting: He cries that a wolf is after his sheep, and the town's people come running. How often can that trick work, though?

B.G. Hennessy's retelling of this timeless fable is infused with fanciful whimsy through Boris Kulikov's hilarious and ingenious illustrations. This tale is sure to leave readers grinning sheepishly.

Publishers Weekly

Hennessy (Claire and the Unicorn Happy Ever After, reviewed below) and Kulikov (Morris the Artist) retell a well-known story with humorous verve. Kulikov slyly sets the scene in a Renaissance Italian landscape. He pictures the shoeless shepherd chewing on a stem; lazy butterflies, birds and dragonflies flit about. Hennessy's conversational style meanwhile brings the 16th-century peasant into present-day focus: " `I am so bored,' he thought. `All day long all I do is watch sheep.....' Munch, munch, munch. Baaaaaaaaaaaaa, answered the sheep." When the dullness overwhelms him, he runs to the village, yelling, "There is a wolf after my sheep!" The townspeople arrive en masse and span several centuries, from a knight to a musketeer to 19th-century city-folk in top hats. "That was a fun afternoon," thinks the shepherd, playing leapfrog with a friend who stays behind. Needless to say, he succeeds a second time, but his third effort (in earnest) fails to draw a crowd. Kulikov depicts the wolves as a fearsome hydra, but the boy's punishment is not too severe; the book ends wordlessly, with a spread revealing that the resourceful sheep have clambered up a tree. Hennessy's economic prose repeats key phrases for emphasis, while Kulikov composes comic close-ups with steep perspectives as the intensity heightens. Their shepherd misbehaves, but he's not so bad-he just wants a little excitement. Ages 3-7. (Mar.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

B.G. Henessy is the author of more than thirty children's books. For many years she worked as an art director at a major children's book publisher in New York, and now she lives on Mummy Mountain in Paradise Valley, Arizona, with her husbands and sons. Visit her Web site at www.bghennessy.com

Boris Kulikov, a former set and costume designer in St. Petersburg, Russia, was chosen as a Flying Start by Publishers Weekly. He has also illustrated Morris the Artist by Lore Segal, The Perfect Friend by Yelena Romanova, and Carnival of Animals by John Lithgow. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.