Legends, Myths & Fables - General & Miscellaneous, Greek & Roman Mythology, General & Miscellaneous Science

Professor Aesop's The Crow and the Pitcher

Name: Professor Aesop's The Crow and the Pitcher
Author: Stephanie Gwyn Brown
ISBN: 9781582460871

by Stephanie Gwyn Brown, Stephanie Gwyn Brown (Illustrator), Aesop

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Overview

A hot, dry desert. A tired, thirsty crow. A tall pitcher of water. Think you know the story? Think again! In her reinterpretation of Aesop's classic fable of perseverance, STEPHANIE GWYN BROWN guides readers through all six steps of the scientific method—from question to communication—with Crow as the model scientist. But it takes a strong work ethic and a series of comic attempts before he invents a way to bring the water to a life-saving drinking level. Readers are ultimately invited into Crow's laboratory where they learn much more than just a moral to the story.A hip and funny treatment of the perseverance fable.Adapted to highlight the Scientific Method!

A clever crow uses the scientific method to get a drink from a nearly empty pitcher in this adaptation of a fable from Aesop. Includes an explanation of the scientific method's six steps.

Synopsis

A hot, dry desert. A tired, thirsty crow. A tall pitcher of water. Think youknow the story? Think again! In her reinterpretation of Aesop's classic fable of perseverance, Stephanie Gwyn Brown guides readers through all six steps of the scientific method-from question to communication-with Crow as the model scientist. But it takes a strong work ethic and a series of comic attempts before he invents a way to bring the water to a life-saving drinking level. Readers are ultimately invited into Crow'slaboratory, where they learn much more than just a moral to the story.

Linda Ruble - Children's Literature

A thirsty crow discovers a pitcher containing a small amount of water but is unable to drink because his beak is too short to reach far enough down the narrow pitcher. He cannot give up because his life depends upon drinking the water. After several unsuccessful attempts, the crow has an idea of how to sufficiently raise the water level in the pitcher, illustrating the importance of determination and ingenuity. Author Stephanie Brown breaks the fable down into the six steps of scientific method, including gathering facts, forming a hypothesis or educated guess, then experimenting to test the hypothesis. Scientifically-minded kids will enjoy Professor Aesop's spin on the old fable, and Brown's illustrations are a nice combination of colorful storybook drawings with just a hint of textbook to them. Included along the page borders are gauges displaying information such as ambient temperature and determination levels. As noted in the book, necessity plus perseverance equals invention, and the crow eventually uses these factors to his advantage. 2003, Tricycle Press,

About the Author, Stephanie Gwyn Brown

STEPHANIE GWYN BROWN experiments with traditional and digital media in her toy and gadget filled studio in Los Angeles where she lives with her husband and three cats who observe and take notes. This is her first picturebook.

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Editorials

Children's Literature

School Library Journal

K-Gr 4-When a thirsty crow can't reach the water in a pitcher, his problem becomes the focus of a fact-based inquiry transforming a familiar fable into a demonstration of the scientific method. A simple text, amusing illustrations, and a lighthearted perspective make it work. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Busy design seeks to illustrate Aesop's fable of the crow and the pitcher, with an emphasis on the scientific method-hence, presumably, the "Professor" Aesop of the title. The story is told straightforwardly and without linguistic elaboration: the thirsty crow finds a pitcher of water; the water level being too low for his beak to reach, he uses the principle of water displacement to raise the level of the water with a series of pebbles until he is able to drink. With a heavy reliance on digital technique, newcomer Brown's full-bleed, mixed-media illustrations add what are probably meant to be clever touches: a thermometer measuring the "ambient temperature" (a term that goes unexplained), a Thirst-o-meter, a determination scale, and a pebble indicator are added one by one as the crow works through his solution. Blueprint diagrams illustrate both the essential problem and the solution, and an X-ray shows the raising of the water level in process. The moral-"Necessity + Perseverance (that's good old hard work) = Invention"-precedes a busy and confusing double-paged spread explanation of "the scientific method according to crow." The notion of introducing children to the scientific method is praiseworthy, but this attempt to illustrate it falls victim to its own cuteness. While the various scales at the sides of the page are entertaining, they add little to the mission of the narrative, instead serving to distract the reader from the simple elegance of the crow's solution. The illustrations are bright and appealing, but in the end they are more obfuscatory than illustrative. Children are natural scientists; they do not need these extraneous bells and whistles to encourage exploration.(Picture book/nonfiction. 4-7)