Overview
The classic Aesop fable has been given a contemporary twist in The Race. Featuring the instantly recognizable Tortoise and Hare, this delightful re-telling features a rhyming text and an exciting race around the world, via boats, planes and even a hot air balloon. In Hares haste, he runs into all kinds of traveling trouble, while slow-and-steady Tortoise makes a leisurely trip to the end destination -New York! Lush illustrations combine with witty text to make the familiar morals of patience and diligence ring true for a whole generation.A modern rhyme retells the events of the famous race between the boastful hare and the persevering tortoise.
Synopsis
The classic Aesop fable has been given a contemporary twist in The Race. Featuring the instantly recognizable Tortoise and Hare, this delightful re-telling features a rhyming text and an exciting race around the world, via boats, planes and even a hot air balloon. In Hare s haste, he runs into all kinds of traveling trouble, while slow-and-steady Tortoise makes a leisurely trip to the end destination -New York! Lush illustrations combine with witty text to make the familiar morals of patience and diligence ring true for a whole generation.
Publishers Weekly
Finished with crackle-grain varnish, Jay's (Picture This) droll and distinctive paintings add a winning component to this updated rendition of Aesop's fable about the tortoise and the hare. The background patterns of hairline cracks in the illustrations suggest an antique quality, as do such images as an old-fashioned hot-air balloon, a vintage ocean liner and open-cockpit planes. But Jay's playful liberties with proportion and perspective also give her work a strong contemporary feel, creating a fresh and quirky amalgam of old and new. Repchuk's (The Snow Tree) narrative, relayed in rhymed couplets of varying cleverness, is less impressive: "Tortoise and Hare each packed a case. To New York City they decided to race," it opens. Tortoise books passage on a sturdy ship that transports him from England to Manhattan, while Hare embarks on a perilous string of misadventures. Readers will chuckle as Hare rear-ends a poodle's car in Paris, crashes his hot-air balloon in Egypt and falls out of a plane into New York Harbor, where a relaxed Tortoise fishes him out. An eye-catcher. Ages 3-6. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.