Squids Will Be Squids: Fresh Morals, Beastly Fables

by Jon Scieszka, Lane Smith (Illustrator)

Overview

Sure we'd all love to be able to go around telling stories about all the weird, scary, and just-plain-annoying people that we know. But the truth is, no one likes a gossip. Here, the irrepressible Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith have found a way around that problem-they just make like Aesop and change all the people to animals or food, add a moral to each story, and call the stories fables!

 

With tales like "Little Walrus," in which too much of the truth is a dangerous thing, the cautionary "Slug's Big Moment," wherein Slug is so caught up in herself that she doesn't see the steamroller behind her, and "Straw and Matches," which illustrates quite clearly why you should never play with matches (because they cheat), the eighteen fables in this uproarious collection are sure to delight readers both young and old.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142500408
Publisher:	Penguin Young Readers Group
Publication date:	05/26/2003
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	48
Product dimensions:	9.06(w) x 12.00(h) x 0.18(d)
Lexile:	AD650L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Multiple award-winning author Jon Scieszka grew up in Flint, Michigan, the second oldest and the nicest of six boys. Jon went to school at Culver Military Academy in Indiana where he was a Lieutenant; Albion College in Michigan where he studied to be a doctor; and Columbia University in New York, where he received an M.F.A. in fiction. He taught elementary school in New York for ten years in a variety of positions. He is the author of many books for children including the New York Times Best Illustrated Book The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales (illustrated by Lane Smith), the Caldecott Honor book The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (illustrated by Lane Smith), and Math Curse (illustrated by Lane Smith).  In addition to his work as an author, Jon also runs a web-based literacy program called “Guys Read” that is designed to encourage boys, particularly reluctant readers, to get involved with books. In 2008, Jon was named the country’s first National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, a joint effort of the Library of Congress and the Children’s Book Council. During his two-year role as Ambassador, he acted as a spokesperson for children’s literature, speaking to groups of parents, teachers, and children to encourage the importance of reading. You can visit Jon online at www.jsworldwide.com.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"[Has] and in-your-face attitude that will hold reader's rapt attention." -Publishers Weekly

Jon Scieszka

From a barnesandnoble.com e-nnouncement

We're all used to hearing fables -- those moral-filled stories about tortoises and hares and ants and grasshoppers. But fables about skateboarding frogs? Duckbilled Platypuses? BeefSnakStiks? Outrageous, you say? Well, that may be true, but these fables have just the right amount of bizarre hilarity that fans of Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith have come to expect. After standing fairy tales on their heads in THE STINKY CHEESE MAN AND OTHER FAIRLY STUPID TALES and blowing the lid on THE TRUE STORY OF THE 3 LITTLE PIGS, the enormously popular and highly acclaimed author and illustrator team are back with SQUIDS WILL BE SQUIDS, and this time, they've unlocked the ancient secret of animal tales.

Move over, Aesop, because the world of fables may never be the same!

A Fable by Jon Scieszka exclusively for barnesandnoble.com:

The secret to writing fables is to take a situation, change the names of the people to animal names, tell what happened, and then add a moral. Voila. You have a fable. I don't remember exactly where I got the idea for this fable, but it just kind of came to me....

YAK AND EMU

Yak promised Emu he would write a fable for her to give to barnesandnoble.com. He promised he would have it by Monday. On Monday, Emu called Yak and asked for the fable.

"I'm just fixing up the ending," said Yak. "I'll email it to you Tuesday."

On Tuesday, Emu called Yak and asked for the fable. "Oh man," said Yak. "My modem just died. I'll get it to you on Wednesday."

On Wednesday, Emu called Yak and asked for the fable.

"What bad timing," said Yak. "My whole system just crashed. I'll get it to you on Thursday."

On Thursday, Emu called Yak and asked for the fable.

"You're not going to believe this," said Yak. "But my dog just ate my hard drive." And at that exact moment, Yak's pants burst into flames and he had to come up with a fable right then and there.

MORAL: Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Editorial Reviews

"[Has] and in-your-face attitude that will hold reader's rapt attention." -Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Squids Will Be Squids pretends to be a book of fables, but it is really a sardonic riff on the idea of fables, a punch in the tummy of the notion that a story might have a lesson. . . the trouble is, fables need the crowing pearl of a lesson in the same way that jokes need punch lines. -- Riverbank Review

Christine Alfano

'This book's the best. Really cool and hilarious,' a 6-year-old told [the reviewer]. 'Kids almost 7 and up will love it.'. . .an adult. ..will regard this book as more silly than seditious. . . .I came to admire the sustained spirit of impiety.
—New York Times Book Review

Patricia Marx

[Scieszka and Smith's] books cleverly step outside of themselves. . . their books are all about being books. . . .Squids parodies. . .the moral fable. With a nod to Aesop, Scieszka leads readers over the edge into absurdity through an every loonier series of fables. -- Time Out

Barbara Aria

This latest bright, glib collection of tales irreverently updates Aesop-like fables as Beavis and Butthead might have rewritten them. Scieszka and Smith (Summer Reading Is Killing Me) forego tradition by ditching standard animal characters for the likes of a squid, a musk ox, and an animated stick of beef jerky. The introduction explains that fables were a way people could "gossip about anybody, as long as you could change their name to something like 'Lion' or 'Mouse' or 'Donkey' first." Some of the morals work (when Skunk, Musk Ox, and Cabbage argue about who smells, the moral is "He who smelt it, dealt it"); others are tags without the snap.

In illustrations that are as fresh and eyecatching as ever, the goofiness is as enticing as junk food, the colors Fruit-Loop bright, but fables usually have purpose, not punchlines; without such purpose, this is just another joke book for the '90s.

Kirkus Reviews