The Pandas and Their Chopsticks: and Other Animal Stories

by Demi

Overview

Eating bamboo shoots with chopsticks three feet long? Impossible, you say. Not if you are a playful panda and learn to share and work together with your friends! In her beautifully illustrated new book, award-winning author, Demi, presents ten classic animal stories, each containing important moral lessons for little hearts and minds to absorb. Cunning kitties, helpful hummingbirds, talkative turtles, and hasty hedgehogs, all bring these meaningful fables to life. Through her magical illustrations and whimsical storytelling, Demi teaches the importance of being humble, the dangers of being too proud, the importance of generosity and sharing, and how everyone, no matter how small, has a part to play in life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781937786168
Publisher:	Wisdom Tales
Publication date:	08/01/2014
Pages:	28
Sales rank:	827,451
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	AD530L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Demi is the award-winning author of over 130 bestselling children’s books. Her titles have sold over half a million copies. The Empty Pot was selected by former First Lady Barbara Bush as one of the books to be read on the ABC Radio Network Program Mrs. Bush’s Story Time, sponsored by the Children’s Literacy Initiative. Demi’s book Gandhi was named a New York Times Best Illustrated Book and received an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award. In addition, she represented the United States at the First International Children’s Book Conference in Beijing, China. She lives with her husband in Yarrow Point, WA.

Editorial Reviews

06/16/2014
Award-winning author-illustrator Demi (The Empty Pot) brings her considerable artistic skill to this collection of 10 animal stories. Themes of generosity, humility, and cooperation are presented through the antics of pandas, hedgehogs, hummingbirds, and turtles. Most of the tales unfold in a single illustrated spread, ending with a moral, set in italics (“Pride often opens our mouths. Humility tells us when to keep them closed,” reads the conclusion to “The Turtle Who Couldn’t Stop Talking”). Not all of the stories are original to Demi—for example, “The Pandas and Their Chopsticks” is a reworking of the traditional parable of the long spoons—but the illustrations set her version apart. Rich in color and pattern, with distinctive, whimsical borders that feature the animals mentioned in the stories, they will certainly draw the eye of young readers; “The Fox Who Was King of the Forest” depicts a small menagerie of animals in addition to the titular fox. The moral associated with each tale could be used as a teaching tool for parents or caregivers who want to discuss, or encourage, these qualities. Ages 6–up. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

07/01/2014
K-GR 3—Each of these Fables (nine are about animals and one about a river flowing into the ocean) Includes A Moral Or Proverb Worthy Of Discussion. Six Of The Selections Were Previously Published In A Chinese Zoo (Harcourt, 1987), two in Demi's Reflective Fables (Grosset & Dunlap, 1988) and one in The Dragon's Tale (Holt, 1996). Vocabulary has been updated, animals switched, and the lessons revised, but overall the stories are very similar. Demi's signature motifs are used generously, often in the faint patterns filling many of the mainly pastel backgrounds. Borders around the illustrated pages are filled with gesturing, parading, and cavorting animals from the particular tale. An author's note is missing here, but A Chinese Zoo credits ancient Chinese sources going back to the Indian Jataka Tales. Libraries missing Demi's earlier works or in need of replacements for worn copies may find this a worthy addition.—Carol S. Surges, formerly at Longfellow Middle School, Wauwatosa, WI

School Library Journal

2014-06-25
Ten fables with pretty pictures and explicit, if not always apt, morals.Recast from unspecified originals, this collection of minitales opens with the titular vision of hungry pandas seated around two tables and holding very long chopsticks—a version of which appeared previously in the author's Chinese Zoo (1987). They solve the problem of how to eat by feeding one another with their 3-foot chopsticks. Its moral—"Be generous. It brings happiness to everyone"—seems a little off-target given that nobody's giving away any food that belongs to them. Hubris is examined in an encounter between a kite and a butterfly ("Hello butterfly! I am so much higher than you! Aren't you just a little bit jealous of me?") and another between a proud river and the huge but humble ocean. Humility also features in the moral to the story of a turtle who "flies" on a stick lifted by birds until he opens his mouth. Since he's cast as garrulous rather than proud and lands in a lake as he wanted to do rather than dying, there's not much cautionary force to the episode. Creatures drawn with delicate, calligraphic strokes float in negative space on the pages within patterned borders, and though details in some stories aren't depicted literally, the art adds a vivacious energy to each episode.A sparse if nutritious (at least valuewise) gathering. (Picture book/folklore. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews