Thibodeaux Turtle and Boudreaux Bunny: The Tortoise and the Hare with a Louisiana Twist

by Todd-Michael St. Pierre, Lee Randall (Illustrator)

Overview

Once upon a Louisiana time, there was a turtle and a bunny. The turtle was polite, quiet, and careful; the bunny was rather rude, loud, and impatient. The turtle finally agrees to a big race against the bunny. In this Louisiana version of the Aesop tale, young children will discover that slow and steady wins the race.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781455624508
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	11/11/2019
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	1,122,274
Product dimensions:	8.60(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.30(d)
Age Range:	3 - 8 Years

About the Author

Todd-Michael St. Pierre is the author of several cookbooks and children's books rooted in Southern themes. He has served as a judge for The Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators Contest and has developed recipes for Cooking Light magazine. An avid Cajun and Creole cook, dedicated gardener, lifelong cat lover, and proud Louisianian, St. Pierre considers himself part Creole mouse and part Cajun mouse.

With a lifelong desire to be an artist, Lee Brandt Randall graduated from Louisiana State University with a bachelor of fine arts in printmaking. She continued to nurture this passion by working in freelance graphic design, film animation, and book illustration, in addition to teaching private art lessons for children and adults. A member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Randall continues to teach and in her spare time enjoys jazz, cooking, and puppet making.

Editorial Reviews

2019-06-23
Aesop's familiar fable gets a Cajun twist.

Thibodeaux Turtle might be slow but she's well mannered and unassuming. Boudreaux Bunny, on the other hand, knows he's fast, and he's not shy about letting everyone know it (in fact he can be quite rude). Boudreaux teases Thibodeaux about her speed, saying mockingly that her garden won't get planted by Christmas. One day he's mercilessly harassing her about her turtle's pace, saying there's no way she could beat him in a race: "You're not just a slowpoke, you're a girl!" Her friends, Louisiana creatures one and all, urge her to accept the challenge, and when she does, they train her. The fable plays itself out in the traditional way, of course. In the backmatter, St. Pierre adds a song for each main character as well as a recipe for pralines. Randall's naïve-style illustrations have the look of colored pencil; they are adequate in reflecting the story if a bit stagey at times. St. Pierre neatly weaves local details into the narrative, but his choice of the folkloric surnames from a tradition of country-bumpkin jokes in Louisiana doesn't quite fit the characters, since both Boudreaux and Thibodeaux are usually men and none too bright. Boudreaux's blatant sexism may serve as a conversation starter for little listeners.

A pleasant-enough regional retelling. (Picture book. 3-8)

Kirkus Reviews