Papa Alonzo Leatherby: A Collection of Tall Tales from the Best Storyteller in Carroll County - Hardcover

Grade 3-6-Meet the Leatherby family: Papa Alonzo, wife Lulie, and nine children. They live in New England's Carroll County, so long ago that nobody "had ever heard of automobiles, much less seen one" and television "hadn't been thought up yet." So what do they do for fun? Papa Alonzo tells stories, and all of them are whoppers. The book begins when the winter was so cold that Papa Alonzo's words froze, and as they thawed Lulie canned them. Each chapter links a child (or, in one case, twins) and a story, as the jars are opened one by one. From the mammoth maple tree that gave enough sap for syrup for the whole winter, to the goat that turned blue, to the biggest dingdong turkey ever seen in those parts, Papa Alonzo's tales touch on a variety of topics throughout the seasons. His turns of phrase are delightful. The selections make great read-alouds and can be used to inspire more creative tall-tale telling. The framing of a story within a story is occasionally awkward, and Davol uses some stock tricks of the genre (the corn that pops because it's so hot, the geese who fly off with the quick-frozen pond), but there's a lot of originality here, too. Pair this title with Mary Pope Osborne's American Tall Tales (Knopf, 1991) or Robert San Souci's Larger than Life (Doubleday, 1991; o.p.).
Sally Bates Goodroe, Houston Public Library
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.