Posted on by TracyC

Six Crows

Six Crows by Leo Lionni, 1988.

A farmer in the Balabadur Hills (the book doesn’t explicitly say that this story takes place in India, but it’s implied) has a good farm, but he also has a problem with the crows who live nearby. Whenever his wheat is ripe and about ready to harvest, the crows come and eat it.

Chasing the crows away doesn’t work because they always come back. The farmer decides to try building a scarecrow instead. It does frighten the crows, but with an unexpected result.

The crows decide that they must make their own scare-person, a kite that looks like a big, fierce bird, to scare away the scarecrow. When they fly over the field with their scare-person kite, the farmer gets scared and decides that he needs a bigger, scarier scarecrow.

The situation escalates, with the birds building an even bigger and scarier bird kite to scare the farmer.

Meanwhile, an owl who has been watching all of this unfold decides that it’s gone far enough and goes to talk to the farmer and the crows about the situation. The owl persuades both sides to speak to each other and work things out.

When they talk, the farmer and the crows realize that they don’t want to fight with each other. The crows depend on the farmer’s wheat for food, and the farmer realizes that he actually enjoys having the birds around. The owl fixes the mean-looking scarecrow to have a happy and friendly look.

I’m not sure that this is really a traditional fable because the book doesn’t provide any background information on the story and the author isn’t credited as doing a “retelling”, but the story is told in a folktale or fable format about conflict resolution. When the farmer and the crows are feuding, they continually escalate the situation with bigger and scarier “weapons” until the owl convinces them that the only way out of the situation is to talk it out and come to an agreement.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

The Dancing Goat

The Dancing Goat by Bonnie Book, 1966.

Mimi is a good little goat who lives with a poor farmer and his wife.  They like her and take good care of her, and in return, she provides them with milk that they sell to help make their living.  However, things change for Mimi when she happens to see a circus parade with a dancing dog.  From that moment on, all Mimi wants to do is to dance!

It wouldn’t matter so much except that Mimi develops a bad habit of dancing when the farmer is trying to milk her, spilling the milk.  Eventually, the farmer concludes that he can no longer afford to keep Mimi, even though he and his wife don’t really want to part with her.  Mimi is upset at the thought of losing her home, and when the farmer takes her to the market to sell her, she starts to cry.

The people at the market don’t want to buy a crying goat and think that something is wrong with Mimi.  To cover up the noise of Mimi crying, the farmer starts to blow a tune on his comb.  Hearing the music, Mimi starts to dance again.

To the farmer’s surprise, everyone in the market loves Mimi the Dancing Goat, and they throw coins.  With the money that Mimi makes with her dancing, the farmer can now only afford to keep her but buy other livestock as well.  From then on, the farmer regularly takes Mimi to the market to show off her dancing and earn some extra money.  He plans to buy another goat to keep Mimi company, and he hopes that the new goat turns out to be a dancer, too!

I usually don’t like “animal almost loses their home” type stories because I always feel too sorry for the poor little animal, but the risk in this story is over pretty quickly, which helps. It also helped that the farmer and his wife genuinely liked Mimi and were only going to part with her reluctantly, so it wasn’t difficult for the farmer to change his mind as soon as Mimi showed that she could bring in money to help earn her keep.