The Fisherman and His Wife [Hardcover]

Rachel Isadora (Author, Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 4 and up | Grade Level: P and up

Caldecott Honor–winning artist Rachel Isadora brings another fabulous fairy tale to brilliant life with her stunning collages. The Brothers Grimm story of the kind fisherman who catches an enchanted fish, and his greedy wife who always wants more, is perfect for these “give-me” times.

Rachel Isadora’s captivating collage-style artwork, featuring the African landscape and the increasingly turbulent ocean, provides a wonderful new backdrop for this classic story.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

As she has with previous books, The Princess and the Pea and The Twelve Dancing Princesses (both, 2007), Isadora takes stories from the Brothers Grimm and adapts them for a generically African setting. The fisherman frees a flounder and gets a wish. Then his wife makes him continually up the ante: her new hut must become a castle; then she wants to be king, emperor, pope! The highly patterned collage pictures don’t really capture the scope of her ambitions, which seem more European than African, but their shaped and sculptured beauty is arresting. Preschool-Grade 1. --Ilene Cooper

About the Author

Rachel Isadora lived in Africa over a ten-year period, inspiring her to create fairy tales in an African setting, such as her previous picture books The Twelve Dancing Princesses and The Princess and the Pea. She received a Caldecott Honor for Ben’s Trumpet and is the author of the popular Lili at Ballet series, and lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Juvenile (January 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399247718
• ISBN-13: 978-0399247712
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 10.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #507,099 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Lalapalooza Book, October 24, 2008

By 

Street Guy Professor (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Fisherman and His Wife (Hardcover)

What a super interpretation of a classic story. I read this to my son and I really chuckled at Ms. Isadora's humor. My son thought it a great, wacky story and asked how a writer from so long ago wrote such a "real" story. We really got into the pictures and my son wanted to try his hand at collage art work. We cut pictures from magazines and different papers and he made his own beach scene. The book was very creative and blew us away. We will take out some of Ms. Isadore's other books.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rutgers University Project on Economics and Children, August 15, 2008

By 

Yana V. Rodgers "econkids.rutgers.edu" (New Brunswick, NJ) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Fisherman and His Wife (Hardcover)

Using an African-themed setting that includes striking fabric designs, Rachel Isadora retells the classic Brothers Grimm tale about a hapless fisherman and his greedy wife. When the fisherman is surprised to catch a talking flounder, he consents to its request for release back to the sea. The wife, upset that her husband came home with no fish to cook for dinner, insisted that he go back and ask the magical fish to grant them a wish.

What started out as a reasonable wish to replace their dilapidated and stinky shack with a new hut that they genuinely needed, turned into a subsequent set of wishes for increasingly grandiose positions of wealth and power. The more unreasonable the wishes became, that's the darker and angrier the stormy sea grew, until the wife's final extravagant and impossible wish led them back to their original situation in the dilapidated shack. This book serves as a nice vehicle for teaching about the difference between wants and needs and the potential pitfalls of allowing the pursuit of wants to escalate.