Jumping Frog [Paperback]

Mark Twain (Author), Alan James Robinson (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 1998

Mark Twain's "Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is a story of the crusty Jim Smiley, a man who so loved to bet on animals - horses, dogs, etc. - that he trained a frog to be the strongest jumper in his county.

Twain's broad yet graceful humor is beautifully complemented by the elegant woodcuts of Alan James Robinson. Finely reproduced, these illustrations bring Twain's great comic tale to life.

Twain's classic tale of the "Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is in three parts: the original tale published in 1865, the first French translation of the story, and Twain's tongue-in-cheek verbatim re-translation into English.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The book is graced with comic but elegant wood carvings by Alan James Robinson...Twain fans will leap for joy. -- New Orleans Times - Picayune

Language Notes

Text: English, French

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Moyer Bell and its subsidiaries; 2nd edition (September 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559210974
• ISBN-13: 978-1559210973
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,346,523 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Twain (1835-1910) was an American humorist, satirist, social critic, lecturer and novelist. He is mostly remembered for his classic novels The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Book about the perils of translation, February 27, 2006

By 

Antoniioo Giidi "Giidi" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Jumping Frog (Dover Humor) (Paperback)

The Jumping Frog is an interesting tale, but this book is more about the difficulties of translations than about the Jumping Frog itself. You can probably find the Jumping Frog in other collection of Twain's books, so don't bother to buy this book if you are only interested in the tale. It is only a three-page tale.

To make a long story short, the Jumping Frog was translated into French with the objective of demoralizing Twain's humor. Obviously, the humor in this tale was more in between the lines and in the form it was written than about the story itself (which was silly and not funny.)

As Twain says, however, the translator "has not translated it at all; he has simply mixed it all up; it is no more like the Jumping Frog when he gets through with it than I am like a meridian of longitude." To prove his point, Twain proceeded to translate the French translation "back into a civilized language" [i.e. English] to show that the French translation did not do justice to his work.

This book has the original tale in the first pages, then the French translation, and then the English version of the French translation.

It is more a personal vendetta from Twain than a work of literature. But it is an interesting work for those interested in translation.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mahhvelous Dahhlink!, July 21, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Jumping Frog (Paperback)

This is a super book, to read aloud or for kids to try on their own. The pictures are fun and Twain is (of course) delightful. You won't regret buying this book.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mark in a Playful Mood..., March 13, 2008

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Jumping Frog (Dover Humor) (Paperback)

Mark Twain had a wicked sense of humor. Sometimes it got him in embarassing scrapes, like his famous disaster at the banguet for Jame Russel Lowell. Old Mark wouldn't have been comfortable with "political correctness" - no matter who defined it.
Twain wrote some wickedly funny essays about the ludicrous (to him) German language, and he wasn't any more merciful to French. In this little book, he finds himself astonished (disingenuously) at reading a translation of his famous story "the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" into French. The volume in hand contains that story, the translation, and for our amusement, Twain's retranslation of his story from French to English:
"It there was one time here an individual under the name of Jim Smiley; it was in the winter of '49, possibly well at the spring of '50, I no me recollect not exactly. This which makes me to believe that it was the one or the other, it is that I shall remember that the grand flume is not achieved when he arrives at the camp for the first time..." and so on through the whole tale.
Gruelingly funny, but perhaps it is that hardly lest one shall whenself have studied the french...