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

Marguerite W. Davol (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up

Telling his nine children tall tales about such creatures as a hen that lays hard-boiled eggs, Papa Alonzo Leatherby finds his outrageous stories threatened when a blizzard freezes every word that falls from his lips.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

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.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing; First Edition edition (October 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689802781
• ISBN-13: 978-0689802782
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,667,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Tall Tales inspired by the tradition of oral story telling, April 28, 2000

By 

Peggy Jo Skill (Puyallup, Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Papa Alonzo Leatherby: A Collection of Tall Tales from the Best Storyteller in Carroll County (Hardcover)

Anyone who has ever sat through a tall tale telling competition will understand the inspiration behind this modern Paul Bunyonesque book. Each chapter is devoted to one of Papa's children and is a self contained tall tale. All of the tales are connected both by the fact that they froze solid on the original telling (it was that cold), and have been thawed individually to be savored each in its own time, and by the desire of Papa Alonzo's daughter to learn from them in hopes of becoming as good a story teller as her father, a feat he claims she achieves at book's end. The stories are not quite the caliber of well honed traditional tall tales (What individually invented stories are?), but they are imaginative, funny and satisfying. The book is delightful. I will be giving copies of it as gifts for years to come.