The Six Fools [Library Binding]

Zora Neale Hurston (Author), Joyce Carol Thomas (Author), Ann Tanksley (Illustrator)

Book Description

Age Level: 6 and up | Grade Level: K and up

THE SIX FOOLS

Zora Neale Hurston

Who's the biggest fool?

Is it the girl who floods her basement with cider, the man who jumps into his pants, the farmer who feeds his cow on the roof, or the woman who tries to fill her wheelbarrow with sunshine?

Based on a story collected by Zora Neale Hurston during her travels in 1930s Gulf States, The Six Fools is an outrageously funny tale about a dashing young man who finds foolish folks aplenty and true love!

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 1-5–A fellow courts a girl, and they agree to marry. Sadly, she and her family are such fools that the young man takes off: …you are the three biggest fools that I ever laid eyes on. I'm going traveling for a year, and if I find three fools as big as you, I'll come back and we'll get married. Does he find them? Of course. This adaptation of the fool story from Hurston's Every Tongue Got to Confess (HarperCollins, 2001) is light and adept. Though Thomas doesn't describe the changes she's made, comparison with the original shows that she's added a small amount of narrative detail and dialogue, hardly altering and not cutting anything from the original. The result is wonderful in voice: rich, hilarious, and satisfying. Tanksley's oil monoprints done in a folk-art style set the story in Hurston's 1920s-'30s with humor and vibrant color in a wide-ranging palette. The combination of single-page, three-fourths-page spread, and spot illustrations, with text varying black on white or white on color, gives a sense of visual movement to the story. Short notes at the end (including a source note and an explanation of the unusual but traditional ending phrase) complete this delightful picture book, perfect for reading aloud and for any folktale shelf. Pair it with Christopher Myers's Lies and Other Tall Tales (HarperCollins, 2005) for a Hurston Renaissance.–Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

PreS-Gr. 2. Stories about foolish adults make kids laugh and feel superior, and Thomas' adaptation, from Hurston's 1930s folklore collection Every Tongue Got to Confess, is a good example. A young man thinks his fiancee and her parents are the biggest fools he has ever laid eyes on--until he searches the world and finds fools everywhere: a man jumping up in the air to get into his trousers, a woman trying to haul sunshine into her kitchen in a wheelbarrow, and more. The characters, depicted with rolling eyes and exaggerated gestures, are not nearly as appealing as those created by Christopher Myers for Hurston's Lies and Other Tall Tales (2005), but children will still love the uproar and the nonsense. Pair this with one of the many African trickster tales or with Yiddish stories about the fools of Chelm, such as Eric Kimmel's Jar of Fools (2000) and Steve Sanfield's Feather Merchants and Other Tales of the Fools of Chelm (1991). Hazel Rochman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 6 and up
  
• Library Binding: 40 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins (December 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060006471
• ISBN-13: 978-0060006471
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,395,973 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Zora Neale Hurston was born on Jan. 7, 1891, in Notasulga, Alabama. Hurston moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, when she was still a toddler. Her writings reveal no recollection of her Alabama beginnings. For Hurston, Eatonville was always home.
Growing up in Eatonville, in an eight-room house on five acres of land, Zora had a relatively happy childhood, despite frequent clashes with her preacher-father. Her mother, on the other hand, urged young Zora and her seven siblings to "jump at de sun."
Hurston's idyllic childhood came to an abrupt end, though, when her mother died in 1904. Zora was only 13 years old.
After Lucy Hurston's death, Zora's father remarried quickly and seemed to have little time or money for his children. Zora worked a series of menial jobs over the ensuing years, struggled to finish her schooling, and eventually joined a Gilbert & Sullivan traveling troupe as a maid to the lead singer. In 1917, she turned up in Baltimore; by then, she was 26 years old and still hadn't finished high school. Needing to present herself as a teenager to qualify for free public schooling, she lopped 10 years off her life--giving her age as 16 and the year of her birth as 1901. Once gone, those years were never restored: From that moment forward, Hurston would always present herself as at least 10 years younger than she actually was.
Zora also had a fiery intellect, and an infectious sense of humor. Zora used these talents--and dozens more--to elbow her way into the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, befriending such luminaries as poet Langston Hughes and popular singer/actress Ethel Waters.
By 1935, Hurston--who'd graduated from Barnard College in 1928--had published several short stories and articles, as well as a novel (Jonah's Gourd Vine) and a well-received collection of black Southern folklore (Mules and Men). But the late 1930s and early '40s marked the real zenith of her career. She published her masterwork, Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1937; Tell My Horse, her study of Caribbean Voodoo practices, in 1938; and another masterful novel, Moses, Man of the Mountain, in 1939. When her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, was published in 1942, Hurston finally received the well-earned acclaim that had long eluded her. That year, she was profiled in Who's Who in America, Current Biography and Twentieth Century Authors. She went on to publish another novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, in 1948.
Still, Hurston never received the financial rewards she deserved. So when she died on Jan. 28, 1960--at age 69, after suffering a stroke--her neighbors in Fort Pierce, Florida, had to take up a collection for her funeral. The collection didn't yield enough to pay for a headstone, however, so Hurston was buried in a grave that remained unmarked until 1973.
That summer, a young writer named Alice Walker traveled to Fort Pierce to place a marker on the grave of the author who had so inspired her own work.
Walker entered the snake-infested cemetery where Hurston's remains had been laid to rest. Wading through waist-high weeds, she soon stumbled upon a sunken rectangular patch of ground that she determined to be Hurston's grave. Walker chose a plain gray headstone. Borrowing from a Jean Toomer poem, she dressed the marker up with a fitting epitaph: "Zora Neale Hurston: A Genius of the South."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable!, January 23, 2007

By 

Amy Graham (Scottsdale, AZ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Six Fools (Hardcover)

We picked up The Six Fools at the Library as part of our ongoing study of myth, folklore and legends...it's one of the few African American stories that my branch of the library has on the shelf and I'm glad I did. Here we have the story of a young man who becomes engaged and discovers that his fiancé and her parents are fools and so he decides that he's going to go out into the world and if he can find three fools bigger than them, he'll return to marry the daughter. The Six Fools is one of those rather surreal tales that doesn't really make much sense, but are a joy to read...filled with humor and images that will entertain children and adults alike. Does our young man find three fools and return to marry the girl...but of course, the world is full of fools, but you'll have to read to find out exactly how foolish the people he encounters are! A joy to read for adults and kids alike, I give The Six Fools four stars, both the text and the illustrations work well tighter in this story, recommended!

5.0 out of 5 stars The Six Fools, February 14, 2006

By 

Black Butterfly Review (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Six Fools (Hardcover)

The Six Fools is a story/folk tale collected by Zora Neal Hurston.

This tale interweaves the surrealism of African Folklore and Hurston's abstract style for a story that is full of enchantment all the while set to the tone of a children's book.

The story is creatively spun with Hurston's unique fashion and use of rich dialect. Encouraging the audience to be drawn in at the conflict of the story, which entails the protagonist confronting his future `family to be' with a challenge. He informs them that in order to marry their daughter, he must make a journey in order to find three additional "fools" as big as they. The tale continues and ends with magical word play and wonderful imagery.

Ms. Thomas has skillfully adapted/translated this tale to a comprehensive yet comical story for children. The illustrations by Ms. Tanksley are vibrant, colorful miniature works of art that can tell a story without dialogue.

Eleanor S. Shields, Black Butterfly Review