Gobble You Up!
Sunita and Gita Wolf
Tara Books
The wily jackal is hungry but he’s far too lazy to search for his own food. Instead he tricks his friend crane into catching some fish. Crane obliges but not only does jackal eat the lot, he gobbles up crane as well. He then goes on to consume tortoise, squirrel and cat. “My, you’ve put on weight!” peacock remarks and meets the same fate. Then along comes a huge elephant. Surely jackal won’t manage to fit an elephant into his now enormous tum but …
Time for a drink of water he thinks. But even jackal’s tummy cannot go on stretching for ever: SQUEE! BLEAH! BLAM! BURST and out tumble all the animals safe and sound.

And what about jackal? Considerably deflated, he goes off in search of the tailor bird for a large repair job.
This lively retelling of an old Rajasthani folk tale will perhaps remind European readers of the Danish story The Fat Cat or the Russian tale of The Clay Pot Boy. Readers aloud and their young audiences will enjoy the cumulative rhyming refrains and the latter will want to join in this part of the telling.
The illustrations are done by a Meena artist, Sunita, who was taught Mandana art by her mother. (In the Meena villages of Rajasthan women paint the floors and walls of their homes as well as communal areas to mark festivals, such as Diwali, celebrations and the passing seasons using this decorative form. Designs and images are made using cloth soaked in a chalk and lime paste that is squeezed through the fingers of the artist.)
As a frequent visitor to Rajasthan I was particularly interested to see, what is to me a familiar art form, being used to illustrate a story. In order to create this beautiful and unusual book, the artist’s original images (made with diluted acrylic paint squeezed through her fingers) were photographed, converted into graphic images and silkscreen printed – with the jackal rendered in black and the animals he consumes in white – onto specially made paper and hand bound. Truly a work of both art and craft.
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Even quite young children can try out this technique using white acrylic paint on brown sugar paper or better, large sheets of paper painted over with household size brushes in terracotta colour paint and left to dry before the design is added. This can be applied using a variety of tools – fingers, cotton buds, twisted rag, small plastic bottles with nozzles such as those from hair colour, etc.

Wayland
Tony Mitton and John Lawrence
David Fickling Books
Tony Mitton seems to get better and better. For me this spell-binding reimagining of a northern legend, brought to these shores by the Vikings, is his best yet. Essentially it is a tale of greed, revenge, hope and above all, love. It tells how three brothers, two warriors and Wayland, a smith, take three Swan Sisters as their brides having seized and hidden their swan capes to prevent their escape. Only Wayland’s wife loves him and when the three discover the whereabouts of their capes and plan their escape, she alone hopes to see her husband again. After the wives flee, Wayland’s life gets harder and harder. More and more terrible events occur but eventually, in this version at least, he and his beloved are reunited.
Tony Mitton’s beautifully crafted, lyrical verses are a joy to read aloud, and to get the best out of this book, it really must be read aloud.
‘From out of the dark spring stories
to banish both drear and cold.
So gather you near, come, listen and hear,
Where the fire burns red and gold.’
Equally beautifully crafted and the perfect complement to the poetry, are John Lawrence’s exquisite woodcut illustrations. These really draw you even deeper into the story making you want to linger long over each one.

There are some allusions of sex in the story so parents/teachers should read this themselves before offering it to under elevens.
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