SIX FOOLISH FISHERMAN

Exercising the storyteller's prerogative to mix and match, San Souci (Secret of the Stones, 1999) takes incidents from several traditional “noodle” tales and sets them on the Louisiana bayou. When Ti-Paul, Philippe, and Pierre bring poles but no bait, and Jules, Jacques, and Jean bring bait but no poles, it looks like no one's going to fish. The misinterpreted advice of a passerby only muddies the waters, and the silliness escalates until Pierre decides that he must be dead, since no matter who does the tallying, there only seem to be five people present. Luckily, Pierre's wife, Henriette, arrives to set things straight, more or less. In Kennedy's (Mr. Bumble, 1997) cartoon illustrations, the six dim bulbs struggle through their misadventures wearing wide, vacuous smiles, as a frog and a turtle look on in vast amusement. The tale has a mild gumbo flavor, evoked more by cadence and pacing than dialect, and the droll goings-on will put readers and listeners—even those familiar with similar incidents in Alvin Schwartz's All of Our Noses Are Here (1985) and like collections—in stitches. (glossary, afterword, bibliography) (Picture book/folktale. 6-8)