The Fortune Tellers

A: The Fortune Teller

B: Lloyd Alexander

C: Trina Schart Hyman

D: Dutton Children's Books (Division of Penguin Books USA Inc.)

E: Picture Book, Fiction

F. 2nd - 4th (?)

This was a story about a young carpenter, his name is never revealed, who lives in the country of Cameroon. He was very unhappy with the trade he was in and wondered if this is what he would do the rest of his life. He caught wind of a fortune teller that was coming to the town next to his, so he set off immediately to go and talk with the man and see if he could get his questions about his life figured out. The first thing that the fortune teller says is a prediction that the carpenter will become rich, "On one condition: that you earn large sums of money". After the fortune teller said that he had the carpenter hooked and he gladly paid the man. The carpenter asked all kinds of question, about being famous, getting married, and living a long life. With every question asked the fortune teller told him good news but always with one condition to it. He started to walk away after his initial questions had been answered but stopped and decided that he had more questions to ask so, he turned around and ran back to where the carpenter was. Once he got there he found the room empty and the cloth merchant's wife came in (the owned the room that the fortune teller was using) and thought it was a miracle that the fortune teller had preformed. She thought that he had turned himself from an old man into a young and handsome man. She would not believe anything the carpenter said so she made him tell the family their fortunes. Pretty quickly people kept coming and giving him money and so he decided that he would give up being a carpenter and pretend to be a fortune teller since the money was so easy. He ended up getting everything he wanted; fame, riches, a wife, and he lived a long time. Then we come to find out what really happened to the original fortune teller, he had fallen from the balcony, fell into a cart with a running bull carrying him into the savanna, was chased by a lion up a tree, broken a hornet's nest, got carried off by a GIANT eagle, and finally dropped into a river and was never seen again. The carpenter thought fondly of the fortune teller but he lived a long and happy life in his new profession.

This was a WONDERFUL picture book, quite humorous and entertaining to say the least. I think that it would easily keep the attention of any child while either reading, listening or even just looking at the illustrations.

Now the illustrations were one of my favorite parts of this book. Trina Schart Hyman did an excellent job. They were so vivid and realistic, it was so easy to visualize what the carpenter would see on his journey. I loved how whenever the fortune teller would speak of a prediction for the carpenters life there would be an illustration that had a little different of a hue to it, like it was what he would imagine it to look like if it did indeed come true. The colors were magnificent! I am pretty sure that most of the illustrations would be considered double page because most of the time the pictures flowed from the left page to the right page of visa versa. I love how the book does this it just makes the story flow so smoothly. At one point there was even a page turn effect, when the fortune teller was having to deal with all his problems that lead to his disappearance. The medium that was used was comprised of four different eliminates all of varying kind: ink, acrylic, and crayon and it is done on Arches watercolor board. I believe that the art alone would be interesting enough for a very young child just to look at, the colors are just so bright and vivid!

Over all I thought that this was a really cute story and the illustrations were beautiful. I tried to pick something other than an ordinary picture book and saw on the list that he was considered to be a writer of fantasy, even though the majority of the books i found by him were chapter books.