By: Anne IsaacsIllustrations: Paul O. Zelinsky
Puffin Books, 1994
Tall Tale, Picture Books
K-4th Grade
I would say this would be his baby picture.
Caldecott Honor 1994
This is a story about a girl named Angelica Longrider, or more commonly Swamp Angel. From the day she was bore she was, lets say, larger than life. She grew up in a traditional Tennessee home back in 1815. By the time she was two she had already built a log cabin, and once she was grown she was able to do all sorts of mind boggling things. One summer there was a giant bear that was raining hell on the Tennessee settlers, he was known as Thundering Tarnation.
I would say this would be his baby picture.Since Thundering Tarnation had eaten all of the food the settlers became worried since it was almost winter and a great reward was set for anyone who could get his pelt. As soon as people heard about the offer all sorts of Tennessee daredevils started trying to capture the giant bear, and since it was unheard of for a women to do such work everyone gave Swamp Angel a hard time about wanting to try to capture Tarnation. All of the daredevil men tried and they all had all sorts of terrible things happen to them as a result of Tarnations antics. Well it finally came down to Swamp Angel being the only one left to try to defeat the giant bear. Well they started to fight and Swamp Angel threw him up into the sky and thought she had lost him there. She was so determined to get his pelt she did many different things, at one point she even had to drink a whole lake until it was dry as a bone. Well finally a giant pine tree fell on top of Tarnation and killed him. That night they fixed Tarnation up and fed everyone in Tennessee, there was a great big celebration. Well Swamp Angel decides to keep the pelt as a rug but it was too big for Tennessee so she moves to Montana. And people think that they would never see anything of Thundering Tarnation but when Swamp Angel threw him into the sky he left a permanent mark up in the stars.
This is a fantastic story, so creative and innovative, it seems that most people do not try to create new tall tales such as this one, which makes it spectacular! Isaac's definitely had fun writing this story, at least I would think so if it were me! From the get go Swamp Angel is larger than life and already doing things out of the ordinary! It would be an excellent and entertaining story to read with a class. Getting the children to try to predict what is going would be something that would be really fun and would be useful with teaching creative thinking and story telling. You could have the children create their own tall tales and even have them illustrate them, it could be something that could be turned into a longer project that dealt with creative writing and then have a the final project where they actually make it into a book. Speaking of illustrations, the ones in this book are FANTASTIC! They were painted in oils on cherry, maple, and birch veneers. They fit with the story and they type of tale that it was just so perfectly! The illustrations were so detailed and something that could be looked at over and over because there was always some small detail that I did not notice at first glance but only saw after I looked through them again. It is refreshing to see someone create another tall tale that is current and yet sticks with the traditional genre.
Lesson Plans:
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