Beware of Boys

Review

A small boy wanders into the woods and is captured by a hungry wolf who announces that he is going to eat him. "Raw?" the boy asked incredulously. The wolf is taken aback. Is there any other way? Now, there's a lead in! The boy suggests a series of preposterous and funny recipes that the wolf might use to cook a wonderful dish with Boy as a major ingredient. Each time the wolf is sent scurrying to bring in incredible amounts of ingredients common and exotic only to be told that there's one thing missing. Protesting that the boy didn't ask him to fetch that, the wolf is sent off to find the ingredients for the next concoction. At the end of the story we find out what some of those strange ingredients are for and we've been exposed to a lot of measurement terms both real and preposterous.

This is a clever take-off from the story of "Stone Soup". Students might like to look at Tony Ross's Stone Soup for a different departure from the story, after reading the more conventional versions. There are many trickster tales in folklore and in modern composed story and students can, after enjoying them, categorize the devices used and compare tricker and trickee.

Related Areas of Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site

• Food and Stone Soup in Children's Literature
• Fools and Tricksters in Children's Literature