Caroline Repchuk

Aesop's classic fable, The Tortoise and the Hare, is here reinterpreted by Caroline Repchuk, who fleshes out the tale, transforming it into the story of a global race. As Hare and Tortoise set out from England on a race to New York (by way of Asia and the Pacific), one rushes ahead and one takes his time...

I was distinctly unimpressed by Repchuk's rhyming narrative here, finding it clunky and uninspiring. Alison Jay's colorful and engaging artwork, with its distinctive "crackled" appearance, show more was a pleasure, but it was not enough to save The Race. There are better adaptations of this fable to be found - notably, Caroline Castle's The Hare and the Tortoise - so I would advise other Aesop devotees to give this one a miss. show less

This is a hard one to review kind of because it's got all the basic rhymes, which are all great and part of our heritage, and adds some modern bits that kind of fit in like "Old MacDonald" (it's about farms, and farms are oldtimey) and "The Owl and the Pussycat" (basically actually oldtimey, since it's 19th century, though of course we know who wrote it), but then Caroline Repchuk doesn't really deserve any credit for that (Lord love the public domain!), but then she also does the show more illustrations and though some of them are uninspired, literal renditions of what is in the rhyme (not always fun! sometimes something utterly mundane like teatime), some of them are wonderful ("I love little Pussy," the girl and her cat are cuddling cuddling and it makes me happy every time; "I had a little nutmeg tree," a fairytale world in six lines; "Goosey Goosey Gander," the old man is obviously cracked and the goose is pulling him down the stairs in a valentine-coloured house and it is incredible). But then so many of the rhymes picked here are dull and don't scan and are certainly not of any vintage, wherever they come from (the worst one is "Hey de ho," which is about an elephant and colonial lies), and then ultimately I give this a bad grade because she ruins several of the good ones too, like "The farmer in the dell," which she thinks is "The farmer in the den," and instead of "Heigh-ho the derry-o" it's "E I E I" (???), and instead of "The cheese stands alone" it's "We all pat the dog," and I'm sorry, but the cheese MUST stand alone.

Anyway, I looked up a bunch of the bigshot rhymes like Old King Cole and ride a cock horse and of course the titular one, and they're all first recorded in the 18th century, so I will assume that they were first concocted in the previous century and give this book a date of 1658, the beginning of the Restoration, because you know Cromwell would have banned nursery rhymes if they were already a thing. show less

This seemed a bit by-the-numbers to me (pictures of fairies, different colors, getting ready for the ball) but my son is less jaded and also clearly aches to be the sparkliest fairy of all, and I think we should entertain his pretty pretty side a little, if only as a corrective to overindulgence in trucks. Perhaps for instance an evening with the music of the recently departed Prince.

The Race is a cute and modern retelling of the classic Tortoise and Hare fable. Both are in a race to New York where they use boats, planes, and hot air balloons to travel. In the end, the Tortoise still proves that “slow and steady wins the race.”
Although the text is quite simple, the rhyming makes it more entertaining to read. However, the brilliantly unique illustrations are what kept me truly engaged. The moral remains true to Aesop’s fable as it teaches the importance of patience show more and perseverance. show less