J. J. Reneaux (1955–2000)

This book is a collection of tales about animals and how they helped people, or taught their peers valuable lessons. The stories in this book are cute, interesting, and have great lessons. I most appreciated the titles of each story as the lineage or heritage was listed below. It was great imagining the story "How Miz Gator Lost Her Pea-Green Suit" being told by African-Americans and the story of "looking for trouble" being taught this way for so many years to multiple generations. The show more writing is detailed and reads quickly. Sometimes you can infer what plot twists might lay ahead and start to look for messages. The writing is also specific to those southern groups of people and the dialogue often reflects how they sounded. The use of onomatopoeias and slag make the stories rich and there a glossary in the back in case you run into a term you are unfamiliar with. I can see this book making a great bedtime story book and the use of voices and the illustrations can engage audiences of all ages. show less

This was not a favorite story. I did not like the plot of the story. However, I believe that this would be a great circle story read. I also liked that you can throw in a Cajun voice for a fun read. My children were not very impressed with this story.

I really enjoyed this book as a whole. There are several stories in this one book. I think another reason i enjoyed this book was because the stories were all kind of southern based. Some of the stories had vocabulary words which I liked because you could us this in your classroom to teach students.

I love dogs, so the story of a dog getting over on an alligator made for quite the cute story. This alligator has been wanting to get a piece of this dog for quite some time, but doesn't dare go near where man lives. Then one day, while chasing a rabbit, dog ends up nose to nose with alligator.
** My daughter informed me that this was one of her favorite books when she was younger.