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Ant and Grasshopper



Ant and Grasshopper
by Luli Gray, illustrated by Giulano Ferri
Simon & Schuster, 2011. Unpaged. Picture Book.

A kinder, gentler, funny, and tender retelling of Aesop's grasshopper and ant fable, Ant and Grasshopper. In this version, the ant is a bean counter--literally. He not only spends the spring and summer days gathering food, but counting what he has. The grasshopper, playing his fiddle and singing invites the ant to join in, but the ant tells him to buzz off, so to speak. But the ant finds the catchy rhythms interrupting his counting, and sometimes he starts to rhyme his counts. When he finds the grasshopper freezing to death outside his door he brings him in, warms him up and feeds him, and acknowledges, in a charming ending, that the world needs singing and dancing, too. Giulano Ferri's charming pictures perfectly illustrate Gray's story about all the ways we can--and should!--help one another.

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