La cigarra y la hormiga

Abstract

This version of GA opens with a four-armed ant riding a snail, with a basket of food over the snail's haunches and a trailer of food behind. The ant-hill has bridges, traffic signs, and a lookout. The ant promises the grasshopper that he will ask the queen about food. As far as I can tell, the only mention of winter comes from a bossy manager ant in the anthill: "You know that we ought to gather food before winter comes!" Even before our ant can get to the queen, ant workers hear the grasshopper's music and begin to dance. Both the queen and the managers are angered and turn the grasshopper away. He charms many other animals and insects. The best-illustrated of them might be the centipede wearing many sneakers. When the grasshopper makes music at night, other animals shush him. Winter comes and he is freezing. But his friend the ant remembers him, goes to the queen, and goes out to find and rescue him. In the end, the grasshopper plays music inside the ant-hill. A strange feature of the book is that it has two sets of text, one often inside the image at the top of the page and the other a shorter version in bold at the bottom of the page. 7½" x 8½". 28 pages.