Qua va Daibang: The Crow and the Eagle

Abstract

This pamphlet joins the eleven others in this series. Each is a fine bilingual booklet of 12 pages. The art is especially detailed and supportive of the text. The text appears in a few lines on each page. The art of this presentation emphasizes, starting from the cover's dramatic picture, the relative disproportionateness of the perpetrators. And the art dramatizes the way that the second sheep's wool catches the claws of the crow. That picture (6-7) expresses well the surprise that would come over the grass-munching sheep as the crow alights and gets stuck. As the crow with its wings cropped is handed over -- amidst crow tears -- to the shepherd's son on 10-11, the child hears the answer to its question about what kind of bird it is. This is the crow who thinks it is the eagle. Except for the beginning and ending single pages, this entire pamphlet consists of double-page illustrations, all well done. The back cover illustrates the whole series of The Fables of Aesop.