The Funny Little Woman By (retold): Arlene Mosel

The Funny Little Woman   By (retold): Arlene Mosel

Pictures by: Blair Lent

E.P. Dutton; New York

Copy Right: 1972

(Award Selection)

            This was a fable of an old Japanese woman who loved to make rice dumplings. While chasing a dumpling that had rolled away she fell in a crack in the earth and was met with a mean “Oni”.  They took her to their house and forced her to make them rice with a magic spoon that only required one grain of rice to make a pot full.  Eventually the old woman escaped back to her home with the wooden spoon.  She used that spoon to make countless rice dumplings and sell them, making her the richest woman in Japan.

            The reading level is easy enough for second grade in this book.  Students will enjoy a foreign fable, especially since it has scary monsters in it.  I made a text to text connection with the book “The bamboo Grove”.  While this was related to Japanese culture and the other with Korean, they are both based on cultural fables passed from generation