“It could always be worse,” my mom says when I complain about something. This story shows how much worse things could be. In 1977, Margot Zemach received the Caldecott Medal for the illustrations in her story It Could Always Be Worse, which is a Yiddish folk tale. It was first published in 1976 and reissued in 1990 by Michael di Capua Books.
    This story is set in a hut during winter in a small village. The story’s mood is loud, fighting, and grumpy. The main character is a man who is the father of a large family. His house and his family are the antagonists because the house is small and his family has many people. The rabbi, who is the other main character, cares about the man and wisely tries to help him make his house more peaceful.
    The father asks the rabbi what to do about the noise three times. The author has the rabbi repeat his answer three times. Each time the rabbi tells the man to bring another animal into the house. Each time the noise is worse, not better. The author used descriptions skillfully to show how horrible it was: Feathers are in the soup; the goat butts with his horns; the cow tramples everything. 
    Toward the end of the story, the father says his house is a nightmare. The rabbi tells him to let all the animals out. The house feels bigger and quieter than before, although the house hasn’t changed. The man was grateful and thanked the rabbi. 
    This ending is funny because nothing really changed except the man’s attitude. The illustrations show even more than the story says about how crowded the house is. This is a silly book with a message about not complaining and being grateful because “it could always be worse.”

     “Marcia Brown brings out the humor inherent in this old tale with the touch of a skillful storyteller and gives to her bright red double-page pictures a real feeling of fete.” The New York Times Book Review kindly wrote this about Marcia Brown’s children’s story, Stone Soup. Published in 1947 by Simon & Schuster, this entertaining tale has been loved by many generations of children. It received a Caldecott Honor. Notably, Brown is one of the most honored illustrators in children’s literature. In fact, for some contributions to children's literature and illustrations, Brown was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal. The author was born in Rochester, New York, in 1918. Writing and illustrating over thirty books for children, Brown’s career was extremely successful.
     Stone Soup is a story about three soldiers who are traveling on foot to get back home from war. It is not exactly clear where the setting is, but it is stated that the soldiers are walking through foreign lands. Interestingly, while the author does not give the three main characters specific names, she instead refers to them as “the soldiers.” On a rough road, they solemnly trudge. Having not had a meal for two days, the soldiers are quite ravenous and fatigued. Since they have not slept nor dined, the author tells how the soldiers conspire among themselves about how much they would enjoy a large meal and nice bed to sleep in for the night. Continuing with their journey, the soldiers eventually perceive bright lights off in the distance. It was a village.
     Hearing the soldiers traipse into their town, the wary and stingy villagers hastily hide all their food so they will not have to give any to the foreign soldiers. This is clearly a problem. The soldiers approach the first house in the village and ask if they have any food to spare. Cleverly, the owners, who did have plenty of food, make excuses of why they cannot spare any. In the village, the forlorn soldiers sadly march to the next house. Again, the author explains that this family forebodingly declines. As they wander from house to house and hear the same answer every time, the exhausted soldiers become discouraged, despondent, and dismayed.
     The climax occurs as the three soldiers connive and concoct a plan. Since the poor peasants claim they have no food to share, the soldiers’ solution is to subtly trick the villagers into making “stone soup.” Calling the townspeople to gather around, the three soldiers relay their idea to make soup with nothing but some water and three large stones. Will this pique the villagers’ interest? The soldiers ask if anyone has a large pot to make the soup in. One person provides this. Next, they add lots of water to the pot, and three smooth stones are dropped into the boiling water. Stirring the soup, the soldiers proceed to tell the peasants that salt, pepper, and carrots would be delicious in stone soup, and surprisingly this becomes a turning point in the tale as villagers fetch those ingredients. At this point, the author then tells how the soldiers continue to casually suggest other ingredients which would improve stone soup, and one by one the villagers gather and donate the tasty items. Finally, the townspeople graciously thank the amiable soldiers for teaching them a lesson on being selfless as they fed the entire village with one pot of tasty stone soup.
     Clearly this captivating story holds a beneficial lesson as it teaches readers the value of cooperation and selflessness. Lacking detail, the setting leaves the reader wondering where these soldiers are from and where the village is located; though given that the villagers have French names, it seems that they are in France. However, the character development of the poor villagers is remarkable since they progress from being stingy to selfless and end up amply feeding their whole town from one pot of soup. In contrast, the character development of the soldiers is evident from the beginning of the story, for they are clever and resourceful. While this book is a well-written children’s story, it provides a meaningful lesson for all ages. Readers young and old will enjoy this classic children’s tale. It is a must read.

     “Name me, name me not, who’ll guess it's Tom Tit Tot!” This phrase is from the tale “Tom Tit Tot” by Flora Annie Steel. It is set in the old Medieval period in the gloomy castles of England. Published first in 1918 in the series English Fairy Tales, this tale was retold several times until the Great Books Foundation published it in 1984. Steel lived in India for twenty-two years because her husband was a member of the Indian Civil Service and was greatly fascinated by the country and its culture. When her husband’s health began to deteriorate, she undertook his job to continue to live in India. While she was living in the Punjab area, she set up a girls’ school in Kasur. She even acquired the rare, ritzy, and remarkable luck of working with Rudyard Kipling’s father, John Kipling. However, she also wrote her own works, and the series English Fairy Tales, where this story originates, was finished in 1922 in England.   
     Set in the old days of England, the intriguing, humorous, but unadventurous tale portrays the protagonist’s mother as a woman who has atrocious culinary skills. Although most tales’ protagonists do have names, the protagonist in this tale is nameless, so she is merely labeled “daughter,” but it must be noted that despite the mother’s unappetizing cookery, this daughter bragged an immense appetite. The antagonist is a black-colored imp named Tom Tit Tot, and also present is a character-wise amorphous king with a subtle role although his intermittent appearance throughout the story creates the backdrop. Beginning with the mother cooking five pies, the story tells us that they turn out so hard that she tells her daughter to set them out, hoping they would soften up over time, but the gluttonous daughter gobbles them all. When the mother finds out her daughter has exercised her voracious appetite, she compulsorily sings a song of lamentation about the daughter’s hearty appetite, which happens to be picked up by the passing-by king although not clearly. In his curiosity the king asks about the nature of the song, but being too embarrassed to expose the gluttony of her own daughter, she contrives a different song on a whim, which deceitfully serenades that her daughter had spun five skeins that day. Fortunately for the mother, the king strikes a deal with the mother that the daughter would be his wife, and the royal couple would be as joyful as Chanticleer and Pertelote. The mother was delighted.
     According to the king, the daughter would have everything she fancies for eleven months, but after that she must spin five skeins a day for the whole month. Unfortunately if she fails to do so, according to the king, “her head would come off.” The king is true to his word because the king, indeed, lavishes the queen with all she requests except for the twelfth month when he drags the queen to a dark room, hands her flax to spin, and orders her to undertake the task or else she would die. As the queen is sorrowfully moaning over her fate, Steel introduces the antagonist, a “black thing,” who is dubbed by the author as “That,” who entices the queen to be his wife at the end of the month in exchange for five skeins every day until then, but there is a loophole through which she could escape the coercion of the black devil. The black thing would allow her three tries each day to guess his name correctly to escape this horrible fate of despair. Tension builds as “That” spins five skeins daily, but the queen fails to guess his name correctly each day, and even more so on the day before the ordeal is over as, on one hand, the king throws a pre-congratulatory dinner for her, but on the other hand, she is left with only one day’s worth of chance to guess the name correctly. Expressing the escalating tension from the predicament with “That,” which spills over to the queen's palpable behavior, the author paints a picture in which the queen would not eat even with her large appetite. She is frightened to death.
     The climax begins at the king’s dining table where the queen still has no clue what the name of That is. While the king is still in a jolly mood from feasting with such a talented queen, he breaks out in laughter, which understandably prompts the queen to inquire what amuses the king so. In reply he discloses an anecdote from his recent hunting trip. During his adventure he hears a minute noise, which invokes his curiosity, so he peers into a small knothole in which a small black “thing” was spinning wool for dear life, singing a song: “Name me, Name me not, who’ll guess it’s Tom Tit Tot!” Hearing this priceless piece of information, the queen almost blows up with delight. She is in ecstasy. Consequently, the queen guesses the correct name of the devil, the devil flees with enormous sorrow, and she lives with the king happily ever after. The moral of this tale is hidden, yet after a small amount of contemplation it becomes clear that the moral is there is always a way out of trouble, albeit it is never easily acquired.
     First of all, this tale captivates the reader by a relatively complex plot for a children’s book. For example, the story includes a main conflict between the queen and the king over the task of the five skein a day along with a side plot between the queen and “That” while most other children’s books contain only one plot in which the protagonist is involved. Speaking of the protagonist, the author paints her as an imprudent girl with little virtue as most characters in fairy tales are quite dumb. The story is narrated in a slightly older style of English, which is fitting the mood of the story. Although the plot may not be as multifaceted as that of Shakespeare’s works, its simplicity merits a spot in a bookshelf. From a philosophical standpoint, “Tom Tit Tot” is a book not worthy of praise because it promotes a way out of a difficult state or condition one deserves as a penance for lying, which is neither realistic nor morally desirable in a children’s book. The moral is not applicable to children since it is unethical, but the plot twist keeps the reader engaged throughout the story.

Works Cited

“Flora Annie Steel.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation,
     22 Feb. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flora_Annie_Steel.
“Flora Annie Steel.” Fairytalez, VareGuide/Weiner Media, 2020, 
     fairytalez.com/author/flora-annie-steel/.