Little One-Inch & Other Japanese Children's Favorite Stories

Introduce your children to the wonderful tales Japanese children know and love! A bit abridged, if you know the tales already, but these are a fine collection.Little One-Inch is Japan's Tom Thumb, and he is shown wending his way down a stream in a boat made of a rice bowl, using a chopstick for propulsion. There are ten stories in all, sweetly illustrated in Japanese style. Kids 3 to 10 will enjoy these; my favorite is The Rabbit Who Crossed the Sea ...on the backs of sharks he somewhat maliciously tricks into helping him. The listener learns Rabbit's hard-won lesson about fooling people, and they are given a delightfully amazing picture of Rabbit using the sharks as an inter-island bridge.One warning: there is a color picture of Little One-Inch poking a needle into the eye of a demon, but I've seen more frightening pictures in Disney publications. In general, the book has nothing scarier than what western fairy tales offer.