Reading Notes: The Giant Crab

For this week, I branched out and read some short children's stories from "The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India." The first one was called "The Crab" and was about a crab (surprise) that lived in a lake and sat at the bottom waiting for animals to come to the lake so he could eat them. Soon, he becomes huge from all the food he's getting. Mr. and Mrs. Elephant soon become tired of the crab eating all of their animal friends, so they come up with a plan to kill him. They end up cracking his giant shell, and when they become Queen and King of the animal kingdom, they use the giant shells as drums in war.

The next one I liked was called "The Hypocritical Cat." A family of rats lived in a hole by the river that a cat liked to watch. The cat eventually tricks the rats into thinking he worshiped the sun and ate air, and that was why he always faced towards them. The cat made them think they were safe walking past him, since he didn't eat other animals, and so the cat kept eating rats that passed.

In "The Crocodile and the Monkey," a crocodile was persuaded by his wife to capture a monkey so that Mrs. Crocodile could eat its heart. Mr. Crocodile pretended that he wanted to help the monkey cross the wide river, but really he was going to drown him for his wife. However, the monkey convinced the crocodile that the figs hanging in the tree on the other side of the river were the hearts of monkeys. So the stupid crocodile believed him and helped the monkey across the river.

I have nothing to say about "The Wise Parrot and the Foolish Parrot" because it broke my heart to hear that a poor parrot was plucked by that horrible maid.

There was one story that I liked called "The Mouse and the Farmer." In this story, a mouse always gave the farmer a gold coin, and, in exchange, the farmer gave the mouse a good piece of meat to eat. Soon, a cat started to notice the mouse since he had gotten fatter. The cat threatened to eat the mouse unless the mouse gave the cat the nice meat. However, the farmer helped the poor mouse. He gave him an inkwell and when the cat came to eat the mouse, it swallowed the inkwell and the mouse crawled out of the dead cat's throat.

Are we sure this is a children's collection??

Picture illustrated by W. Robinson.

Bibliography: W.D. Rouse. The Giant Crab and Other Tales from Old India. Link to text.