The Funny Little Woman

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The Funny Little Woman
CM funny little woman.jpg
The Funny Little Woman
AuthorArlene Mosel
IllustratorBlair Lent
CountryUnited States
GenreChildren's picture book
PublisherE. P. Dutton/Penguin Young Readers
Publication date
1972
ISBN0-525-30265-4
OCLC549397
398.2/0952 E
LC ClassPZ8.1.M8346 Fu

The Funny Little Woman is a book "retold by" Arlene Mosel and illustrated by Blair Lent. Released by E. P. Dutton, it was the recipient of the Caldecott Medal for illustration in 1973.[1]

"The Old Woman who Lost her Dumplings" was the title of the original tale by Lafcadio Hearn,[2] which Mosel had adapted.[3]

Plot[]

The story is set in old Japan. It is about is a funny little woman (who is an old woman). She likes to laugh ("Tee-he-he-he") and makes dumplings out of rice.

One day, one of her dumplings rolls down a hole. The little old woman chases the lost dumpling and ends up in a strange place underground lined with Jizo (guardian statues). The Jizos warn the old woman not to go after the dumpling because of wicked oni (monsters) who live there, but she does anyway. An oni grabs the old woman and takes her in a boat across a river to the house of the oni.

The oni forces the old woman to cook rice for them. They give her a magic paddle to make a full pot of rice from a single grain. Now the old woman is enjoying to be busy serving them plenty of rice dumplings for dinner every day.

But months later, the old woman becomes homesick. One afternoon, she decided to return home. When the oni are not looking, the old woman takes the magic paddle, and escapes on a boat on the river. Soon the monsters found that the old woman was heading home. They want to stop the her, but oni cannot swim. So they drank all the river water.

When the water bed dries up, the boat gets stuck into the mud. The old woman (who was too worried to laugh) tried to run away. But she gets stuck too in the mud. When she struggles, the oni all laugh. But when they do, they accidentally release the water from their mouths back into the river. When the water comes back again, the old woman can finish crossing to the other side in the boat.

The funny little woman returns home. She makes many rice dumplings with the magic paddle and sells them to people, and becomes "the richest woman in all of Japan."

References[]

  1. ^ American Library Association: Caldecott Medal Winners, 1938 - Present. URL accessed 12 January 2013.
  2. ^ Hearn, Lafcadio (1902-06-01). The old woman who lost her dumpling. Japanese fairy tale series No.24. Tokyo, Japan: T. Hasegawa.
    • The title on the 2nd page is "The old woman who lost her dumplings".
    • Appendix. Whole list of other titles and authors in the Japanese fairy tale series.
    • Bibliographic data
    • Lacy1986 cites the following book, but it contains typos "Fizō" which is a mis-copy of "Jizō":
  3. ^ Lacy, Lyn Ellen (1986), Art and Design in Children's Picture Books: An Analysis of Caldecott Award-winning Illustrations, American Library Association, p. 183
Awards
Preceded by Caldecott Medal recipient
1973 		Succeeded by

External links[]

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