Book Review: The Story of Edward

(Reclaimed from Blogjob, where it was "tagged" as burro, drawings of donkeys, horse stories,nonsense stories, picture books, Spanish Riding School of Vienna. If Blogjob ever finds itself able to pay for these posts, they'll migrate back there; I liked Blogjob but I do not like the way advertisers are coasting on posts for which I've not been paid.)

A Fair Trade Book

Title: The Story of Edward

Author: Philippe Dumas

Date: 1976 (French), 1977 (English)

Publisher: Flammarion (French), Dent (U.K.), Parents Magazine (U.S.)

ISBN: 0-8193-0869-2

Length: 48 pages

Illustrations: drawings by the author, some water-colored

Quote: “There is nothing like dancing to create family spirit—a fact worth noting before closing this book.”

Edward is a donkey who enjoys dressing up like a human. He can even fool humans, as long as they preserve a polite conversational distance. He can’t fool a woman whom he tries to impress, but he can fool men long enough to buy a female donkey, his mate. By the end of the book he’s taught her and all the little donkeys to dress up and dance like humans too.

I find the drawings more amusing than the bare story of this book, which sounds a bit like an Elephant Joke, but evidently many people have liked The Story of Edward; my library-discard copy shows a respectable amount of wear and tear. This book is recommended to anyone who likes the jacket drawing. Dumas is a well-known illustrator, and there's more of that kind of thing on every page.

Something about the quaint atmosphere of this book made me wonder...yes, this is A Fair Trade Book. Dumas is only seventy-five years old, so if you buy this collector's item here, by sending payment to either address in the lower left-hand corner of the screen (in the "sidebar," above the colorful ad), I'll send 10% of the total cost to Dumas or a charity of his choice. That would be $5 per paperback or $10 per hardcover copy + $5 per package for shipping. This is a small book so I recommend buying other things from this site to fill up the package. Amazon recommends Lucie, a Tale of a Donkey and The Lipizzaners and the Spanish Riding School of Vienna as other books by Philippe Dumas with similar illustrations. He's written several others, not all about equines and not all available in English.