I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago: A Tall Tale
Adding comical original verse and ebullient full-page art, Kellogg creatively embellishes the titular traditional tall-tale tune to wreak playful havoc with a number of historical happenings. The author first introduces a gleeful, coon-cap-wearing young narrator, who declares that he was born about 10,000 years ago "and there's nothing in the world that I don't know." The clever lyrics go on to place him and four additional kids smack-dab in the middle of a host of momentous events, including that fateful bite from an apple ("I saw Adam and Eve driven from the door.../ And I swear that I'm the one who ate the core"); the construction of the pyramids ("And for Pharaoh's little kiddies/ I built all the pyramiddies"); and the settlement of the American West ("Pecos Bill and I drove cattle/ Clear from Texas to Seattle"). Giving this whirlwind romp a futuristic spin, Kellogg ends with one of his young characters stocking a Saturn-bound rocket with enough plates of food to last until her return?when school gets out in June. Dominated by his trademark fluorescent tones, Kellogg's illustrations feature funny details and pleasingly silly anachronisms: the Sphinx sports a striped tie and a matching birthday hat, and Pecos Bill's cattle clamber up Seattle's Space Needle. A concluding invitation to kids to devise their own rhyming tale that "stretches" the truth makes this bouncy read-aloud doubly fitting for classroom use. Ages 5-up.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.