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Jamie o'rourke and the big potato [electronic resource] : An irish folktale. Tomie dePaola.

dePaola, Tomie. (Author). Van Dyck, Jennifer. (Added Author).

Summary:

"My Irish grandfather, Thomas Lawrence Downey, was a great storyteller. I loved his rendition of The Animal Fair and his explanation of why he was bald ( that  will remain a personal secret). I never tired of sitting on his knee—and later, when I was a bit too big, sitting at his feet with one of my baby sisters on his knee—listening to his wonderful tall tales. Among the stories I loved the best were the ones about the Irish—and the Downey family in particular. In those tales, I'm afraid, "dramatic flair" and artistic liberties took over for fact. But as any good storyteller knows, to embellish is to make the tale interesting, especially to a young Tomie. When I read the short tale that inspired Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato , I swear I could hear my grandfather Tom Downey whispering in my ear, "Jamie O'Rourke was the laziest man...". Now I hope that the next generation, sitting on someone's knees or at someone's feet, will hear the words just as I did." — Tomie dePaola

Electronic resources

Record details

  • ISBN: 9780525594581
  • Physical Description: 1 online resource (1 audio file) : digital
  • Edition: Unabridged.
  • Publisher: New York : Listening Library, 2018.

Content descriptions

General Note:
Unabridged.
Participant or Performer Note:
Narrator: Jennifer Van Dyck.
Target Audience Note:
Text Difficulty 3 - Text Difficulty 4
790 Lexile.
System Details Note:
Requires the Libby app or a modern web browser.
Subject:
Folklore.
Historical Fiction.
Mythology.
Juvenile Fiction.

Accessibility Features

Summary: "My Irish grandfather, Thomas Lawrence Downey, was a great storyteller. I loved his rendition of The Animal Fair and his explanation of why he was bald ( that  will remain a personal secret). I never tired of sitting on his knee—and later, when I was a bit too big, sitting at his feet with one of my baby sisters on his knee—listening to his wonderful tall tales. Among the stories I loved the best were the ones about the Irish—and the Downey family in particular. In those tales, I'm afraid, "dramatic flair" and artistic liberties took over for fact. But as any good storyteller knows, to embellish is to make the tale interesting, especially to a young Tomie. When I read the short tale that inspired Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato , I swear I could hear my grandfather Tom Downey whispering in my ear, "Jamie O'Rourke was the laziest man...". Now I hope that the next generation, sitting on someone's knees or at someone's feet, will hear the words just as I did." — Tomie dePaola