Reviews for The Twins: Two by Two

The average rating for The Twins: Two by Two based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-09-18 00:00:00 Christine Ayala This is a fascinating collection of stories from around the world, collected and retold by the inimitable Michael Rosen, published in aid of Oxfam's life-saving charitable work in 77 different developing countries worldwide. Excluding Antarctica and Australia, stories from all other continents are included, in many cases from a variety of different cultures: e.g. Africa is represented diversely by Mali and Morocco from the North, West Africa and Mauritania around the Equator, and Zimbabwe to the South. The stories themselves are also from a variety of genres: tales with a moral, ghost stories, humorous accounts, stories of religious significance and fables explaining why the world is the way it is. Among my favourites are the smart Indonesian monkey who resolves a fight over food between a cat and a dog by tricking them into letting him eat it himself; the Ghanaian explanation for why dogs chase cars; the sly Jamaican fox who tricks an alligator into thinking food gets hotter the longer you wait before eating it; and Pedro, from Bolivia, whose dog no longer recognises him when he changes his clothes. Alongside the obvious world geography connections, there are also links to living organisms in Science (many stories involve animals and discuss their characteristics or behaviour), History (in the past origins of each story) and RE (in the religious sources of stories in Buddhism or Hinduism). There is a fascinating array of artwork within the pages also, as every short story has been depicted by a different illustrator, including Michael Foreman, Helen Oxenbury, John Burningham and Axel Schleffer, giving pupils the chance to compare or imitate their styles, or consider how those styles are appropriate for each respective story. There are PSHE messages in many stories: the greedy Zimbabwean father gets his comeuppance for keeping food for himself instead of his children; the Botswanan hare triumphs over the lion through shrewdness rather than strength; the strongest person in the world, a Korean rat family discover, is not the sun, clouds or sea, but each of us ourselves and the impact we can have upon them. Perhaps my favourite aspect however is found at the back of the book, where a paragraph on the history of each story is provided; some were collected by Oxfam workers out in the field, but others were told to Rosen by Cypriot, Maltese, Bangladeshi, Jamaican and English children in schools. What a wonderful opportunity for inclusion for one of Britain's most well-loved authors to visit your school to transcribe and publish one of your own community's traditional fables or fairy tales into this collection; maybe children of different cultures in today's contemporary richly diverse classroom might even know variants of these stories themselves - or even better, know their own stories of international origins that they could contribute to their school's own collection of new tales from around the world.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-08-25 00:00:00 Antoine May Michael Rosen has collected these stories from around the world. He has retold them in his great storyteller voice. Each one is illustrated by a different artist. It's a little hard to define the reader but these would be great read aloud. This edition supports Oxfam.