Why Epossumondas Has No Hair on His Tail

A Southern folktale honed to perfection is a read-aloud gem.

Author: Coleen Salley Illustrator: Janet Stevens Pages: 32 Publisher: Harcourt Brace Published Date: 10/03/2004 Genre: Fiction - Picture Book HC Price: $16.00 Publisher's Recommended Reading Level: 3-7 Read Aloud: 3+ Read Alone: 6+

Common Sense Note

Through generations of telling, refining, and retelling, a story worthy of the folktale canon has been honed to its essence and comes with a kind of seal of popular approval. A perennial southern favorite, "Epaminondas" is just such a story. Salley and Stevens have managed to capture the essential spirit and appeal of the traditional tale, and transform it into something utterly new.

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Common Sense Review

Reviewed By: Marigny Dupuy

This is the sequel to an earlier collaboration by renowned storyteller Coleen Salley and Caldecott Honor Award winner Janet Stevens. The first book, "Epossumondas," was critically acclaimed and won several awards. The main characters in both stories are an endearing baby possum named Epossumondas and his (human) Mama. To add to the slightly topsy-turvy fun, author Coleen Salley also plays the part of Mama in Stevens's excellent, colorfully expressive illustrations.

The first of Epossumondas's adventures follows the traditional storyline of the child's hilariously literal interpretation of his mother's requests. This delightful sequel veers off in a new direction and is enriched by the addition of two more familiar folktale characters, the trickster rabbit and the lumbering bear.

The accent, the pacing, and the humor combine in way that will cause almost any reader to sound like a seasoned raconteur. With language that is a storyteller's dream and multi-media illustrations that are as artful as they are entertaining, this is a read-aloud gem.

From the Book:
Epossumondas was swinging on the porch swing one day when Skunk came pussyfooting by. ... Skunk and Epossumondas were waving friends, not play-together friends. So they waved, and Skunk pranced by swishing her thick black-and-white tail.

Epossumondas kept lollygagging there on the porch, thinking and swinging, swinging and thinking. He was thinking about tails.

Skunks have thick black-and-white tails , he thought, and foxes have bushy red tails, and even hares have fluffy white powder-puff tails. But my tail is just pink and naked and funny looking.

After a while Epossumondas went inside to find his mama.

Plot Summary:

When Epossumondas asks Mama why he has no hair on his tail, she tells him the story of his great-great-grandpa, in the time when all possums had little powder puff tails. Papapossum had developed a craving for persimmons. When he shared this with his wily friend, Hare, the rabbit came up with a typical trickster idea: Papapossum should climb Bear's persimmon tree, something Hare could not do himself, and throw down half of what he could pick. That way Hare could do no work whatsoever and still get his fill of persimmons.

Once hungry Papapossum was up in the tree, however, he became, so enthralled with the taste of the sweet persimmons that he soon forgot his deal with Hare. No one hates to be tricked more than a trickster, so Hare went directly to Bear to tell him that Papapossum was eating all of his persimmons. Ultimately Papapossum's little puff of a tail was radically transformed by the teeth of the angry bear, and thus the long, hairless pink tails that possums have to this day.

Ever the optimist, however, the resourceful possum ancestor discovered several practical uses for this long skinny tail, among which, of course, was hanging upside down from tree branches.