Marilou on Stage

Elizabeth Levin is a professor of psychology at Laurentian University.

Originally published in French, this chapter book for early readers is
about a play that Marilou and her friends put on. The play, The
Grasshopper and the Ant by Jean de La Fontaine, is a fable, and Marilou
and her friends are to act it out. (As it happens, the children in the
story are learning about fables in school.) The children start to build
the sets, sew the costumes, and learn their lines, songs, and dances.

One night Marilou has a nightmare about the fate of the grasshopper in
the fable. Feeling that it is unfair to make the grasshopper dance all
winter long because it had been so busy singing all summer long that it
did not have time to store food for the winter, Marilou decides to
change the fable’s ending.

This delightful story could be used as an introduction both to fables
and to creative problem-solving. Marie-Claude Favreau’s
black-and-white illustrations are cute and help to break up the text for
young readers. Recommended.