This book's strength is that the illustrations match the vibrant colors of South American culture. It also warns against deception and jealousy, which can be used to teach lessons about how jealousy harms us more than the people we are angry at or jealous of. ( )

Gerald McDermott retells an old myth and has bright illustrations to bring life to this tale. Jabuti is a trickster that plays beautiful music. The birds are big fans of his music, except for Vulture. Vulture was jealous of Jabuti, and could not wait for the day Jabuti would disappear. Then that chance came, Jabuti asked Vulture for a ride on his back and Vulture knew it was he will be able to trick Jabuti. Vulture flew with Jabuti on his back and then flipped over to drop him. Jabuti then fell onto a rock and his shell shattered to pieces. The birds then helped Jabuti and patched his shell back together. In the end, Jabuti was fine and Vulture was not happy. This story tells the readers to always be kind to others. It also has the message that everyone is individually unique. You should not be jealous of others or want to be someone else. Instead, accept who you are and love yourself. Gerald McDermott's vibrant illustrations made the story exciting and interesting to look at. I feel that this was a cute tale explaining why vultures are not colorful and do not sing. ( )

It's interesting to see the tortoise as the trickster, usually in American tales its the fox. Very vibrant illustrations.

The book states the first collection of Jabuti stories, from oral tradition of the Tupi-Guarani and other rain forest tribes in Brazil. The story is very short and simple to follow and understand. There is a tortoise who loves to play a flute and has tricked people through out the years for some services. The birds all really enjoy his flute playing since they sing to his flute playing. The vulture who does not like the tortoise promises the tortoise to take him up to heaven to play his flute and sing with the birds. On their way up through the sky the vulture purposely drops the tortoise. The tortoise lands on a rock and his shell goes flying in pieces. All the birds search for the tortoise, they find him, piece him together and those birds received color and the vulture stayed the same old gray ugly color. The tale is telling a creation story, how birds received all the colors they did. The illustrations are bold, bright, and very in your face...works both ways, they can be a bit overboard and annoying but at the same time it gives the story some life.
Ages 5-9 ( )

Jabuti is a mischievous, trickster turtle who is very talented at playing the flute. Some of his songs remind different animals of tricks that Jabuti played on them, but the birds, the birds- all except the vulture- loved the music Jabuti played. The vulture didn't like it because it ermines him that he could not sing, so the vulture played a trick of his on on Jabuti because he was jealous. He said he was going to bring Jabuti to play for the King of Heaven, but instead tried to hurt him. This isn't a book that I would read to my class aloud, but it would be a nice book to keep for free time reading. I absolutely loved the bright, colorful illustrations. ( )