Caps for Sale

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Subtitled A Tale of a Peddler, Some Monkeys and Their Monkey Business, this absurd and very simple story has become a classic, selling hundreds of thousands of copies since its first publication in 1940. A peddler walks around selling caps from a tall, tottering pile on his head. Unable to sell a single cap one morning, he walks out into the countryside, sits down under a tree, checks that all the caps are in place, and falls asleep. When he wakes up, the caps are gone--and the tree is full of cap-wearing monkeys. His attempts to get the caps back generate the kind of repetitive rhythm that 3- and 4-year-olds will adore. (Preschool and older) --Richard Farr


Book Description
Caps for Sale is a timeless classic, in print for over fifty years, and beloved by generations of readers. This easy-to-read story about a peddler and a band of mischievous monkeys is filled with warmth, humor, and simplicity. Children will delight in following the peddlers efforts to outwit the monkeys in this new, enlarged, and redesigned edition, and will ask to read it again and again.


Card catalog description
A band of mischievous monkeys steals every one of a peddler's caps while he takes a nap under a tree.


About the Author
From an early age, Russian-born Esphyr Slobodkina was surrounded by parents and friends who were deeply interested in the arts. "Those who didn't practice," she says, "discussed art at great length." She recalls that fifteen to twenty people at the dinner table was not a party but a daily happening. Even during the Russian Revolution and before coming to live in the United States, she always found an inexhaustible supply of laughter in the "saga" of the family struggling for self-preservation.At the age of 92, Esphyr's sense of fun and good humor still extends to family, friends, and art compositions. Although she continues to produce sculpture and collage, today Esphyr's primary focus is on overseeing the production of musical storybook cassettes of all twenty of her children's books.Esphyr also recently designed a mini museum in Glen Head, Long Island, New York (through her Slobodkina Foundation), as a place where guests can visit and view more than 200 works of art, her handmade dolls and jewelry, as well as her complete collection of children's storybooks, including some of her original illustrations.


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From an old folk tale [the author] has fashioned this bright picture book, infusing it with a humor which seems to have sprung from her own hearty enjoyment of the troubles of a peddler with a band of monkeys.


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