كيف صار الحوت؟

by Ted Hughes, تيد هيوز, شفيق مهدي (Translator)

لأول مرة يترك الشاعر البريطاني الرائد «تيد هيوز» الشعر للنثر وفي الحقيقة أنه لم يتخل عن عالم الشعر؛ فمجموعته هذه المؤلفة من إحدى عشرة قصة قصيرة تتحدث عن الأيام التي أعقبت الخليقة، حيث كان الهواء يتلألأ «لأنه لم يستخدم أبداً»، وكان على الحيوانات أن تقرر ما الذي تريد أن تصبر عليه .. والموقف يلائم مخيلة الشاعر المؤلف. لقد قالها نثراً بذكاء لم يتنازل فيها عن لغة الشعر فكانت لغته حية دقيقة .. والقصص لاتعظ غير أنها تنقد الغرور والخيانة والزهو والخداع .. والقاريء سیسره أن يعرف لماذا يجب على النحلة أن تنتقل من زهرة إلى زهرة، باحثة عن الرحيق، لتقضي على حزنها، ولماذا بقي الفيل هو نفسه، خجولاً غير أنه قوي وذكي وشفوق.

Genres: Short Stories, Childrens, Fiction, Animals, Fantasy, Picture Books, Poetry

101 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Edward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
He married fellow poet Sylvia Plath in 1956, and they lived together in the United States and then in England, in a tumultuous relationship. They had two children before separating in 1962 and Plath ended her own life in 1963.

Reviews

[hawk · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this collection of creative creation short stories, by Ted Hughes 🙂

spoilers abound if you read on....

🌟


🦉 Why the Owl Behaves as it does.
Owl somehow tricks the other birds that they've gone somewhere else and turns the day and night patterns around. and eats the other birds in the dark! 😯 the birds have had enough and decide to die all together! but opening their eyes in the 'night' does not kill them (as Owl has told them), cos it's just day 🙂

🌜🌞🌛

🐋 How the Whale Became.
God spots something odd growing in his garden 😉 it announces it's Whalewort 😉 it gets so big that God and the creatures tug it into the sea! God pokes a hole in the top of Whale, so he can try to blow himself smaller thru it... but each time he goes to sleep at the bottom of the sea he grows big again 😆

🌊🌱🌊

🦊 How the Fox Came to be where it is.
two similar, rival, creatures - one rusty red (sly looking) and the other black and white (four square) - who both want the job of guarding man's cabbages 😆 the hens are to make the decision... (but sly looking eats them! with the unwitting help of rabbit! 🐰). o, this takes a clever turn 😉 "snuppety snippety snoopety snap!" 😉

🐔🥬🐔

🐻‍❄️ How the Polar Bear Became.
the animals admiring each other, and holding beauty contests 😆 Polar Bear usually wins. she says she'd look even better somewhere that wasn't so dirty. Peregrine Falcon, often runner up, tells Polar Bear where such a place exists (he's flown to every country)... Whale takes them on his back 🙂 the seals, her admirers, go with her 😉

🦭🐻‍❄️🦭

🐕 How the Hyena Became.
copied Leopard becomer... and awoke to find his skin covered in spots! the Wild Dogs started to be wary of him. never to become a Leopard, but also not a Wild Dog anymore. became Leopard follower...

😆🐆😆

🐢 How the Tortoise Became.
Torto gets made without a skin! makes him very fast, but all the other animals shun him. so he eventually accepts a skin from God... so long as its one he can take on and off 😉 he gets so into wearing his skin, that then can't take it off to race...

🏆🐢🏆

🐝 How the Bee Became.
Demon is watching God make all the creatures, and tries to do the same... tho struggles to make clay with the powder of jewels, cos he needs to cry to produce tears to wet it. bakes it in the fire of his eye over thousands of years... flatters God into breathing life into it.
the bee was sad cos he'd been made from a tear, so keeps going from flower to flower for the sweetness 😉😍

💎😈💎

🐈 How the Cat Became.
different from the others... lives in a tree, from which terrible sounds come... from his violin! the creatures decide Cat should take a job, rather than just sit around... he catches rats and mice on farms... tho also still plays violin with the other cats.

🎻😺🎻

🐴 How the Donkey Became.
a creature that doesn't stay the same - wanted to be all creatures and practised each of them. some fun names for his combinations 🙂 but wasn't any one of them long enough to earn his living as one, and begged for food from the other animals. one day he helps man to turn the well, and gets a job doing that in return for food and accommodation in a cosy little shed. works for longer and longer for twice as much food... after which he sleeps, and doesn't have time to practice his creatures. began to practice in his head instead, while he's walking round the well.
one day lion comes to eat man's family. donkey taunts Lion and shows him how to Lion, tho while he's Lion in his head he just looks like he's kicking and braying. after that he faces the truth, that he's "a well fed, comfortable, hard working donkey" 🙂

🐴🦁🐴

🐇 How the Hare Became.
Hare was a dandy 😉 Gazelle tells him the moon wants to marry him... Hare tries to meet up with her, but she keeps moving whenever he gets to where she used to be. endlessly gazing at the moon changed how his eyes looked, and he got long legs from running after her, and long ears from listening.

🌜🐇🌛

🐘 How the Elephant Became.
Bombo was the unhappiest of the creatures - he didn't know what he wanted to be. the other animals tell him to 'be himself' when he tries and fails to become them. he was bigger than all the other creatures, and had great ears and a long long nose... the other animals laughed at him.
Buffalo charges past with his family, off to drink. Bombo has a think about what he can do that's different to all the other creatures.
he does some headstand like tricks but all the other animals laugh at him, so he goes to live alone on an island.
one day a forest fire... all the other animals run from it til they reach the river... "we must drown or burn, goodbye brothers and sisters". it seemed like the end of the animals.
some great descriptions of who is sitting on who.
Bombo wades across and picks up all the animals and carries them across to the island on his back. but sparks follow them and sets the trees alight... Bombo uproots the trees with his tusks and throws them in the river, and the animals can tramp out the rest.
the next day Bombo is gone, and to this day he's hard to find... 🙂

🌳🐘🌳

🐾

the tales are quite disturbing on some level... but also generally turn out OK in the end 😉 quite inventive, playing with ideas. carry alot of normative attitudes found of time and place, and kinda interesting in how it exposes them.

🐾

accessed as an RNIB talking book, very well read by Robin Holmes 🙂

🐾

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poet Ted Hughes tells his version of how animals came to be. The stories are surprisingly complex, and they are filled with brilliant fresh imagery and structure.

What animals? Whale, fox, polar bear, hyena. Tortoise, bee, cat, donkey. Hare. Elephant.

I listened to the audio of this, read by Ted Hughes and Michael Morpurgo. I was mesmerized.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads like a Pokédex! Could see how these charming stories are great for kids

[Rogue Male · Rating 3 out of 5]

6/10

[Nova · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume of Ted Hughes’s ‘creation’ stories was first published in 1963, and has now been published in paperback with a bright modern cover.
There are eleven stories averaging eight pages each and each story tells of how and why a particular animal behaves as it does.
The volume opens with the story of why the owl hides away during the day and only comes out at night. It is because he played a nasty trick on the other birds so that he could eat them as opposed to rats, mice and beetles. The other birds wised up and now every morning when they awake, they remember owl’s nasty trick and chase him into a hole.
God, as creator, features in some of the stories. He found a whale-wort growing in His garden but as it refused to stop growing and flattened God’s house, whale-wort was pushed into the sea where he shrinks when blowing and grows again when sleeping; and thus is not allowed back in God’s garden.
Ted Hughes shows a great sense of humour and good imagination in telling these stories. They would appeal as bedtime stories for five to ten year olds and the adult reader would chuckle too.
As a teacher, I am not sure the book would have enough appeal to be chosen off the shelf by a child. While the cover is bright, the inside lacks colour and is sparsely illustrated. However it is a great read-aloud and I would use it to stimulate children’s imaginations to write their own how/why animal stories.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a re-read of one of my childhood books. These vignettes are a little like the 'Just-So' stories, though not quite as richly woven. Still, an enjoyable bit of nostalgia. I'm wondering whether to introduce both series of shorts to my Chatterbooks group.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't the edition I read btw. The one I read was a Puffin but it isn't on Goodreads and I can't be bothered to add it. This edition is the one I read when I was a child. Here's a weird thing. In my head it is a book of poetry. I was convinced. But it isn't. It is a collection of short, whimsical stories about how some of the animals came to be what they are.

It's as simple as that. The world is created by God. Animals appear but they aren't quite sure what they are. So, the becoming a thing things gradually become an actual animal. However, some of them became what they are as the result of tricks played on them by other animals, usually because of their own vanity. Some become what they are as a punishment. Some become what they are in moments of stress or need. Most of the stories are quite light-hearted, but some of them are a little dark - How the Bee Became - I'm thinking of in particular.

I loved this book when I was a kid. I think this might have been the first book I truly loved. I read it and re-read it and then haven't read it for probably thirty-five years. It was quite the rush of nostalgia.

I loved it again now. I don't know if I can judge it fairly though as it is so wrapped up in nostalgia. I'm not even sure if it is in print at the moment as I bought the edition I have second hand after I was reminded about the book in a chat on Twitter.

It's a lovely set of stories containing some clever little twists. God is in it. But he's a relatively ineffectual God. A hands off God. Only in one story does God really step in and that is How The Whale Became.

So nice to re-read it again after all this time.

[Jon Ellison · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was in Year 6, we read a couple of chapters (How The Whale Became and How The Hyena Became) - yes, that's the reason for this rating, because they were the only chapters we were introduced to.
What was really interesting about the Whale chapter was that the character of God, rather than seemingly living up in the heavens, lives in a normal house doing some normal garden duties. Of course, when he plants something, that's when the fantasy kicks in - the plant grows into a sperm whale and the growing goes out of control.
As for the chapter about the Hyena - I can't really rate it as high as the other chapter. As far back as I can remember, the hyena has a friend who's a leopard and wants to be one. I can remember the hyena becoming obsessive about being a leopard and asking his mate if it'll ever happen and the leopard responds that the hyena's become a "Leopard Follower". Quite rightly, because in all fairness, the hyena was just stalking him and doesn't really learn from his mistakes. The next thing, he's grumbling that his goals will never happen and that the leopard's just stupid.
Had we read more of the book, my rating might have been different.

[Pream · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm very much in love with Hughes's use of animal imagery in his various works. So, I was totally excited when I first discovered this book. The stories are full of creative imagination, and most young readers will find them fascinating.

In my opinion, a few stroies from this book bear hidden symbolic meaning. For example, in the very first chapter titled "Why the Owl Behaves as It Does", the owl seemed to me an embodiment of crude politicians and capitalists, and the other birds symbolised common hardworking people, too naive to understand the tricks of the deceaving owl. Such hidden symbolic meanings make it a very interesting read for adult readers. Reading it aloud to a young crowd will definitely bring some giggles. Overall, I'll rate it 🦉🐱🐳/🐰🦊🐘🐝🐢.

[António · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conjunto de pequenos relatos a imaginar a origem de alguns animais em tons tanto de conto-de-fadas como mitológicos. Se alguns soam quase forçados ou menos imaginativos, nenhum deixa de revelar engenho na construção do respectivo enredo e nos jogos morais esboçados nas interacções entre as personagens. Algumas histórias, como a da coruja ou a da hiena, são muito interessantes, admiráveis até, demonstrando os poderes do autor para engendrar relatos tão fascinantes como simples para oferecer aos animais, pelos quais tem claro apreço, profundidade mitológica, e torná-los personagens cheias de vida.
Um pequeno e muito agradável livro, cheio de verdades senão evidentes nem propriamente convincentes, muito possíveis.

[Morgan Hood · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Australian poet Ted Hughes wrote kids stories in the 60s- 90s about how animals became. Read to the boys after mums recommendation. Such an inventive book that uses creative tales to teach morals and explain why creatures are as they are. Some of the stories can be a little dark which seems to be the standard for 60s/70s kids stories. How the elephant became was the best story in my opinion. Boys handled one story a night when we had time. Noah said it was a good book.

[Amber Scaife · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hughes turns his hand to writing origin stories for animals. I feel like I should have liked this one more than I did. Then again, nope. I liked it just the right amount, regardless of its author, and honestly, I've read much better animal myths.

[Ömer Şentürk · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Boyun kısalmadan olmaz!" diye bağırmış Tanrı. "Boyun kısalmadan gelemezsin!" "Peki ama nasıl küçüleyim?" diye ağlayarak sormuş Balina-otu denizin ortasında bir o yana, bir bu yana sallanarak. "Ne olur, karada yaşayabilmek için nasıl küçülebilirim bana söyler misiniz?"

[Adrian Bloxham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clever engaging small stories for small children

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this because I remembered one of the stories. It's a slightly lopsided mess of a collection with some stories being more fun than the others, but good.

[Sacha · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wondered if Hughes' work for children was less dark. Nope. The first story involved a decision to go through with collective suicide. (That it didn't work was small comfort).

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing much here. I expected a bit more as I did enjoy The Iron Woman last year. This was just meh.

[Faby RD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Siempre será uno de los libros más especiales de mi vida. Sin importar cuantas veces lo lea, lo sigo disfrutando como la primera vez

[Yassin El Badrawy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd been meaning to start reading Sylvia Plath, so when I came upon a book by her husband, Ted Hughes, on my mother's shelf, I had to give it a shot. It was essentially a collection of short stories about how certain animals evolved into the creatures we know today. It was such a lovely and simple read, and I really enjoyed it!

[Year 5 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good 👍 has a lot of sad bits but really good

[g026r · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's admittedly hard to read Ted Hughes' How the Whale Became and Other Stories and not think of the animal tales in Kipling's Just So Stories . The tales within are, quite obviously, much of the same type: a short tale providing a fantastical explanation of why a certain type of animal is how it is or does what it does.

This comparison is both to Whale's advantage and detriment. The detriment is that Hughes, though the far better poet, oddly doesn't have quite the same sense rhythm as Kipling when it comes to prose. There's no line here as evocative as The Elephant's Child's "great grey-green greasy Limpopo" or The Sing-Song of Old Man Kangaroo's repetitive gallop of "Yellow-Dog Dingo".

On the other hand, even the most ardent admirer of Kipling's work has to admit that the non-animal stories drag and pale in comparison, and that's where Whale has the better. The stories in here are far more consistent than Kipling's — never quite the same highs, but likewise never approaching the lows.

[Simay Yildiz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe this is the first Ted Hughes book I've ever read. If I did read anything else of his, I honestly don't remember. If they're all like this one, I'd definitely like to check them out.

I've read the Turkish translation version, so I have no idea what the "other stories" in the English version are. In the one I read, though, it starts with how the whale became, and then it moves onto other animals. All of them were absolutely adorable, yet the whale was my favorite. And I especially loved god's role in creating all of them, but I'm not going to get into the reasons...

I think this is an enjoyable read for both kids and adults. And it definitely makes great bedtime stories whether someone reads them to you or you read them yourself.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tales of how the animals 'became' - in short, easy chapter bites. I'd say more 5+ than the 8+ though as directed by the 1001-childrens-book editors.

I liked this collection a lot better also than Kipling's "Just So Stories" - considering a children's audience - as the language is simpler and more modern. The image of the whale flattening God's house and garden fence is ridiculous and funny.

But be ready, if you're not of a religious household, for the questions from your little person about God, and did He really make everything!

[Lola · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the very first book with more letters than drawings I´ve ever read,this was like 20 years ago and since then I love to read. I think this is a good story for kids that are learning to read because it´s full of short stories that keep them interested from the begining to the end in a short time.

I still keep my copy of it and now I can hardly wait for my niece to start reading so I can share it with her.

Its a great book!!!

This is the first book I´ve read to my son.

[Whole And · Rating 5 out of 5]

An EXCELLENT collection of animal stories and how each became. Full of adventure intertwined with reasoning and moral questioning, it's not only about how the animals became but the behaviours and characteristics that shaped who and how they became. A rich reading experience.
Thank you Ted Hughes!

[Stefanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Geschichten über die Entstehungen der Tiere. Die ersten Geschichten sind recht gut, aber danach werden sie seltsam. Und zum Großteil werden die Tiere auch negativ dargestellt. Die Eule, die die anderen Vögel betrügt. Der Wal, der von Gott ins Meer geworfen wird, weil er zu groß geworden ist. Der böse Fuchs. Der dumme Hase...

Eine der wenigen positiven Geschichten war die über den Elefanten.

[Rebecca Schwarz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Found this at the library and am reading them to Sylvia. We both really enjoyed these animal origin stories. They were unpredictable yet satisfying with just a little more going on thematically than the typical kids' lit fare.

[James Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag of stories, with each story being used to explore some aspect of the animal's stereotypical character: cruelty, vanity etc. and explain how its features were occasioned. Rather enjoyed this.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and even read it to my preschooler. She enjoyed the fun stories about how the animals "became." It's a fun read with great lessons. You'll love meeting the vain Polar Bear, the hard-working Lionocerangodiff (?), the speedy Torto, and the sleepy Whale-wort.

[Hirosasazaki Sasazaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

easy read