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Cottage TheatrePhonics Plays

TheatrePhonics Plays: Cottage Press, By Margaret Fanning and Linda Bak

1992 Mom Crab Gets Mad: A TheatrePhonics Play. By Margaret Fanning and Linda Bak. Illustrated by Linda Bak. Pamphlet. First Printing. Lincoln Center, MA: A TheatrePhonics Play: The Cottage Press. $3 from the publisher, Sept., '96. Level II, Vce.

This playlet presents the fable quite faithfully and directly. The mother crab draws a line in the sand and asks the young crab to follow it. The telling of this tale becomes a kind of tour-de-force of monosyllabic words and specific consonants. "If you twitch to the side, to the side, to the side, you will crash that soft shell in a ditch! Switch to this line and shush up!" (7). Mom's last line is "Do like I tell you, not like I do!" (16).

1992 The Famished Fox: A TheatrePhonics Play. Margaret Fanning and Linda Bak. Illustrated by Linda Bak. Pamphlet. First printing. Lincoln Center, MA: Cottage Press. $1.95 from Powell's, Chicago, August, '96. Level I, Short Vowels.

This pamphlet-play presents a novel version of FG, in which it is a fig on a log pile, not a bunch of grapes on a trellis, that is beyond the hungry fox's reach. The play is ingenious for finding one-syllable short-vowel words for the fox to use! There is a little question in my mind about the fox's inability to get something which seems be resting on top of a pile of logs. This booklet tipped me off to the existence of the series, and I then ordered the other fables from the publisher.

1992 The Fox and the Fig: A TheatrePhonics Play. Margaret Fanning and Linda Bak. Illustrated by Linda Bak. Pamphlet. Second printing. Lincoln Center, MA: Cottage Press. $3 from the publisher, Sept., '96. Level I, Short Vowels.

This pamphlet reproduces The Famished Fox. I will repeat some of my comments from there. This play presents a novel version of FG, in which it is a fig on a log pile, not a bunch of grapes on a trellis, that is beyond the hungry fox's reach. The play is ingenious for finding one-syllable short-vowel words for the fox to use! There is a little question in my mind about the fox's inability to get something which seems be resting on top of a pile of logs.

1992 The Lad and the Fib: A TheatrePhonics Play. Margaret Fanning and Linda Bak. Illustrated by Linda Bak. Pamphlet. Second printing. Lincoln Center, MA: Cottage Press. $3 from the publisher, Sept., '96. Level I, Short Vowels.

This playlet is a tour-de-force of monosyllabic words following the pattern of BW. Vin is assigned to guard a vat of figs. Bored, he invents threats to the figs—from a pig and then a cat. People come to guard the figs. When Vin screams truly that a rat is attacking the figs, they do not believe him.

1992 The Pup and the Bone: A TheatrePhonics Play. By Margaret Fanning and Linda Bak. Illustrated by Linda Bak. Pamphlet. Second Printing. Lincoln Center, MA: A TheatrePhonics Play: The Cottage Press. $3 from the publisher, Sept., '96. Level II, VCe.

Originally published as The Greedy Pup. This playlet presents DS. The frisky pup first must wait for lunch time and then must pass up various opportunities, where the foxes could attack him or where the grass is not thick enough. The pup even takes a nap next to a pond. Does this story work as well with a pond as it does with a river?

 

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