The Boy Who Swallowed Snakes

The Boy Who Swallowed Snakes
By Laurence Yep
Illustrated by Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng

This book is a Chinese folktale about a brave, honest, poor boy named Little Chou who witnesses a rich stranger leaving a basket full of silver coins in the forest. Little Chou tries to return the treasure by calling after the stranger, but the stranger evades his efforts. He drags the basket of treasure home for his widowed mother to see. The silver coins were hiding a poisonous magical glowing ku snake that attaches itself to Little Chou. The magical snake “kills people, steals their treasure and brings the wealth back to its owner.” Despite their many attempts, the snake could not be destroyed. So in a brave effort to prevent the snake from killing other people, Little Chou swallows the snake. Swallowing the poisonous snake does not kill Little Chou, but does result in two glowing ku snakes springing from his stomach that evening. He retaliates by eating the two new snakes. This same cycle repeats itself every night with the number of snakes increasing each time. The rich stranger hears about his ku snake multiplying itself to one thousand snakes and decides that he needs his snake back to steal the treasure of a thousand people at one time to be wealthier than anyone. When he reclaims his snake, it returns to just one. Little Chou tells him the secret of multiplying the snake and the rich stranger eats the snake. But since the rich man’s heart was greedy instead of pure like Little Chou’s, he dies. Little Chou and his mother use the basket of silver that the rich man gave them to invest in their land and become wealthy on their own.

I had a hard time following the storyline in this book. The story was awkwardly worded and I had to read it over many times to follow the plot. More details needed to be given about the magic of the snake. I could not imagine how a snake could “kill someone, steal their treasure and bring it back to its owner.” The pictures were very detailed and colorful watercolor paintings and added much to the story. I especially liked how on the last page Little Chou and his family were watching fireworks that reminded them of the night one thousand glowing ku snakes sprung from Little Chou’s stomach and danced in the sky.

Most of Laurence Yep’s books are chapter books that give insight to culture alienation and racial conflict (Dragonwings) and/or retells old Chinese folktales (The Ghost Fox). This book was very different, it was a children’s picture book of an original folktale.

I learned from reading this book that even if the storyline isn’t exactly well thought out, wonderful illustrations can make it worth the effort of reading it.