Review: Lies and Other Tall Tales

Lies and Other Tall Tales, complies by Zora Neale Hurston, adapted and illustrated by Christopher Myers (HarperCollins, 2005)

“Liars, back in the day, could tell a lie so good,

You didn’t even want to know the truth.”

The late Zora Neale Hurston (author of Their Eyes Were Watching God), throughout her anthropological studies of the southern U.S., collected tall tale after tall tale, each one more deliciously far-fetched than the next. But then:

“…she knew that there had been a decline

In the quality of lies and it was just

Gone get worse, unless somebody did something.

So she wrote down all the lies she could get her hands on.”

Illustrator Christopher Myers went the next step with Hurston’s collections, creating a book full of whoppers, illustrated with Myers’ cut cloth and paper art. Meet a man who ran so fast, he lost his feet. Or the woman so small, she could walk between the raindrops and never get wet. And then there was the year it was so dry — or the year it was so cold — well, you wouldn’t believe it until you read it, and even then, maybe you won’t believe it, but you’ll want to!

Lies and Other Tall Tales is a tribute to the fast-dying art of tall tales and outrageous whoppers straight from the furthest reaches of the imagination, “back when computers ran on steam power, back when cellular phones had rotary dials.” The rhythmic text echoes the voices of the original speakers as they sat of an evening, trying to outdo one another with one whopper after another. Small children may need some introduction into the text, lest they take the tall tales too literally, but young readers will enjoy the zestful exaggerations and wild fancies, and may try to come up with their own whoppers to match.