Juan Bobo- Folktale

Juan Bobo: Four Folktales from Puerto Rico
retold by Carmen T. Bernier-Grand

This book is about a boy named Juan Bobo and things that he encounters. The book is compiled of four short stories called: 'The Best Way to Carry Water,' 'A Pig in Sunday Clothes,' 'Do Not Sneeze, Do Not Scratch, Do Not Eat!,' and 'A Dime a Jug.' The last two pages of the book tell the entire four short stories in Spanish. I think that this book would be a great way to help ELL students to advance in thier reading skills.

In the first story, Juan Bobo's mother askes him to get water from the stream. He complains that he is not strong enough to carry the buckets back with water. His mother tells him to figure it out, and Juan Bobo goes to fetch the water. When he comes back he boasts about how strong he was to be able to carry the water back to his mother and that the load felt lighter as he got closer to home. His mom steps into a puddle on the porch and realized that Juan Bobo used baskets to carry the water and the water leaked through the baskets onto the porch!

In the second story Juan Bobo's mother gives him the option of going to church or staying home and taking care of the pig. Juan decides to dress the pig in his mother's belongings and take it to church. The pig acted like a typical pig, rolled in a mud puddle, lost an earring and tore the dress. Juan's mom found the pig on the way home from church and picks it up and carries it home, which of course gets mud on her dress. She is furious! When she sees Juan Bobo, he gets excited and says he didn't know they could play with mud in church and tells her he'd like to go to church next Sunday, as well!


In the third story, Juan Bobo and his mother are invited to eat at a lady's house. Before leaving, Juan Bobo's mother tells him things he can and cannot do while at the lady's house. As soon as Juan Bobo was served his food, he sniffed rice up his nose and had to sneeze, which was something his mother told him not to do. Then Juan Bobo is served steak, his mom tells him not to use his hands, so he uses a spoon and drops the steak. When he went to pick up the steak, he remembered he could not use his hands and left the steak on his lap. Then fried bananas were being passed around, just as he was about to get one a mosquito bit him on the neck and he yelled. His mom thought he didn't want a banana and did not give him one. Then the steak fell on his foot and he thought it was his mother's foot tapping his which was a signal that he was eating too much. Since Juan didn't actually eat anything, he got and ran home, deciding that good manners must mean no eating and he didn't want to practice his manners.

The finally story tells about Juan Bobo's mother asking him to sell sugarcane syrup to some widows. On the way there, Juan Bobo gets distracted by a handkerchief in a puddle that has dimes in it and takes the wrong path. He mistakes a barn for the church and thinks the shiny black flies are the small widows his mother told him about. He takes the corks off the jugs and lets the flies taste the syrup. He tells them that the jugs cost a dime each. The flies flew around him and into the bottles. He shook the flies out of the jugs and they flew away. He began to chase after them but fell. When he fell the dimes came out of his pocket and he thought it was the flies paying. He called after them to get the jugs, but they had flown off, so he ate the rest of the syrup and took the money home to his mother. She tells him he can have anything he wants for dinner, but he is full from all of the sugarcane syrup!

I think this book would also be entertaining to the students because of the comedy provided by Juan Bobo and his silly mistakes and misconceptions!