A Tale of Two Beasts by Fiona Roberton (published 2015) is an amusing tale about a girl who finds a strange beast in the woods and brings him home to take care of him. It is also the tale of a beast who is minding his own business when he is accosted by a terrible beast that kidnaps him and subjects him to all sorts of torture. Once you’ve read one story, you flip the book over to see this second perspective!
The illustrations as well as the text show these two perspectives. The pages narrated by the beast show the illustrations from a lower perspective, with himself as the main character. The illustrations are cartoon-like pencil drawings and the beast is illustrated as a non-recognizable animal, kind of a mix between a fox and a squirrel, and this adds to both the humor and the general storyline: children might know not to bother a squirrel, but what about a friendly animal like this?
Because it is the same story, but told from two different perspectives, it is a perfect book for discussing a narrator’s perspective, and of course to learn to compare and contrast characters. It is a great book for reading aloud thanks to the humor involved, but it also a touchstone work when looking different perspectives from a different narrator.
