How the Tortoise Cracked His Shell
Classical Stories · No. 29 — A feast in the sky and a borrowed name: All of You.
- Classical Stories
- 44 min
- Ages 8–13
- 7 chapters
About this audiobook
In a season of famine, word spreads that the people of the sky are giving a great feast — for the birds, since only the birds can attend. The tortoise, hungriest and smoothest-tongued of all the animals, has no wings, no invitation, and no shame: he flatters a feather from each bird until he has a full borrowed coat, and on the flight up he introduces the party custom of taking new names for the feast. The name he chooses for himself is 'All of You.' When the sky people set out the food and announce, as hosts do, that the feast is 'for all of you' — the tortoise's moment has come, and the birds' patience is about to run out at a very great height.
Why it's worth a listen
The birds are invited to a feast in the sky, and the tortoise — famously, catastrophically hungry — talks his way into borrowed feathers and a brand-new name: All of You. What that name lets him do at the feast is the single best food-trick in world folklore, and what happens afterward is why every tortoise you will ever meet still carries the same cracked pattern on its back.
A question to keep
How does a clever person become a wise one — and what breaks the clever ones who don't?
Chapters
- The Season of Thin Shadows
- A Coat of Many Wings
- The Flight of 'All of You'
- The Feast in the Clouds
- The Falling of the Plumes
- The Long Descent
- A Question to Keep