"HEY, MAN. I'M A SNAKE": FIRST EDITION OF WHO'S GOT GAME? POPPY OR THE SNAKE?, SIGNED BY TONI MORRISON

MORRISON, Toni & MORRISON, Slade. Who's Got Game? Poppy or the Snake? New York: Scribner, 2003. Square quarto, original green cloth, pictorial endpapers, original dust jacket. $350.

First edition of this witty turn on Aesop's Farmer and the Snake, co-authored by Tony Morrison and her son Slade, a wonderful tale with illustrations by Pascal Lemaitre that expressly draws on African American folklore, signed on the title page by Toni Morrison.

In the Who's Got Game? books, co-authored by Toni Morrison with her son Slade, she highlights her belief that "a central goal of education should be to encourage children to think and decide for themselves: 'trust the children to figure it out.'" This critically praised series "not only weaves new twists into old tales, but leaves it to readers to decide who outsmarts whom, if anybody." Here, in a variant of Aesop's Farmer and the Snake, the Morrisons' richly inventive tale of Poppy or the Snake particularly draws on "Black folklore" and expressly "signals the presence of an ancestor in the story, a distinctive element of African American literature." When Poppy, representing a figure Toni Morrison has defined as an "elder," concludes his story of how he was bitten by a snake, he doesn't blame the snake. Instead, "Poppy claims that what saved him was being alert to the snake's words, which prompted him to buy an antidote; 'He never said he wouldn't bite me—just that he wouldn't think of it… paying attention is what saved me'" (Lopez Roperto, Trust the Children, 45-52). Of course, Poppy's handsome "remembering boots" offer their own sly lesson as well. With illustrations by Pascal Lemaitre, whose artwork, which is linked to that of William Steig, Shel Silverstein, and James Stevenson, is also featured in the Morrisons' other Who's Got Game? books.

A fine copy.