Product Description
A place of crawling spiders and poisonous snakes-where nightmares came true ...that was "the black" where men were punished for challenging mind for powerful than their own. ... Read more

Product Description
The Rabbit Ears Treasury of Fables and Other Stories entertains and enlightens with these classic animal stories--read by your favorite stars and featuring original music by some of today's greatest artists.

The Three Billy Goats Gruff / The Three Little Pigs
Read by Holly Hunter
Original Music by Art Lande
Three billy goats encounter a greedy troll--and turn the tables on him--when they try to cross a bridge in the popular Norwegian classic The Three Billy Goats Gruff.
The big bad wolf huffs and puffs his way through the tale of the brave pig who outsmarts his fellow oinkers by simply working harder in the all-time favorite The Three Little Pigs.

Rumpelstiltskin
Read by Kathleen Turner
Original Music by Tangerine Dream
When the king orders a young woman to spin a room full of straw into gold, she turns to a mysterious elfin man for help . . . but will the price of his aid be her first-born child?

The Tiger and the Brahmin
Read by Ben Kingsley
Original Music by Ravi Shankar
"I shan't eat you if you let me out of the cage," the tiger tells the Brahmin before the holy man discovers that the tiger intended to eat him all along. Only the intervention of a clever jackal can save the Brahmin from his fate.

The Ugly Duckling
Read by Cher
Original Music by Patrick Ball
Rediscover the inner beauty in all of us with this beloved Hans Christian Andersen story of the outcast duckling who finds himself transformed into a beautiful swan. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A wonderful thing to play in the car
Turn off those in-car dvd players. Take off the ipod head phones. Instead, parents, slap in these cd's and take your kids on a magical trip while driving to the store. The stories in this series are short, and better than sweet. They are interesting, well read, and backed up with beautiful music. The readers are all actors, and the stories so well read your kids will ask you not to turn off the car when you get to where you are going. My favorite - The Tiger and the Brahman read by Ben Kingsley.

Best one!
I like Rabbit Ears, but I have to say this one has been the all time favorite amongst any child I have ever had listen to these.They like the others, but they want to hear this one again. The voices are superb in this one and enough sound effects to keep their attention.

too much music
I was disappointed for two reasons: first too much background music made it difficult to hear the reader; secondly, the writers changed the story.Why try to "improve" upon a classic like the Three Little Pigs??

Great for a long family trip
Our family (5-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son) has enjoyed several of these Rabbit Ears collections while on the road. The stories are long enough, but not so long that attention wanders, and the music is lovely, too. ... Read more

Product Description
Three goats match wits with a terrifying troll in order make their way across a bridge to a succulent clover meadow, in a delightful version of the Norwegian folktale. Read by Holly Hunter. Music by Art Lande. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

Good classic story
My daughter is 3 and enjoys this story.The goats and troll are nicely illustrated, and it is an easy enough read to hold a toddler's attention.

Three Billy Goats Fruff Sound Book
The book was not packaged correctly, and the corners of the book were damaged in shipment.It was the correct book and the book was usable.Two pieces of carboard would have saved the book from damage.

The True Trollish Tale
I first heard this tale in Swedish, though the classic version was collected by the Norwegians Asbjornsen and Moe. I can't remember if it was read to me or told to me by one of my Swedish aunts. This edition is the finest, crispest, most authentic translation into English, without any up-to-date-ifying or tampering with the fierceness of the original.

Yes, I see the price! Makes me want to lower my horns and butt somebody off the bookseller's bridge. But honestly, mom and dad, you don't need the book to tell the story. Use your own personality to project it! My son loved the story and made me tell it again and again. We used to enact it on trails when we took family hikes. I'd run ahead and become the troll. He'd cross the bridge first as the kid. Then his mother would cross as the nanny, while he crept back to the starting point. Then he'd come across as the billy and butt me a hundred yards up the trail.Sometimes we played Brer Rabbit and the Tarbaby for variety.

Read the eloquent previous review by Judy Polhemus for her thoughts about the illustrations. Then search the other booksellers if you MUST have this edition.

Meanwhile, don't you wish you could butt a few trolls off the bridge that crosses amazon?

Clarification
For the barcode: 019341071327 Amazon.com's database (as does a few others) brings up this version of this release.I have uploaded the artwork; both front & rear. Release Date: 1989. Manufactured by: Windham Hill Records; Produced by: Rabbit Ears Productions, Inc. Art Lande has a more than credible assemblage of musical talent and Holly Hunters voice, complete with "homey" accent, lend themselves to a throughly enjoyable rendition these classics.

The scary version
"The Three Billy Goats Gruff 1957" by P.C. Asbjornsen and J.E. Moe (the Grimm Brothers of Norway) and illustrated by Marcia Brown is what I call the scary version of this Norwegian folk tale. My library (I am a school librarian) has three other versions, all pretty and not scary at all. What good is a fairy tale if it doesn't make the little ones hug their neighbors in delicious fright.

Least you think I am a troll myself, I would like to remind you of that word the French gave us--frisson--that delicious scary feeling when we're safe. Thus, when I show the various book covers of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" and ask which version they want me to read: the nice one, the pretty one, or the scary one, the children all hug each other and say without doubt--"the SCARY one!!"

I might add that it is Marcia Brown's illustrations (yes, THAT Marcia Brown) that make this version the scary one. She smears on color, uses lots of black and reddish-browns, uses bold gashes of colors. Just the coloring technique lends itself toward that frisson. The introduction of the troll is a mudpit of fierce, scary browns and blacks with a hint of red in those browns--a pit of anger and hatred. The troll's huge eyes, long nose, and jagged, broken teeth add to the frisson.

Listen to the word pattern: "On the way up was a bridge over a river they had to cross, and under the bridge lived a great ugly troll with eyes as big as saucers and a nose as long as a poker."

When the troll comes out, the viewer sees him in his full scariness because he is right there "in our face," large as life. Then he says that scary line: "Who's that tripping over my bridge?" You know, any reader worth her salt is going to read it in a fierce voice, and adds: "Now, I'm coming to gobble you up!"

Truly, this is some scary artwork, almost beyond frisson. "'It's I! the BIG BILLY GOAT GRUFF!' said the billy goat, who had an ugly hoarse voice of his own." And you should see THIS scary drawing of the BIG goat! When the third Billy Goat Gruff does battle with the bad ol' troll, body parts fly. Really! In a children's book! That's why some people disapprove of this version.

It's a matter of taste. I always let students who seem fearful to go into the other room until I finish reading this version--the scary one! Afterword, everyone wants to check out this book. Oh, the other childen? If any went into the other room, they always return to hear the story.

Books are magic. ... Read more