Recent Reading: Borgel

Here is a fable from Daniel Pinkwater's novel Borgel.

The Story of the Rabbit and the Eggplant

Once upon a time there was a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. Now, the eggplant, as you know, is a member of the vegetable kingdom, and the rabbit is a very fast animal.

Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something.

People expected the eggplant to win the race by some clever trick of philosophy. The race was started, and there was a lot of cheering. The rabbit streaked out of sight.

The eggplant just sat there at the starting line. Everybody knew that in some surprising way the eggplant would wind up winning the race.

Nothing of the sort happened. Eventually, the rabbit crossed the finish line, and the eggplant hadn't moved an inch.

The spectators ate the eggplant.

Moral: Never bet on an eggplant (pgs 17-18).

So, here we have a nonsense nursery story or a folktale. However, at some point, Pinkwater sold the rights to this nonsense folktale and it was changed an made part of a standardized test in New York, Illinois, Arkansas, and Delaware. Here is part of how the New York Times described the incident in 2012:

A reading passage included this week in one of New York's standardized English tests has become the talk of the eight grade, with students walking around saying, "Pineapples don't have sleeves," as if it were code for admission to a secret society.

The passage is a parody of the tortoise and the hare story, the Aesop's fable that almost every child learns in elementary school. Only instead of a tortoise, the hare races a talking pineapple, and the moral of the story is the part about the sleeves.

The story goes on to say

Daniel Pinkwater, a popular children's book author who wrote the original version of the passage, which was doctored for the test, said that the test-makers had turned a nonsensical story inot a nonsensical question for what he believed was a nonsensical test, but acknowledged that he was tickled to death by the children's reaction.

I invited you to read the rest of the story on the Times website. The story was also covered by a number of other media outlets, including NPR.

Pinkwater, himself, had this to say about the incident on his website:

I don’t know how the test publishing company changed the story. I gather they decided to call the rabbit a hare, and made the eggplant into a pineapple. Also there appears to be something about sleeves. And they made up questions for the students to answer. I would not have done any of these things. But it has nothing to do with me. I cashed the check they sent me after about 8 months, and took my wife out to lunch at a cheap restaurant. I believe, she ordered eggplant.