Watch Out for Clever Women!: Cuidado con las Mujeres Astutas! » (English and Spanish)

Joe Hayes is one of America's premier storytellers. He grew up in a small town in southern Arizona where he learned Spanish from his classmates. As he got older, Joe began gathering old stories from the Southwest. Joe has earned a distinctive role as a bilingual storyteller.

Folktales with an affirmative action twist: In each a woman uses her wits to overcome adversity.

Children's Literature

The introduction to these, bilingual, Spanish/English folktales states that there is an old saying that a woman thinks more in one minute than most men think in an entire month. This pretty much sums up the philosophy expressed in this humorous collection of trickster tales. The tricksters turn out to be clever wives, mothers, daughters and sweethearts, who manage to outwit the villains to save their rather naive or even dumb males. Most of the stories are from the Hispanic tradition of the Southwest, although one tale deals with a Navajo shepherd and his wise mother. One tale, "The Day it Snowed Tortillas" has already been published in an all-English volume with the same title, by Joe Hayes. The illustrations are realistic black and white drawings.