The Singing Pumpkin Flannel

This flannel story goes with the Iranian folktale “The Singing Pumpkin” that I discovered in Judy Sierra’s Silly and Sillier: Read-Aloud Tales from Around the World. In this tale, a woman goes to visit her granddaughter, but happens upon a ogre on her way! She convinces the ogre to not eat her until her way back because she will be much fatter then. When the woman gets to the granddaughter’s house, the granddaughter gives her a huge pumpkin to hide in and roll past the ogre. However, the woman sings while inside the pumpkin and the ogre knows something is weird about this. The ogre tells the woman to come out but she says she cannot until he says the magic words, “Come here my big white dog.” When the ogre says this the woman’s dog comes running and chases the ogre away.

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