Joe Hayes

Rattlesnakes and storyteller Joe Hayes must have a thing for each other. Joe’s teamed up again with Antonio Castro to tell us how one day he saved a rattlesnake’s life. Sure enough, that made the rattlesnake so happy he followed Joe home. The snake became Joe’s pet. Just like a dog. Oh, wow, Joe’s tall tales get taller every year!

When Joe Hayes was a boy, he loved to wear his black and white high-top sneakers. He wore them every day. “Get rid of those shoes,” his mother told him one morning. “They smell terrible!” But did Joe listen, did he believe what his mother said? Not until he met the back end of a skunk!

“Hayes's flowing plot, enlivened by several wry twists, is decidedly satisfying. Fiedler's spare, earth-toned paintings convey the particulars of the setting from traditional garb to the sprawling landscapes as well as the timelessness of folklore.”—Publishers Weekly Don Ignacio is a wealthy landowner whose prized possession is an apple tree that produces the most delicious fruit around. He trusts only one man to care for this tree—his ranch...

In his classic bilingual style, Joe tells the story of a haunted house in a poor little town in Arizona. Nobody will rent that house because they know a ghost lives there. So the landlord tries to rents it out for free. Still nobody will rent it. That is, until Elena’s father rents it. He doesn’t believe in ghosts. Lucky for Elena that her grandmother knows all about the ways of ghosts. Elena, with the help of her grandmother, resolves the mystery of “ghost...

Respected raconteur Joe Hayes is built for tall tales—he’s got the world’s longest legs! And Joe—who travels all over the United States telling stories to kids—says that The Gum-Chewing Rattler is the perfect tall tale for kids because it combines so many familiar experiences—chewing lots of bubblegum, getting in trouble in school, driving your mom crazy—with the wild, impossible claim that a certain rattlesnake chewed gum and...

Kids of all ages are always asking Joe Hayes, «How can it snow tortillas?» Well, now they’ll know where to find the answer—at long last, Joe’s signature book The Day It Snowed Tortillas is appearing in this new bilingual edition. Bloomsbury Review listed the original English-only edition as one of their fifteen all-time favorite children’s books. Our bilingual edition has all the original stories as they have evolved in the last twenty years of...

What happens when an old dog sitting at the dinner table with his master slides a whole leg of lamb, a big bowl of posole, a stack of tortillas and a bottle of wine to a coyote, who just happens to be under the table? A whole ruckus, that's what!But that's nothing compared with some of the other wild and wonderful folktales gathered by author Joe Hayes in this bilingual edition of The Coyote Under the Table. Like his signature collection The Day It Snowed Tortillas, this book is full...

La Llorona (yoh-RROH-nah) / The Weeping Woman is the ghost story to end all ghost stories, capturing the minds of both kids and adults in the U.S. and Mexico. In Spanish and English, master storyteller JOE HAYES retells the tale of a beautiful woman whose fear and jealousy dooms her to an eternal search for all she’s lost. It appears at first to be only a frightening story filled with mysterious events that cause children to sit wide-eyed, huddling together, listening spellbound. Yet it’s the...

Can a pair of sisters be too generous with each other? Only if their mother doesn't say a word. Author Joe Hayes and artist Esau Andrade team up to deliver a knockout picture book about siblings. Two sisters secretly try to outdo each other with generosity. Each new gift from one sister to the other—a secret to everybody but their mother—will have readers crying out, «Don't say a word, Mama!» Until, of course, she does. ¿Pueden un par de hermanas ser demasiado generosas entre ellas? ...

“An entertaining marriage of pictures and words.”— Kirkus Reviews In 1996, master storyteller Joe Hayes and illustrator Rebecca Leer created A Spoon for Every Bite . It became an instant classic. In this lovely New Mexico folktale, a rich man tries to prove his wealth to his poor neighbors by using a new spoon for every bite. In the process, he’s served a pretty dish of come-uppance. A Spoon for Every Bite is available for the first time in the...