By Lily Toy Hong
A Chinese folktale about an old couple who dig up a pot that doubles absolutely everything you drop into it, including themselves.
Mr. Haktak is digging in his garden when he strikes an old brass pot. He carries it home, and when his wife's hairpin falls in, two hairpins come out. Then their purse of five coins goes in, and out comes ten. They are rich and delighted and cannot stop. Then Mrs. Haktak leans too far over the rim and tumbles in, and her husband is left staring at two wives. In a panic he falls in himself, and now there are two of everybody. The solution they land on is one of the warmest endings in any folktale.
The pot has exactly one rule, and your child gets it on the second page. From then on they are ahead of the story, calling out what will come back out before the Haktaks work it out themselves, which is the most fun a child can have in a picture book. The panic when the people start doubling is played entirely for laughs, and the ending is kind rather than a tidy moral. It's a real folktale that happens to run on arithmetic, not a worksheet in costume, and the paintings have a flat, glowing, folk-art warmth that carries it.