"Two of Everything" and "One Potato, Two Potato"

Two of Everything: A Chinese Folktale
by Lily Toy Hong
An elderly Chinese couple, Mr. and Mrs. Haktak, live in poverty until they unearth a large pot from their garden. When Mrs. Haktak drops a hairpin into the pot, she reaches in to get it and finds two at the bottom. When she drops her purse containing five gold coins into the pot, it becomes two purses, each with five gold coins. The story gets really interesting when Mrs. Haktak falls in. Mr. Haktak frantically reaches for her, and pulls out two Mrs. Haktaks. An excellent resource for teaching doubles addition or multiplying by two, it is also simply a very good story that sparks the imagination of children. What would they do with a pot that doubled whatever was put in it?

One Potato, Two Potato
by Cynthia DeFelice
Pictures by Andrea U'ren
This is a later (2006) version of the same story as "Two of Everything." The pictures are very effective and this telling is more compelling somehow. Once again, the characters discover a magic pot that doubles anything placed inside. The ending is a little different: the couple decides to rebury the pot for someone else to find. These two books can be compared to develop text-to-text reading comprehension skills.

Story Props for "Two of Everything" and "One Potato, Two Potato"