The universally known stories in a culture have a profound and lasting influence in the mindset of growing children they are told to, and mark the continuity of tradition when repeated to their own children. This is true in every culture and this story is the ultimate in Chinese children stories. Not only does this story contain numerous character studies, conflicts and scenes that have entered into linguistic/world view idiom, but hidden inside this story are cryptic allusions to deep Buddhist and Taoist training. The full version of this story has 100 books and some authors have considered this story on par with such classics as the Tao-Te-Ching.
This version is a good introduction to this story, the sort to give you a taste or to read to a child. I have a dozen versions of this story and while this is not my choice as the best short-popular version, it is close. Further, this author has released this text for the Kindle for 1 penny! This is the world's greatest bargain. Absolutely everyone should load this on their reader...
As an aside...
I hope that many like myself will purchase his dead tree version of the book and put it on their shelf, prove to publishers and Amazon that this is a good economic model. May many more authors release inexpensive e-book versions of texts as a promotion of their work. There is presently a vast quantity of high quality free audio books by authors trying to break in or grow their base, for traditionally published material. I regularly purchase texts that I have listened to or heard for free on the NPR Radio Reader program.
I personally have been less than enthused with the universal $10 price for kindle books, the overall reading experience and utility is not the equivalent of a paper book. Given that 99.9% of the infrastructure costs such a printing, ink, paper, transport and warehousing are nonexistent for e-books, $10 is exorbitant. I generally feel that if the paper back version of a book is available for $15 compared to a $10 Kindle e-book, I would unhesitatingly go with paper.
There is a lot of inexpensive e-book content "notably - Author 50-years-dead stuff" but much of the contemporary less than $5 content is barely spam. I hope that the Kindle consumer community will spot and recommend high quality inexpensive content; review and recommend it to others. Vote with your voice and and wallet (mouse-click) for this content to knock publishers of their high-horse...