# Duffy and the Devil

**Author:** Harve Zemach
**Grade range:** Grades K–3
**First published:** 1973
**Page count:** 40
**Genre:** Juvenile Fiction
**ISBN-13:** `9780374418977`
**ISBN-10:** `0374418977`
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/book/duffy-and-the-devil
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## About this book

Duffy and the Devil was a popular play in Cornwall in the nineteenth century, performed at the Christmas season by groups of young people who went from house to house. The Zemachs have interpreted the folk tale which the play dramatized, recognizable as a version of the widespread Rumpelstiltskin story. Its main themes are familiar, but the character and details of this picture book are entirely Cornish, as robust and distinctive as the higgledy-piggledy, cliff-hanging villages that dot England's southwestern coast from Penzance to Land's End. The language spoken by the Christmas players was a rich mixture of local English dialect and Old Cornish (similar to Welsh and Gaelic), and something of this flavor is preserved in Harve Zemach's retelling. Margot Zemach's pen-and-wash illustrations 

## Where this book is assigned

### Caldecott Medal

- **recommended** · Kindergarten grade — [source: Caldecott Medal (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 1974 Caldecott Medal winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldecott_Medal)
- **recommended** · 1st grade — [source: Caldecott Medal (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 1974 Caldecott Medal winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldecott_Medal)
- **recommended** · 2nd grade — [source: Caldecott Medal (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 1974 Caldecott Medal winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldecott_Medal)
- **recommended** · 3rd grade — [source: Caldecott Medal (American Library Association), via Wikipedia — 1974 Caldecott Medal winner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caldecott_Medal)

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