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  • The Greatest Liar on Earth: A True Story
  • Elizabeth Bush
Greenwood, Mark . The Greatest Liar on Earth: A True Story; illus. by Frané Lessac. Candlewick, 2012. 32p. ISBN 978-0-7636-6155-7 $16.99 R 6-9 yrs.

Here's a cognitive workout—a fictionalized story about a true story about a bogus life story. The central figure is Louis de Rougemont, alias Henri Grin, a man who [End Page 245] launched a self-promotional career in the late nineteenth century by concocting tales of his fabulous travels and adventures and writing and lecturing about them to wildly enthusiastic—not to mention gullible—audiences. Ironically, some of the bits culled from his readings at the British Museum that would ultimately prove too much for his fans to believe (riding tortoises, encountering giant squid, and experiencing a rain of fish) had actually happened—though not to him. Finally unmasked as a fraud, Louis/Henri tried to reinvent himself as the "World's Greatest Liar," but he was booed off stage to eventually eke out a life on the streets of London. There's a morality tale in here somewhere, but Greenwood lets de Rougemont's claims and the public's reaction speak for themselves without further homiletics. Lessac's gouache paintings, replete with both her subject's fantasized imaginings and his performance venues, are as appropriately naïve as the showman's audiences. A closing note comments on the relative veracity of some of the wilder tales, and a brief list of sources is included. Greenwood admits to paraphrasing de Rougemont's actual quotations, which of course are pretty much bunkum anyway. Try sorting that out.

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