Mr. Fibber, the Storyteller

These stories, in rhyme, about Mr. Fibber were first published in installments in the 1940s and soon became classics.

Lea Goldberg’s Mr. Fibber is a teller of absurd and amusing tales along the lines of a Baron Munchhausen. He boasts about inventing a variety of weird contraptions that rescue him from any situation and he captivates his audience with his preposterous but enchanting and funny adventures.

Once, he relates, he managed to squeeze himself into a lemonade jar in order to salvage a coin that had fallen inside. Someone put a lid on the jar, but he found an ingenious way to get out. In another story, he tells of a gigantic dog that is harnessed to a train, like a locomotive. The dog invites Mr. Fibber to board the train, and when it reaches the top of a mountain it stops to guzzle two tons of coal. And if there’s a giant dog that eats coal, what would you say to a little bird that produces milk? Mr. Fibber is even capable of making sure the weather will be fine and warm when he goes on vacation. How? He simply fishes the sun out of the sea where it has set, wraps it up well and packs it in his suitcase.

Thirty of the stories were published in book form in 1977; three of them appeared as comics in 2013, thereby introducing the much loved character to a new generation of young readers and their parents.