So I finally said to him, 'Get lost, go and amuse yourself. 'I was going to get $25 for reading it, so it was very important, and he kept bothering me, trying to interrupt me. Do something.' About 35 to 40 minutes later, he said 'Listen to this,' and he read me 'Ferdinand.' I finally said to him, 'Get lost, go and amuse yourself.

But when he sits on a bumblebee, he goes berserk, puffing and kicking. He just wants to sit under the cork tree and smell flowers. Precious Ferdinand, even when he grows to be bigger than all the other bulls, still doesn't want to fight. 'It's very delicate and very important, and the people from the Library of Congress were very thorough in saying like, 'Hey, don't touch the first book.'' 'We're going to look at the 1936 edition but not touch it,' Cena told the students. On a table next to him were two early editions of the book from the library's collection. John Cena, the actor who voices Ferdinand in the new movie, recently read the original story to hundreds of DC public school kids at the Library of Congress. And that bull has been on quite a journey to get here. Now, the peaceful bull who prefers sniffing flowers to bullfighting is getting an update from 20th Century Fox. Two years later, Disney turned it into it an Oscar-winning short film.

Millions of people have read Munro Leaf's The Story of Ferdinand since it was first published in 1936. Ferdinand, voiced by John Cena, and Nina (Julia Saldanha and Lily Day).īlue Sky Studios/20th Century Fox Film Corporation

Ferdinand the bull munro leaf