Fox Fables (Hindi & English)

Abstract

This is a large, handsome, landscape-formatted book of 32 pages presenting two fables bilingually. It belongs to a series, of which I now have seventeen. The series presents the two fables of this book by pairing English with a number of different languages, one for each book. FC is visually splendid! The size of the book allows Jago to create impressive illustrations like that of the crane unable to slurp up soup as well as three detailed specific views of her attempts. Casey has the crane thank the fox for his kindness politely and add: "Please let me repay you -- come to dinner at my house." The page after the story lists activities: writing, art, "maths," storytelling, and music. The second story here is "King of the Forest," and it is labelled a Chinese fable. Tiger comes upon fox and frightens him. In desperation, fox claims that he is king of the forest. Tiger roars with laughter. Fox answers that he will show tiger. "This I've got to see," tiger says. Fox gets tiger to walk behind him. Of course, every animal upon whom these two come runs away in respect. Tiger is fooled and pays his respects to the king of the forest. Fox bids him be gone and then, on the way home, has a good laugh over the whole ploy. This story is also strongly illustrated. My versions now include Arabic, Italian, Bengali, Urdu, Swahili, French, Polish, Arabic, Russian, Tamil, Mandarin, Croatian, Farsi, Japanese, Somali, Turkish, Hindi, and Somali.