Aesop's Fables

Abstract

This is a large-format (8½ x 11¼) book with colorful illustrations for each of seventy fables. The book unfortunately frequently exemplifies a lack of integration with the story or, especially, between the story and its illustration. Perhaps some of this difficulty arises from an attempt to put more than one phase or aspect of the story into a single image. Thus The Stag and the Hedgehog (14) combines several traditional fables; the image which has both hedgehogs near the stag will not fit the text. The larks are pictured in a tree, not (as they must be) in the field (21). In a humorous image, the live donkey ends up sitting on the horse's back, where a dead donkey's skin normally lies (23). The golden eggs are visible in groups and even basketfuls; this picture suggests that the goose has been producing more than one a day (31). In The Two Cocks (35), both cocks are pictured in one scene with the eagle; that co-presence cannot work in the story. The illustration for The Mice and the Weasels (46-7) misses the story's point that the hornless mice could escape and thus that only the horned were devoured by the weasels. SW (93) is told in the poorer version. Some stories are simply different. Thus here the cock finds a diamond ring (16). The stag who ate the vine (34) is only wounded. The Androcles character is a shepherd boy, and the lion talks to him (38). Here a frog, not a fox, encounters a mask (80). The goat answers well the apparently solicitous lion: I think it's your dinner you're thinking about, not mine (61). Among the best illustrations are those for The Mouse and the Bull (19) and OF (27): the latter may be the best bloated, pre-explosion frog I have seen for this fable! There is a T of C at the front.