Modern Fables: Twenty of Aesop's Fables Brought Up to Date

Abstract

This book is a pleasant surprise! It offers engaging versions of twenty basic Aesopic fables in terms that a grade school student of the mid-twentieth-century might well understand. The references are dated now, and culture has changed, but the transpositions are engaging. In the first story, a non-athlete saves the football player who had saved him from a bully. The scene is depicted on the cover, with a black-and-white Aesop sketched in behind the students portrayed in color. The beginning T of C lists the updated stories just across from their originals. About half of the fables are illustrated with a full-page black-and-white cartoon. A story telling of a fellow who waits too long to invite his girlfriend to the prom does make a good update of The Angler and the Little Fish. A fellow kicking a lawn-mower does make a good contemporary rendition of the snake attacking the metal file. If one of the strengths of this collection is gathering ephemera, this is a major find. I had never heard of it before.