Lura, Ga Trong va Sutu: The Ass, the Cock and the Lion

Abstract

This pamphlet joins the eleven others in this series. Each is a fine bilingual booklet of 12 pages. The art is especially detailed and supportive of the text. The text appears in a few lines on each page. The English sometimes is not idiomatic, as in the run-on sentence The cock saw the lion therefore it crew loudly (4). In this version, there is no appeal to a lion's fear of roosters. Rather, the lion hears the peculiar combination of these two voices and goes away. Then the ass pursues. There is a dramatic rendition on 10-11 of the lion turning on and overwhelming the ass. A final small picture on 12 shows the cock perched on the ass's fleshless rib cage. The paper used in this copy is creased, and pages 2-3 are poorly matched at the crease between them. Except for the beginning and ending single pages, this entire pamphlet consists of double-page illustrations, all well done. The back cover illustrates the whole series of The Fables of Aesop.