And the Moral Is?

Judy Freeman, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 11/8/2007

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“One good turn deserves another.” “Slow and steady wins the race.” “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” These and other familiar Aesopian aphorisms are (or should be) part of every child’s vocabulary. You'll find these and 19 more in Candace Fleming's droll chapter book, The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School (Random/Schwartz & Wade Bks., 2007). Applying and adapting the lessons of Aesop to today's children, Fleming delivers morals, mirth, and a quirky cast of characters for students in grades two through five.

First, meet Mr. Jupiter, the enthusiastic new teacher assigned to the robust, high-energy, and just plain naughty fourth graders at Aesop Elementary. Mr. Jupiter is more than prepared for his rambunctious group. Nothing the atrociously behaved children do seems to faze him or get him riled. Taking attendance, he says, "Raise your hand if you're not here.” Jackie says, “I’m not here... I’ve gone to the national tetherball tournament to see the Hoboken Blowfish take on the Altoona Poodles.” “A reasonable excuse,” Mr. Jupiter replies. “Is anyone else absent?” One by one, the other students raise their hands and offer an assortment of creative explanations.

Like the children in Mrs. Jewls's 30th-floor classroom in Louis Sachar's Sideways Stories from Wayside School (HarperCollins, 1985) and those in Humphrey the hamster's Room 26 in Betty G. Birney's The World According to Humphrey (Putnam, 2004), each of the 20 kids in Mr. Jupiter's room is featured in his or her own chapter. They include underachiever Calvin Tallywong, whose wish to be back in kindergarten comes true for a day; greedy Hamilton Samitch, better known as Ham, who gets his fist stuck in the jellybean jar; and Amisha Spelwadi, the spelling goddess who can rattle off nincompoop or wildebeest, but inexplicably misspells the word “cat” on her spelling test.

Each short, fable-based chapter ends with a moral such as, "He laughs best who laughs last." Laughs are guaranteed as readers get to know the multitalented Mr. Jupiter who shepherds his charges through class pictures, a poetry contest, and the Lost and Found. Have your listeners keep a running list of artifacts in Mr. Jupiter's classroom and try to figure out and map some of the far-flung places he's visited around the world. Based on the jobs and experiences Mr. Jupiter had before he came to Aesop Elementary, have students write his résumé, listing his many unusual qualifications. Download résumés from the Internet as examples. Then create a template with the standard components: name, address, and phone number; goals or objectives; education; experience; activities; and interests. (Students can even put together their own résumés.)

Each chapter will spark endless tantalizing follow-up ideas to try with your readers. For starters, take note of and decode the pun-filled names of each of the characters, including the librarian Miss Paige Turner, who has a huge crush on Mr. Jupiter, and Mrs. Bunz, the no-nonsense lunchroom lady. Children can write excuses for being absent, memorize poems, and go on a Dewey decimal hunt in the library.

For each chapter, you'll want to read aloud the corresponding Aesop's fable and compare and contrast it with Fleming's text. Some particularly well-told and handsomely illustrated recent collections of fables include Michael Morpurgo’s The McElderry Book of Aesop's Fables (S & S/Margaret K. McElderry Bks., 2005) and Jerry Pinkney’s Aesop's Fables (North-South/SeaStar, 2000). Fables are natural discussion starters for students of all ages and because they’re short, pithy, and to the point, they are also ideal for acting out in pairs or small groups. You’ll find an alphabetical index that links to the full text of all 655 Aesop's fables, complete with morals, at www.aesopfables.com.

And finally, have your whole class read and act out "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." Then download my reader's theater script of the chapter "The Boy Who Cried Lunchroom Monitor" from Candace Fleming’s splendid Web site, www.candacefleming.com, and stage it with your class. Afterwards, your fabled students can write new tales about their own classroom antics, with Aesop's (or their own) morals at the end.

Hear Candace Fleming read from The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School

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