Aesop's Fables

K-Gr 3—The wall-calendar-type layout successfully showcases the illustrations of this offbeat adaptation of Aesop's fables. Each spread's featured image is rendered in the surreal style, combined with realistic and playful depictions of animal protagonists. The simple, straightforward text is enhanced by small figures that echo the introductory scene. The pictures are humorous, but sometimes at odds with the story. For example, the country and town mice dine on oats and barleycorns and then on "the remains of a feast-cakes, jellies and wonderful-smellingcheeses," but their sparse table only displays a soup bowl. The tales fold the morals into the concluding sentence, as in the story "The Dog and His Shadow": "So he snapped at the shadow in the water but as he opened his mouth his piece of meat fell out and dropped in the water and he saw it no more." Some of these endings fall a bit flat, but the prose will work for reading aloud, and the absurd, funny pictures add dimension to the short narratives that will appeal to some readers. An additional purchase for collections with varied editions of Aesop's tales.—Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston