Les Fables du Rat: Esopo, Fedro, La Fontaine

Abstract

Here is a lively large-format book for children gathering seven well-known fables about rats. Each fable gets a two-page spread except the last, which has three pages. Prose texts share the page with colored illustrations. Might these unsigned illustrations be done by Cremonini? Somehow the personfied trees seem to remind me of his work. There are also frequent small animals standing on the edge of a scene and commenting on it to each other. The fables include LM (attributed to Aesop); The Rat Who Became a Tiger (translated from the Italian); The Association of the Cat and the Rat (translated from the Italian); The Cat Hanging Up and Playing Dead (attributed to Aesop); FM (extracted from La Fontaine); The Rats and the Cat (translated from the Italian); and TMCM. I find the first two Italian fables weaker than the other stories. I presume that the Italian fables here are translations of some version of Phaedrus. FM follows La Fontaine verbatim but saves space by making the text into prose and adding slashes to mark line endings. Among the most dynamic illustrations is that for FM. There are five other books in the series Les Fables du Bois: Lion, l'Ours, Renard, Loup, Lapin et ses Amis.