Fablio the Magician: The Grasshopper and the Ant, Adapted from La Fontaine's Fable

Abstract

Here is a fable that I do not yet have in any language by Fablio. The story starts with a ladybug waking up and taking a shower by pulling down the cup of a daisy. The ants respond with unanimity to the wake-up call of a sentry's whistle--except one, Minibus. They all do everything according to regimen--except Minibus. The ants wake up Hippy the Grasshopper, sleeping in her matchbox. Mr. Millipede soon is dancing with twenty-five ladybirds while the ants are working away on a corn-cob. The ants work green-flies for their milk, hooking them up to electric milking machines at home. Everything in the ants' home is orchestrated and even mechanized. In a move that surprises me, Hippy, in an attempt to stay warm, burns her guitar. The story shifts then rather abruptly to La Fontaine's text, presented in rhyming verse. And then this text is presented again on one page with small illustrations above and below the text. The covers are laminated color pictorial boards. This book is 48 pages long. Aesop, Phedre, and La Fontaine are featured on the endpapers.