Don't Count Your Chickens and Other Fabulous Fables
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Authors
Cohen, Mark
Issue Date
1989
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Type
Book, Whole
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Abstract
Forty-one fables with an introduction. The fables come from many sources including Aesop, Anderson, Thurber, Grimm, Potter, Harris, Kipling, Leonardo, and various national traditions. Ted Hughes is new to me; he writes How the Polar Bear Became (81). The introduction is Hans Christian Andersen's What's a Fable? It makes the case for fables well and shows a good sense of fable I would not have expected from Andersen. The very first fable then is Don't Count Your Chickens, and I am glad to find confirmed my suspicion that that proverb is tied to this fable; it remains to establish when the connection was first made. The goose in GGE seems to have laid a whole pile of eggs already (15). Should one ask whether these two stories qualify as fables: The Ugly Duckling (16) and The Three Little Pigs (62)? I like this short fable (29) from Idries Shah: A man being followed by a hungry tiger turned in desperation to face it, and cried: 'Why don't you leave me alone?' The tiger answered: 'Why don't you stop being so appetizing?' Also new to me is The Faithful Tiger (30). The black-and-white illustrations, one to a story, are adequate. The book was discarded by the North East Lincolnshire Libraries. If it appeared in this country, I seem to have missed it. I am surprised that a book like this can appear without credits for its versions. Might that fact have something to do with its non-availability in this country?
Description
Citation
Publisher
Penguin Group: Viking Kestrel
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DOI
Identifier
4681 (Access ID)