Fables et Rimes pour mes petits-enfants

Abstract

Here is a 40-page pamphlet with cardboard covers. On the cover, a cat walks across the peak of a pointed ceiling while the moon watches. The fables, ranging from one to four pages long, come from a variety of sources and have a variety of illustrators and illustration styles. The texts are all in verse, though the fables handled by La Fontaine are not in his verses here. The subjects range from "a boy falling backwards off of a pier because the fish on his line got free" to "tea for tadpoles." Dudley Heath signs his illustrations for TH and FS. As far as I can tell, the verses in these two cases ask us to think the situations through. Do not procrastinators often in life win the prize? Will not the fox eat his avenging stork hostess? A lesson-teaching father finds his boys learning into a crate of oranges; he flips them in, closes the cover, sits on it, and reads his paper. Late in the pamphlet, we get to watch a rat who fed too well slim himself down lest he get eaten.