Disabled Fables: Aesop's Fables Retold and Illustrated by Artists with Developmental Disabilities
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Authors
Aesop
Artists with developmental disabilities
Penn, Sean
Issue Date
2004
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Type
Book, Whole
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Abstract
The fourteen artists who each contribute one fable to this book are members of L.A. Goal, which provides services for developmentally disabled adults. I would hope that it is one of the glories of this fable collection that it lays hold of an unusual book like this and saves it for future generations. The tellings are sometimes a bit unusual. In the first fable, the fox who has conversed with the cat about his many modes of escape actually does get away finally by running out of the forest (12). The crow who finds a pitcher with some water in it had first rejected the Hudson River because it is too dirty (16)! The miser is a woman this time, and she digs up her gold every week in order to look at it (18). Her neighbor advises her to look at her hole. The boy who ends up crying Wolf! is lonely and tries the trick in order to get company (28). Are there really reverse Dalmatians with white spots on black (40)? At the end of each story there is a good short section titled What this story means to me. These reflections often bear eloquent testimony to the struggles which their authors have experienced. Todd Rubien, for example, speaks eloquently a propos of The Shepherd Boy of his own loneliness and that sharing feelings is a better way to combat loneliness than creating emergencies. People respond better when we see them as friends than when we see them as enemies. There is also a separate, framed moral for each fable. The moral for TMCM is It's better to live in peace than in pieces (23). The art is often simple, direct, and good. Among the work that attracts me the most are The Fox and the Cat (12), The Stork (38), The Bear and the Bees (43), and FG (47). Reading through this book is a treat!
Description
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Publisher
Star Bright Books
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DOI
Identifier
5387 (Access ID)