Aesop's Fables: A Poetic Primer

Abstract

Here is an unusual book. A first unusual feature is that its nine traditional fables are in rhymed quatrains. A second is that it explicitly aims to help people be virtuous. Further unusual features include the opportunity to send copies free of charge to as many friends as one likes. The QR code that unlocks this offer also allows one to hear the book read aloud while one views the illustrations. This is an ambitious book, with an attractive dust-jacket and large format (8¾" x 11⅜"). For me, the verse sometimes labors. The illustrations are lively but may be slightly inhibited by their assigned role of framing pages of text. Good sample illustrations are the pairs early in this unpaginated book for both GA and DS. MM uses as its moral "Never, ever/Count your chickens before they hatch." The dust-jacket reveals that the author -- also the publisher -- was bored as an accountant and wanted better literature for his family to read. He aims to "help children grow in virtue, one moral lesson at a time." The milkmaid carrying her pail on the cover and flyleaf is spirited! After the fables, a next section offers for each fable a pair of pages. These pages present reflections on a virtue and a vice and several questions for personal appropriation of the fable. There are finally four pages of glossary.