Product Description

In this elegantly designed volume, more than sixty of Aesop's timeless fables have been carefully selected, humorously retold, and brought gloriously to life by four-time Caldecott Honor-winner Jerry Pinkney. Included are the Shepherd Boy and The Wolf, the Lion and the Mouse, the Tortoise and the Hare, plus many other characters—and morals—that have inspired countless readers for centuries. With more than fifty magnificent full-color illustrations, this handsome edition is a must for every bookshelf.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #323397 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 96 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Beautifully designed, this lush, oversize volume showcases Pinkney's (The Ugly Duckling) artistry in grand style. There's a king's ransom worth of material here, as Pinkney serves up more than 60 of the ancient Greek slave-philosopher's fables. Aesop's wisdom spills across the pages as freely as Pinkney's glorious watercolors, alight with the many creatures who people the tales, from fiddling grasshoppers and diligent ants to wily foxes, clever crows, brave mice and grateful lions. Each of the vigorous retellings concludes with the kind of succinct moral that centuries of readers have come to expect (e.g., "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched"; "You are judged by the company you keep"). And whether the homilies concern a wolf in sheep's clothing or sour grapes, the timeless virtues resonate as freshly as the day they were minted. Pinkney brings his considerable talent to bear on everything from thumbnail animal portraits to sweeping full-page vistas of hearth and woodlands, and his detail, delicacy of line and subtle palette create an elegant foil for the simple parables. If there's room on the shelf for only one picture book version of Aesop, this could be it. All ages. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 4-A visually appealing selection of 61 fables that mixes the well known ("The Fox and the Grapes," "The Tortoise and the Hare") with some that have been nearly forgotten ("The Mermaid and the Woodcutter"). In tone and format, this book is reminiscent of early 20th-century Aesop collections for children. Like Arthur Rackham and Milo Winter before him, Pinkney accompanies the stories with a blend of full-page paintings and smaller illustrations. As in those earlier collections, his text uses ele-vated language and an extremely formal sentence structure. While such loftiness is appropriate for a "classic" Aesop collection, with this edition it becomes a bit of a stum-bling block. Unfortunately, Pinkney's intro-duction doesn't give a reason for the text choices or supply sources. Morals are at-tached to each fable and for the most part they are the time-honored ones. Using a mix of watercolor and colored pencil, Pinkney's illustrations of animal characters are fairly realistic while his depictions of humans lean toward the stylized. The artist's masterful use of watercolor is most evident in his pictures of the animals. Highlights include the dou-ble-page spread that accompanies "The Lion and the Mouse" and the full-page illustration for "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse." While the narrative style occasion-ally gets in the way of sharing aloud and its tone is sometimes at odds with the more re-laxed tone of the art, this handsome title is still one of the best of the current crop.
Denise Anton Wright, Alliance Library System, Bloomington, IL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gr. 2-4. An acclaimed illustrator has set himself an ambitious task: retelling and visually reinterpreting 60 of Aesop's traditional tales. And he has succeeded brilliantly, bringing vivid new life to these ancient fables by creating pencil, colored pencil, and watercolor illustrations that are subtle and delicate in color but dynamic and dramatic in composition and in size. Pinkney is particularly successful at investing his animal characters with personality and panache, but his human characters also come alive on the page. Beginning with the illustrated endpapers, every page of this beautifully designed, lavish book is a delight for the eye and an invitation to the imagination. Happily, Pinkney's text proves equal to his art. His language, though formal, is subtly witty and begs to be read aloud, a fitting tribute to the oral tradition of the tales themselves. This first-rate edition is as artful, witty, and wise as old Aesop himself, and it will also stand the test of time. Michael Cart
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Fun reading to my child
I bought this for my 4 year old. We read the stories and look at the pictures. Great little book.

perfect for the young
It's the perfect introduction for little ones to Aesop's Fables. The fables are quite short with amazing illustrations by Lisbeth Zwerger.

a good collection
In case the mix-up of reviews of different collections is confusing you, this review is of 0517679019, edited by Lois Hill and illustrated by Nora Fry.

There is an introduction, recounting the history of Aesop's Fables. In terms of number of stories, this collection probably can't be beat. 200 stories are included, and are listed in alphabetical order in the table of contents. In this edition, each story is told briefly, usually in one page or less.

I recommend this book for ministers, speechwriters, or anyone else wishing to make a point with a story. I myself used this book for that purpose before finishing reading the book. I was on a discussion thread in which the uses and misuses of statistics were debated. I scanned page 125, which tells of a woman who doubles her provision of chicken feed, hoping that the hen would double its output.

Just one flaw: illustrations are reused where they don't exactly fit. On page 22, we see the Hare taking a nap while the Tortoise is slowly approaching the finish line. That illustration is used again on page 141, where another Hare appears, but does not take a nap. On page 25, we see the Frog bloating himself up to resemble an ox. That illustration is used again on page 185, where another Frog appears, but does not bloat himself up.