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Aesop's Fables > Books of Fables > Individual Books > 1975 to 1979

• 1975
• 1976
• 1977
• 1978
• 1979

1975 Aesop's Fables. A new translation by V.S. Vernon Jones with an introduction by G.K. Chesterton and illustrations by Arthur Rackham. Paperbound. A Piccolo Book. London: Pan Books. See 1912/75.

1975 Aesop's Fables. Translated by John Warrington. Illustrated by Joan Kiddell-Monroe. Hardbound. Dust jacket. London: J.M. Dent & Sons/NY: E.P. Dutton & Company. See 1961/75.

1975 Aesop's Fables. Retold by Marie Stuart. Illustrated by Robert Ayton. Printed in England. NY: Ladybird Books: Two Continents. $2.95

Twenty-two fables. The illustrations are straightforward popular presentations. The book is valuable for introducing a subject. The morals are also straightforward.

1975 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by J. Pavlin and G. Seda. Printed in Czechoslovakia. (c)Artia 1975. No place given: Brown Watson. $1.95 at Strand Books, '86.

A standard, simple pop-up book with "The Dog and the Rooster," LM, "The Wolf and the Kid," "The Raven and the Peacock," OF, and FS. I wish they also had a pop-up of the cover picture of FC.

1975 Androklus und der Löwe. Franz Fühmann. Illustrationen von Loni Roehricht. Second edition. Berlin: Der Kinderbuchverlag Berlin. DM 2 at Zentralantiquariat Leipzig, July, '95.

This book seems to me to exemplify the way a given culture sees particular things in a story. In this case, Androclus' story is about the slave finding freedom. The book dwells at length on the plight of the slave, once it has gone to the trouble of communicating what a slave is. The story is well told. Much is either new to me or is heard for the first time because of its good presentation. Thus I read here for the first time of the fisherman from whom Androclus stole a boat. After a year with the lion, one of the first things Androclus wanted was a haircut. After Androclus was captured, the lion followed the soldiers willingly. He thought they were going to lead him to Androclus! A Roman gladiator inside the circus preached some good Marxism when the fisherman attacked Androclus in their circus cell. Titus challenged all gladiators and slaves to refuse to kill each other. Once Androclus met the friendly lion in the circus, the circus audience wanted to let a panther attack this too-peaceful lion. When he finished with the now-friendly lion, Androclus demanded freedom for all this circus' slaves and gladiators. Good, primitive full-page colored illustrations.

1975 Antologia Personal. Augusto Monterroso. First edition. Archivo del Fundo. Apparently #737 of 20,000 copies. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Econ\ mica. Gift of Larry Huck, S.J., from a book sale in Antigua, Guatemala, August, ’96.

Many of the thirty-one items here are fables which I recognize from La Oveja negra y dem< s Fabulas, especially among VIII-XIX. I only wish my Spanish was good enough to take on some of the other items! T of C at the back. How nice of Larry to seek out books for me!

1975 Arthur Rackham. Edited by David Larkin. Introduction by Leo John De Freitas. Printed in Italy by Mondadori, Verona. NY: Peacock Press/Bantam Books. $5 at Schroeder, May, '88.

Excellent full-page reproductions, including four on Aesop: "The Lion, Jupiter and the Elephant," "Venus and the Cat," 2P, and "The Shipwrecked Man and the Sea" (9-12).

1975 Ask Any Vegetable. R.E. Eshmeyer. Illustrated with Photographs and Drawings by the Author. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. $9.99 from Chuck Witt, Frederick, MD, through eBay, May, '02.

This is a book about making animal forms out of common vegetables. As the eBay title for it proclaims: "Very WEIRD!" As the author writes in the foreword, "Look long at an ordinary gourd of any sort and it will suggest many things to you" (vi). This book is in this collection because of "Fox and Crane" on 24-25, "Hare and Tortoise" on 60-61, and "Fox and Crow" on 68-69. For the former scene, normal gourds were used to create the crane and the vase. For the fox an immature gourd was used; some clay was added, into which ears and eyes were stuck. "A bit of cotton was pasted over the body to resemble fur, and the bushy tail was bult up of strands of corn silk. The fox's ears are feather-shaft ends" (25). Did Aesop ever think that he would be getting into scenes made up of vegetables? The second scene is set in a forest whose trees are carrots. The rabbit is formed from a peanut, and the tortoise from a horse chestnut. The third scene represents some confusion or syncretism between FG and FC. The crow, which might be difficult to create, is cleverly left out of the scene. Prizes in the book go to the camel and leader on 36 (also on the front cover of the dust jacket), the resting sea lions on 53, and the sleeping student on 114. I would say that R.E. Eshmeyer was as crazy as I am, and that probably fits. He was also a man of the cloth.

1975 Basni Sergeya Mikhalkova (Russian "Fables of Sergei Michalkov"). Sergei Michalkov. Illustrations by E(vgeni) Rachev. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Moscow: Detskaya Literatura. $24.98 from Rubux through eBay, Dec., '06

1975 Better Homes and Gardens Story Book.  Betty O'Connor.  Fourteenth printing.  Hardbound.  NY/Des Moines: Better Homes and Gardens Books.  See 1950/75.

1975 Bilder-Abeze.  Joachim Heinrich Campe.  Nachwort von Dietrich Leube.  Erste Auflage.  Paperbound.  Frankfurt am Main: Insel Taschenbuch 135:  Insel Verlag.  €3.20 from Bücher-Insel, through ABE, July, '16.

1975    Der Fuchs und der Storch: Weitere Fabeln von La Fontaine.  Nacherzählt und illustriert von Richard Scarry; Deutsch von Karl-Heinz Berger.  2. Auflage.  Hardbound.  Reinbek bei Hamburg, Germany: Ding Dong Bücher: Carlsen Verlag.  See 1974/75.

1975 Der Rabe und der Fuchs. Nikolaus Plump. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Freiburg im Breisgau: Verlag Herder. $10 from Bartleby's Books, Georgetown, Jan., '03.

Twelve traditional fables are listed on the back cover of this large-format hardbound book for children.  The fables are told, says an early note, following old sources like Aesop, La Fontaine, Lessing, and others.  In each of the twelve cases, a prose text on the left page faces a full-page colored illustration on the right.  Each of the rather standard illustrations includes the "n. pl." signature.  The stork standing over the wolf to remove the bone has a cap and pouch of the Red Cross.  In other collections, one seldom finds the good Lessing fable "Der Elefant un der Mops."  A little dog barks vehemently at a circus elephant, who pays him no heed.  An older dog tells the little dog that the elephant is not paying him the least attention.  "That is exactly why I do it," the little dog answers.  "I know that I can get away with it, and everyone will say that I heroically barked at and stood my ground against an elephant!"  To emphasize the fox's exasperation in the FG illustration, Plump puts in a bird who flies away with a grape in its mouth.  If I knew "Das Schwein und der Esel," I had forgotten it.  A pig cries desperately and tells an inquiring ass that people use his name terribly and only in negative situations.  The ass answers consoling the pig that "that really is a Schweinerei"!

1975 Die Diebe und der Hahn: Fabeln des Äsop und Äsopische Fabeln des Phädrus. Herausgegeben von Hans Marquardt. Mit Tusch- und Federzeichnungen von Josef Hegenbarth. First edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Wiesbaden: VMA Verlag. DM 33 from Versandantiquariat Rainer Woelfel, Woerthsee, Germany, Oct., '00. 

This version is newly printed by a new publisher from the 1966 version done by Buchverlag der Morgen in Eastern Germany. This edition is apparently a collaborative effort between Western and Eastern Germany. Let me repeat my comments from the 1966 edition. This book takes up Hegenbarth's work from its 1949 presentation (Äsop: Fabeln) and gives it a livelier and larger format. The format is generous; there is never more than one fable on a page, and there are many full-page illustrations. There are ninety fables in all, presented here on 132 pages. There is a first selection, "Der Dichter," that I think needs to be considered separately from the fables. I think it probably communicates more about Marquardt than about Aesop or Phaedrus. After the fables, there are comments (119); a "Nachwort" from the publisher, including his remarks on Hegebarth (121); and a colophon on the printing of the book. The texts are sometimes prose and sometimes verse. There is a good moral to the fable on the hog and the dog (58): Smart speakers cleverly turn insults from enemies into praise. A number of the fine illustrations are taken from the earlier book, among them those showing the thief and the watchdog (49); the bald man and the fly (68); and the caught weasel (36). Some are newly done, like WC (here 79, there 12); LM (here 95, there 22); and the old hunting dog (well done here on 115 and less well done there on 30). Among the best illustrations here are those of the fox and the mask (21), WL (45), and the thieves and the rooster (dust jacket and 65). I do not understand the illustration for "The Old Shepherd and the Ass" (82). This story is about sacks, not riders.

1975 Die Diebe und der Hahn: Fabeln des Äsop und Äsopische Fabeln des Phädrus. Herausgegeben von Hans Marquardt. Mit Tusch- und Federzeichnungen von Josef Hegenbarth. Second edition. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Leipzig: Verlag Philipp Reclam Jun. €12 from Leipziger Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '09.

This is the third version I have of this book. The other two seem to have been the original East German done by Buchverlag der Morgen in Berlin in 1966 and a 1975 follow-up by VMA Verlag in Wiesbaden. The present copy seems to come from a parallel -- and even cooperative -- second edition at the same time in East Germany, this time from Reclam in Leipzig. Let me repeat my comments from the 1966 edition. This book takes up Hegenbarth's work from its 1949 presentation (Äsop: Fabeln) and gives it a livelier and larger format. The format is generous; there is never more than one fable on a page, and there are many full-page illustrations. There are ninety fables in all, presented here on 132 pages. There is a first selection, "Der Dichter," that I think needs to be considered separately from the fables. I think it probably communicates more about Marquardt than about Aesop or Phaedrus. After the fables, there are comments (119); a "Nachwort" from the publisher, including his remarks on Hegebarth (121); and a colophon on the printing of the book. The texts are sometimes prose and sometimes verse. There is a good moral to the fable on the hog and the dog (58): Smart speakers cleverly turn insults from enemies into praise. A number of the fine illustrations are taken from the earlier book, among them those showing the thief and the watchdog (49); the bald man and the fly (68); and the caught weasel (36). Some are newly done, like WC (here 79, there 12); LM (here 95, there 22); and the old hunting dog (well done here on 115 and less well done there on 30). Among the best illustrations here are those of the fox and the mask (21), WL (45), and the thieves and the rooster (dust jacket and 65). I do not understand the illustration for "The Old Shepherd and the Ass" (82). This story is about sacks, not riders.

1975 Die Entwicklung der Fabel im 18. Jahrhundert: Versuch einer historisch-materialistischen Analyse der Gattung im bürgerlichen Emanzipationsprozess. Elisabeth Herbrand. Paperbound. Wiesbaden: Studienreihe Humanitas: Studien zur Germanistik: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion. €26 from Antiquariaat Brinkman, Amsterdam, Dec., '07.

This book, done one year after my dissertation, reminds me so much of it and of the 70's! It is published from a typewritten manuscript, including capital letters that do not quite get down to the line of type. Slightly larger in format than my dissertation, it has the same look. The "Studienreihe Humanitas" is a series of books explicitly dedicated to works like dissertations and books-based-on-dissertations of young academics. The other feature that makes me think of the 70's is the somewhat heavy-handed insistence on socio-economic and even Marxist analysis. I will not have a chance to get through the book at this point, but for now I find the book's sub-title revealing: "historical-material analysis of this genre in the emancipation of the bourgeois." Hmmm.. I do hope to get to the book because I look forward to the specific comments on all those eighteenth-century German fabulists that led up to Lessing, not least of all Godsched, von Hagedorn, and Gellert. Lessing gets serious attention. There is a T of C at the beginning. 340 heavy pages. A glance through the Literaturverzeichnis turned up not a single book in a language other than German. 

1975 Die Fabels van Aesopus. Vertaald door Paul Biegel. Geillustreerd door Frank Baber. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Amsterdam: H.J.W. Becht. $16.5 from Stillman Books, Maple Ridge, BC, Jan., '06.

This seems to be a Dutch version of The Fables of Aesop: 143 Moral Tales Retold. Lively art. As I mention in the account of the American book, the best of the illustrations are for WC (22-3) and MM (34-5). There is a long version of "The Young Man and the Cat" (80). New to me: "The Parrot and the Cat" (18). Notice the statue of Mary and Jesus on the donkey's back on 17! I wish I could check this book against a version published by Eurobook.

1975 Early Children's Books and Their Illustration. Text by Gerald Gottlieb. NY: The Pierpont Morgan Library. David R. Godine, Publisher, Boston. $20 at Just Books, Milwaukee, Spring, '86.

A magnificent coffee-table book. Illustrations #1-18 give a little sweep of Aesop, with some manuscripts (Babrius, Phaedrus, several beautifully colored), Steinhöwel, French and Italian early editions, Bewick, and Isaiah Thomas. Very nicely done. Too much of this wonderful book is black-and-white.

1975 Fables at Life's Expense. Marvin Cohen. Paperbound. First edition.  Latitudes Press Book #7.  Printed in USA. Austin, TX: Latitudes Press. $10 from Seward Street Books, Hudson, MI, Sept., '98.

My initial suspicions turned out to be true about this book. It has nothing to do with fables in the sense in which I am pursuing them. I find this a singularly unattractive book. It is generally first-person prose in titled sections of one to three pages. There are four chapters. This book confirms my interest in story by counter-example. Because it sounded more like a story, I tried "A Movie Is for Holding Hands?" (112). It proclaimed the same aggressive narcissism I found elsewhere in the book. I tried again on "The Singer Who Lost Her Shape" (78) and did not fare much better, though this piece is at least narrated in the third person. Play, that can yield so much in fables, does not yield much here. The best thing I can say about this book is that its distributors were my good friends at Serendipity in Berkeley.

1975 Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrations de Matéja. Hardbound. Paris: Éditions Garnier Frères. See 1955/75.

1975 Fables de La Fontaine. LaFontaine. Saint-Justh. Hardbound. Paris: Bias Jeunes annees: Éditions Bias. See 1963/75.

1975 fables: jean de la fontaine, illustreés par jean effel.   Hardbound. Printed in Italy. Paris: les éditions la farandole. $5.95 from Brattle Book Shop, Boston, April, '00.

Twenty-six fables, sixteen of them illustrated by Effel's brilliant colors and simple, telling designs. I love his work more every time I see it! This book also keeps some but not all of the good line-cartoons that adorn other works I have with Effel's art. See especially my two German editions: "Jean de la Fontaine: Fabeln" (1955) and "Jean Effel's La Fontaine" (1955?). This is my first Effel in French. Originally sold by Galignani, Rue de Rivoli, Paris.

1975 Fabulas: Félix María Samaniego. Introduccíon de Basilio Losada. Aedo series. Barcelona: Verón/editor. $4.50 at Editorial A. Lisbona, Caracas, May, '91.

At last a handy and apparently complete edition of Samaniego's 157 fables in nine books. The earlier books seem to contain round numbers (20, 20, 15, 25, 25); the last four have 12, 12, 9, and 19. A helpful short introduction (9-11) characterizes Samaniego's fables as practical and pointed. It details the rivalry with Iriarte, who published his fables one year later (1792). T of C on 161, with a glossary just preceding.

1975 Favole di La Fontaine.  Pop-up.  Hardbound.  Favole Animate:  Auguri di Mondadori.  $12 from Rocco Pellegrino, Rochester, NY, through eBay, Oct., '13. 

1975 Fler fabler av La Fontaine.  Arrangerade och illustrerade av Richard Scarry; Oversatta av Bo Halvarson.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Copenhagen: Fifibiblioteket #20:  Carlsen Cliche & Offset.  60 Kroner from Alfa Antikvariat, Stockholm, July, '14. 

This work is a Swedish version of "The Fables of La Fontaine" published in 1963 by Doubleday.  This book has about half the pages of that book.  However, by contrast with it, this edition has only colored pages, while that offered a number of pictures only in black-and-white.  This edition has no T of C.  The last page is in fact the inside back-cover.  The best illustrations are the two for FS near the end of the book.  The editors were wise to use it again on the front cover.  How nice to run into an old friend in a new language while I was travelling through Scandinavia!  "Fler" fabler as the title for this #20 in the series led me to notice that #10 in the same series is already a book of La Fontaine's fables; this is "more fables."  That #10 is something I can search for my next time in Scandinavia!  It was not easy for me to figure out whether this book was in Swedish or Danish, especially because it was published by a Danish publisher in Copenhagen.

1975 Happy Tales, Fables, and Plays. Gordon C. Bennett. Paperbound. Printed in USA. Atlanta: John Knox Press. $9.50 from Table of Contents, Omaha, through ABE, Feb., '03.

Here are sixteen short plays for two, three, and four voices. Each has morality to teach, with several questions to highlight the possible lessons. They are all, as far as I can tell, original stories. The morality, as well as the tone, may be typical of the 70's, when the book was published. The Gospel bearing of the "fables" comes through often and clearly enough. I read the first three. In the first, a desperate victim of a mosquito gives in, out of frustration with being mosquito-bitten so frequently, to becoming a turnip. Why? Because "you can't get blood from a turnip." The poor turnip gets bored stiff. One of the suggested morals says that it is better to be a person with problems than a turnip without problems. The book nicely repeats a given playlet as often as necessary, so that each of the required voices can have his or her own copy of the play's text.

1975 Ivan Krōlov: Need, Kes Muidu ei Räägi (Estonian: Ivan Krylov, lllustrated Fables). Andres Jaaksoo. Valli Hurt. Paperbound. Talinn: Eesti Raamat. $19.98 from Raigo Kirss, Kuressaare, Estonia, through eBay, August, '06.

There are thirteen Krylov fables in this pleasant pamphlet of some 28 pages. The fables are easily recognizable. The art has a touch of the 70's style we knew in this country, with just a touch of the psychedelic. My prize for the best image goes to WC on 18. A close runner-up is "Kvartett" on 3. The T of C at the end seems to suggest for each fable a specific translator from a group of four. 

1975 Jataka Tales. Edited by Nancy DeRoin, with original drawings by Ellen Lanyon. First printing. Dust jacket. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $10 from Ed Chesko of Delavan, Nov., '96.   Extra copy with repaired dust-jacket for $4 from Arundel Books, Seattle, July, '00.

This book has been on my "want list" for a long time, and now within a few months I have found it in both hardbound and paperback versions. See my comments on the latter under the same title in 1977. The book offers thirty fables of a generally preachy character, usually on two-to-four pages per fable and often with the introductory phrase "Once upon a time when King Brahmadatta was ruler of Benares...." Each story has one or two simple illustrations. About the illustrations, I would point out only that the artist cleverly gets all one hundred carts into the illustration on 31! As to texts, many of the standard representatives of Jataka tales are here, including TT (10), "The Monkey and the Crocodile" (38), and "Rumors" (80, usually about the end of the world, but here about an earthquake). Several fables deserve comment. "The Oldest of the Three" (1) presents a good paradigm-shift: after others proclaim how high the tree was when they were small, the partridge claims to have left the seed for this tree in its droppings. "I knew this tree before it was born!" "Fearing the Wind" (6) is a good fable about the fact that fear exists only in the mind. In "The Brave Beetle" (12) an elephant uses his droppings to defeat a drunken, bragging beetle. "Responsibility" (14) is funny: monkeys tear up trees by the roots to see how much watering the trees need. A good fable on ecology is "Leave Well Enough Alone" (41). Another good fable for a paradigm-shift is "The Most Beautiful of All" (43), in which turtle, asked which of two fish is prettier, answers that he is! "Popularity" (49) is typical of the teaching vein of these fables. A final good fable is "Decide for Yourself" (78): the two quarrelling otters get the head and tail of a big fish; the fox invited by them to settle their dispute takes the biggest and best central portion. One of the weakest stories is "Friends and Neighbors" (24). There are typos on 21 (money for monkey) and 54 (climed for climbed).

1975 Jean de La Fontaine: The Fables. A selection rendered into the English language by Elizur Wright and adorned throughout with illustrations and decorations after Gustave Doré. Bilingual. London: Jupiter Books. $8.50 at McIntyre and Moore in Cambridge, July, '88. Extra copy for $7 from Imagination Books, Silver Spring, Feb., '92.

Offhand, I do not think the abundant Doré illustrations quite match those in the Chartwell edition (1982), perhaps especially because of the paper used here. An excellent bilingual presentation, always with Doré's small etchings and often with his full-pagers. The introduction gives a good sense of Elizur Wright's life and translation work.

1975 Junior Great Books. A Program of Interpretive Reading and Discussion. Series Four, Volume One. Edited by Richard P. Dennis and Edwin P. Moldof. Chicago: The Great Books Foundation. $1.50 at Attic Books, Laurel, MD, March, '92.

Eighteen fables on 75-90 in Jacobs' version, not acknowledged. Then four fables from Thurber on 91-8. I find Thurber a surprising match for Aesop for these young readers. Using Jacobs as source means that a fable like "The Hare with Many Friends" (from Gay) represents "Aesop." There are discussion questions on this fable and Thurber's "The Owl Who Was Not God" on 186-9. Included is the companion volume: Series Four, Volume Two.

1975 Katze, Hahn und Mäusefranz. Nach einer Fabel von La Fontaine.  Jürgen Wulff.  Hardbound.  Oldenburg and Hamburg: Verlag Gerhard Stalling.  $6.30 from Medimops, July, '23.

1975 La Fontaine: Fables choisies. Livres I à VI: 1668. Avec un tableau de concordances chronologiques, une notice littéraire, des notes explicatives, des questionnaires, des documents, des jugements et un lexique établis par Hubert Carrier. Nouveaux Classiques illustrés Hachette. Imprimé en France. Hachette. $1 at Europa Books, Evanston, Dec., '95.

This slim little paperback (with its 1976 companion volume) offers a variety of good helps indicated in the title-page description reproduced above. There are unfortunately only six single-pages of illustrations. The book's strengths may lie in the questions, the vocabulary, and the judicious selection of 66 fables of the 124 in the first six books. Every illustrated booklet like this that I find shows me a new illustrator of La Fontaine of whom I was not aware!

1975 La Fontaine: Fables choisies mises en vers. Introduction, notes et relevé de variantes par Georges Couton. Illustrée de 32 reproductions. Printed in 1975. Paperbound. Classiques Garnier. Paris: (c)1962 Garnier Frères. See 1962/75.

1975 Labyrinte de Versailles: Der Irr-garte zu Versailles: Der Irrgarten von Versailles oder Führung durch Äsops Labyrinth der Psyche. Von Johann Ulrich Krauss und Helmut Eisendle. One of 1500 copies. Paperbound. Berlin and Erlangen: Sammlung Format Band 17: Rainer Verlag und Verlag Klaus G. Renner. €22 from Antiquariat Helmut R. Lang, Wiesbaden, Germany, through abe, Sept., '06.

This is a curious little volume. I have long wanted to find a copy of one of several books that illustrate the fountains in the maze-garden at Versailles. Each of the fountains represented a fable. I have come close to finding such a volume. Here is a 1975 enhancement of an original from Augsburg around 1690. Johann Ulrich Krauss seems to have been the publisher then (Bodemann #79.2). Notice the German back then: "Irr-Garte" for what would now be called "Irrgarten." A first frontispiece here pictures the modern publisher, Helmut Eisendle. The second frontispiece is the original map of the maze, complete with a route and the thirty-nine fountains numbered along the way. Apparently the original book was larger than this 4" x 6" edition. The fountains are listed in both French and German after several prefatory pages. The fables' presentation follows a pattern. On a left-hand page we find in French a short narrative of the fable and then a description of the fountain. Underneath the French is a quatrain, perhaps from Benserade? He created the quatrains found on the fountains themselves. The narrative and description are repeated below in German. On the facing right-hand page is the black-and-white illustration of the fountain. Underneath the illustration is a German quatrain. Between each fable's two pages is a printed slipsheet, apparently with Eisendle's contribution. This contribution explains the unusual subtitle: "Führung durch Äsops Labyrinth der Psyche." These slipsheet-poems have as their characters the Super-ego, the Ego, and the Id. Fables #13 and #14 present the two phases of FS; these two fountains are very close to each other on the map. Fable #17 is new to me: a monkey responds to a parrot that he can imitate humans and tries to show it by putting on the clothes of a swimming boy. The monkey gets so tangled up in the clothes that the boy easily catches him. I am delighted to have found this book!

1975 Longing for Darkness: Kamante's Tales from Out of Africa. With original photographs (January 1914-July 1931) and quotations from Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen). Collected by Peter Beard. Afterword by Jacqueline Bouvier Onassis. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $40 from Eric Stetson Books, Flagstaff, AZ, Nov., '02.  Extra copy for $20 from The Book House on Grand, Nov., '94.

A weird and wonderful find! I noticed the book several times and finally took it off the shelf. What a surprise when I found a chapter of fables! What we have here is the product of a complex process. Kamante Gatura related the tales to Beard, who transcribed them and gave them to Kamante's sons to translate and then to write out by hand. The final chapter claims to be Kamante's versions of some twenty-one fables that Dinesen told. Several, like FG and OF, seem to be heavily dependent on Caxton, but then OF here ends with a bursting frog, whereas Caxton had the ox step on the frog. Are the charming, simple watercolors illustrating them really Kamante's own? The best of the illustrations for me are OF, GA, FK, "The Antelope, the Monkey, and the Leopard," and TH. Two things are especially charming here: the "scriptos" (or whatever handwritten typos are), and the transposition of animals; thus Piraeus becomes Mombasa, and "The Fox and the Eagle" becomes "The Jackal and the Vulture." A real favorite of mine!

1975 Mr. Dongguo and the Wolf.  .  Zhang Yuejian and Cai Zhenua.  First printing.  Pamphlet.  Shanghai: Shanghai People Press.  $15 from an unknown source, Dec., '20.

1975 Mythologia Ethica. Arnoldus Freitag. Illustrations by Marcus Gheeraerts. Hardbound. Antwerp/Athens: Philippe Galle, Christophorus Plantinus/George Ladias Limited. See 1579/1975.

1975 O Androkles kai to Liontari. Illustrations by N. Neirou. Athens: Angyra Publishing House. $1.90 at Prince and Pauper, San Diego, Aug., '93.

Reading books like this would be a great way to learn Greek! The illustrations are simple and the text copious. Androkles uses a part of his blue clothing to bind up the lion's paw. Watch out: there are fifteen more books in the set!

1975 O Zlatem Zoubecku:Slezske Bajky (Silesian Fables). Helena Salichova. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Brno. Ostrava: Detem A Mladezi Svazek 5: Profil. $8 from Zachary Cohn, Oct., ‘01.

Are the twenty-four texts on 122 pages perhaps more folktales or fairy tales than fables? There is a T of C listing them at the end. There are six pleasant colored full-page inserts: frontispiece, 32, 48, 64, 80, and 104. The book was inscribed in 1975.

1975 Old Man Whickutt's Donkey. Mary Calhoun. Tomie de Paola. Hardback. Printed in USA. NY: Parents' Magazine Press. $22.00 from Orphaned Books & Collectibles, Racine, Jan., '99.

I am surprised that I had never run into a reference to this book--and delighted to know that an artist as good as de Paola illustrated it. The story is told in folksy dialect. Whickutt kept talking as they drove the donkey to the mill "so's they'd need him along." The sack of corn that the donkey was carrying kept sliding around, so the old man decided to tie the sack under the donkey's belly. In the meantime the sack keeps spilling, and the birds keep eating up the fallen grains. When Granny Pollard suggested that Whickutt ride, he turned out to have such long legs that he walked while he was riding! During this phase, the boy has to carry the sack. Preacher Hawkins chastises Whickutt for making the boy walk and carry a load. Mother Jones then criticized the lazy boy. When he had to carry both persons and the sack, "The donkey, he was king of sagging." The Perkins family cried out "Poor little donkey! Why, you'll break the beast's back…" Just then, the donkey collapsed. "Donkey's turn to ride!" The miller across the river was about to tell them what they ought to do when Whickutt shouted "I'm derned if I do, derned if I don't!" and decided to please himself. Whickutt then threw each--the sack, the boy, and the donkey--over the creek. Then he threw himself across it too! Formerly in the collection of the Racine Public Library.

1975 Phaedrus. Scriptorum Romanorum Quae Extant Omnia ccxxii-ccxxiii. Fabricius Serra. Paperbound. In Aedibus "Giardini Editori e Stampatori in Pisa." $8 at Atticus, Toronto, Jan., '94.

How straightforward can you get? The book is almost entirely Phaedrus' text. Page 177 notes a handful of variations from Müller's text. Page 7 gives major editions and lexica. No notes. AI of fables at the end. This book was my one find at Atticus, which everyone in Toronto praised but I found estranging, overwhelming, and crowded.

1975 Proverbs to Live by: Timeless Words of Wit and Wisdom. Selected by Gail Peterson. Illustrated with Woodcuts by Fritz Kredel. Hardbound. Kansas City, MO: Hallmark Editions. $1.50 from The Antiquarium, Omaha, July, '02. 

This small landscape-formatted book is full of wit, in both its proverbs and their illustrations. There is only one involvement of fable that I can find. Next to a clear illustration of a fox and some suspended grapes, we read this: ""When the fox cannot reach the grapes he says they are not ripe." It is labeled "Greek Proverb."

1975 Reineke Fuchs von Goethe. Mit Stahlstichen nach Zeichnungen von Wilhelm von Kaulbach. Paperbound. Frankfurt: Insel Taschenbuch #125: Insel Verlag. DM 14,80 from Heidelberg, August, '01.

Here is a very compact presentation of von Kaulbach and Goethe's work. For a small and relatively inexpensive version, the reproductions of Kaulbach's work are good. One of my favorites is still Hinze the cat's attack on the parish priest (37). Other fable favorites here include depictions of an eagle stealing a lamb (48); the fox playing possum (94); the horse kicking the wolf (104); WS (136); the sick lion needing the right cure (139); and the mother dog and her litter confronting the home's generous former owner (154). I find it curious that the old title page still has "Zeichnungen von Wilhelm von Kaulbach" while the contemporary cover has "Zeichnungen von Wilhelm Kaulbach." The "von" has vanished!

1975 Select Fables. With cuts, designed and engraved by Thomas and John Bewick, and others, previous to the year 1784: together with a Memoir; and a descriptive Catalogue of the works of Messrs. Bewick. Facsimile of 1820 edition printed by S. Hodgson for Emerson Charnley et al., London. 1975 facsimile published by Frank Graham Publishers, Newcastle. See 1820/1975.

1975 Sergei Michalkov: Basni.  Illustrated by A. Kanevsky.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Fiction.  $15 from an unknown source, August, '19.

1975 Sermons in Stone: Inspirational Fables for Today. By Mel Ellis. Illustrated by SuZanne. First edition. Signed by Ellis. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. $4.50 from Constant Reader Bookshop, Milwaukee, Dec., '98. Extra copy without dust jacket for $13 from Walk a Crooked Mile Books.

Here are forty-five prose pieces meant to inspire. They seem to me quintessential 70's material. I find several that are good fables. More of them, however, stress either the sentimental or the mystical. The sentimental might be represented best by "The Lonesome Snowflake" about a snowflake that loves a Christmas-tree-light, finally comes to it, and turns into a tear. The mystical might be evoked best by "The Rainbow Trout." This fish wants to swim in the sky full of stars. He finally escapes the river onto the shore and, in his last few moments, looks down on the stars shining in the water he has just left. There is often, as in "Little Creek," a nostalgic or regretful turn to the story. There is sometimes a Zen-like conundrum in these stories, as in the statement by the wind to the little white cloud in the story named after it: "You may have joy or power. You can't have both." Let me say a word about each of three genuine fables I have found here. "An Icy Reflection" works much as DS does. A kingfisher has attacked everything and loves the power he has so much that he does not think of flying south for the winter. Finally the water beneath him turns to ice, he sees in it the image of a bird, and he attacks. In spring they find what is left of him after attacking his own reflection. "The Envious Junco" presents a bird who envies the fat chickens living and being fed inside the window of a warm building. His envy changes fast when he sees them put on the chopping block. The skinny gray squirrel arrives alone and is ostracized by the fat country squirrels. Then he is joined by another hungry gray and another and another. The fat country squirrels are in no condition to fight well. They soon become the hungry outsiders watching and growing thin. The title is from "As You Like It," II 1: "This our life, exempt from public haunt,/Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,/Sermons in stones, and good in every thing."

1975 Son of Raven, Son of Deer: Fables of the Tse-shaht People. George Clutesi. Illustrations by the author. Paperback. Sidney: Gray's Publishing Ltd. See 1967/68/75.

1975 Stories Children Love. Edited by Maryjane Hooper Tonn. First printing. Milwaukee: Ideals Publishing Corp. $1.75 at Poplar Street Books, Charlotte, June, '97.

One of the kitschiest books I have. Two fables. With TMCM (14), there is a photo of two mice statuettes with cheese, but the most prominent piece of cheese is a lighted candle! What?! In this version, the town mouse ate a hearty country meal. The two arrived in the city home during dinner and hid. They were intruded upon by a cat, a cook, and two dogs, all at once! In BW (20), the boy was so glad to see people after his first shout that they were not very angry at him for having fooled them. The second time, some were quite angry. The next time they heard the boy cry, they ignored it until one cry was cut off in the middle. All they ever found of the boy was his pointed shepherd's hat. These two texts are acknowledged as from Tall Book of Nursery Tales (1944). Very simple, varied art.

1975 Tale of Tails: Ten Fables.  Ronald Duncan.  Illustrated by John Bratby.  #200 of 200; Signed by both Duncan and Bratby.  Hardbound.  Cornwall, UK: Elephant Press.  £125 from Rose Hulse, Trefriw, UK, through Biblio, Sept., '18.

1975 Tales, Talk, and Tomfoolery: A Collection of Folklore. Edited by Lawana Trout. Art Editor: Pat Wosczyk. NY: Scholastic Book Services. $4.95 at Book House in Dinkytown, July, '89.

A wild and varied book meant perhaps for pupils in junior high school. The book contains folktales, songs, tricks, games, crazy pictures and cartoons, and black-and-white illustrations. Besides two fables from India and one from Japan, the book contains "The Starved Farmer and His Fat Dogs" and FC: "whatever he had remarked of her beauty, he had said nothing yet of her brains." The authorship of the Aesop's fables is not acknowledged.

1975 The Book of the Archpriest of Hita (Libro de Buen Amor). Translated by Mack Singleton. Hardbound. Madison, WI: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies. $8.95 from Powell's, Portland, July, '99.

This is a strange publication to add to the translations of Libro de Buen Amor that I have reviewed recently: Kane (1933), Mignani and Di Cesare (1970), and Daly (1978). Is this a privately financed book? Done by a group or program at the University of Wisconsin? Its title-page is identical with its cover. The pages throughout are from typewritten originals. After a few pages of introduction (v-x), it marches through the text in rhyming quatrains, adding only a single page of notes afterwards (165). Then on 169-81 we find an introduction to and translation of "Pamphilus," a source and model for Libro de Buen Amor. I have read the first four or five fables in Ruiz' work to get a sense of this translation. The rhyme seems to bend the syntax and word-order a good deal, and there are frequent apostrophes marking dropped syllables. It would be fascinating to learn the circumstances of this book's coming to be.

1975 The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Retold by Freya Littledale. Pictures by James Marshall. First printing. NY: Scholastic Inc. $.75 at Parnassus Downstairs, Albuquerque, May, '93. Extra for $1 at O'Gara and Wilson, Sept., '92. Another extra of the 5^th printing for $1.65 from Magnolia Park Book Shop, Burbank, CA, Feb., '97.

There are two Easter eggs pasted on 30 of the good copy, and there is some water staining on the older extra, but this is a delightful pamphlet. The fable is well told. Tom fools the hunters and the fishermen. Both unite with the townsfolk in turning against Tom when he needs them. The best illustration (21) recurs on the back cover: the wolf looms over Tom. Tom mistakes the voice at first. The wolf eats all the sheep and tells the moral. Tom realizes and changes his behavior. The 5^th printing adds a number to the cover (TW 3282) and improves the paper stock for the pages.

1975 The Emperor's New Clothes.  Hans Christian Andersen.  Hardbound.  NY: Book Club Edition; Disney's Wonderful World of Reading #39: Walt Disney Productions: Random House.  $3.99 from an unknown source, July, '17.

1975 The Fable of the Lion & the Scorpion. Diane Wakoski. Title-page drawing by Tom Montag. 1000 copies published. Milwaukee, WI: Pentagram Press. $17.50 from Arundel Books of Los Angeles through abebooks.com, August, '01.

Physically, this is an 8½" x 10½" sheet of stiff paper folded and stapled around two regular sheets of the same size. Wakoski's fable builds off a typical enough fable that she quotes. A scorpion asks a frog for a ride across the pond and promises that he will not sting the frog. He does sting him in fact in the middle of the pond and to the frog's outraged cry "You promised!" answers only "I know, but it is my nature to sting. I couldn't help it." Her fable brings new elements to the story: a female and a male lion, the poetry of a California poet named Diane Wakoski, and a coyote. Everyone in the story who reads the poetry falls in love with the poet. The lady lion has to kill the scorpion and watch the coyote also fall in love with the poet. The moral: "If you are a lion and want the love of other lions, rather than scorpions or coyotes, don't write poetry. The lady poet, of course, is loved by everyone, but married to none." This sort of unusual item belongs in this collection, but probably not at the price I paid for it.

1975 The Fabled Arts. Written and illustrated by Norman Kirk II. First edition. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. NY: Vantage Press. $10 from Wrigley-Cross Books, Portland, OR, through ABE, Feb., '01.

This is a large-format book of drawings with a short bit of text to accompany each black-and-white drawing. The text always occupies the left-hand page, the drawing the right-hand page. The use of the word "fables" for these fifty prose pieces is a stretch. Many of the combinations involve a play on words, either in the title or in the moral. Such is the case with "Coin Laundry" or "A Fluent Society." Perhaps the best combination of text and art in the book is "The Blacksmith's Bellows" on 18-19. It finishes with this line: "The moral of this fable is that a windsome lass will fire any man's hearth." A good example of the word-play is "Pour Pitcher" on 36-37. The text speaks of a giant pitcher containing pancake batter. The story works around to this finish: "The moral of this fable is to watch your pitcher when the batter is up." There is some delightful whimsy in this book, and there is also some good counter-cultural sense. "Fisherman's Fantasy" (44-45) describes two men who broke into a museum to fish for the dolphin kept in a huge glass bowl. Many of the puns are real groaners, far fetched and not worth the fetching. "Grand Central Station" (86-7) tells of the construction of a New York train station from one hundred ten-dollar bills. There is some good fun here.

1975 The Fable of the Fig Tree. Michael Gross. Illustrated by Mila Lazarevich. Hardbound. Dust-jacket. Printed in USA. NY: Henry Z. Walck, Inc. $7.50 at Copperfield's Books Santa Rosa, Dec., '01. Extra copy without dust-jacket for $10 from Snowflakes Books, Redondo Beach, CA, Sept., '98.

A nice piece of Jewish folklore that is not far from a fable, and could be told as one--in perhaps a fifth of the space that this book takes. The designs, generally half the space of the story, do well with several colors. A poor old man plants a tree, and the king is so encouraged to see him do it that he invites him to bring him some of the fruit when the tree will bear five years later. The man brings the best of his fruit and is rewarded by having his basket returned full of gold. A neighbor tries to do the same with sometimes questionable figs, and the king's reward is to have him tied to a stake and pelted with them by the passers by.

1975 The Fables of Aesop. Selected and Illustrated by David Levine. Translated by Patrick and Justina Gregory. Hardbound. First Printing. Dust jacket. Boston: Gambit. $15 from Nicholas Potter, Santa Fe, May, '93. Extra copies of the first printing with dust jacket from Clare Leeper, '96, and for $3.50, '78, for $8 from Black Oak, Aug., '94, for $9.60 from The Book House, March, '95, and without dust jacket for $13 from Stage House II, Boulder, March, '94.

This is probably my favorite among all the books I have. Levine approaches the fables with real wit. He plays with them. I have to watch out that I do not use too many of his illustrations. Now in 1996 I have done a systematic study of the texts. There are one hundred fables here and fifty illustrations and a frontispiece; there are always two fables on the left page and a full-page illustration for one of them on the right. Patrick and Justina Gregory state clearly in the introduction that they base their English versions on Chambry’s Greek. They claim justly to have tried to reproduce in English the precision and spareness of the originals. The translations bear out the correctness of their claim that "the fewer words we could get away with, the truer to the original our versions seemed" (2). They do not include morals and make an excellent case for that decision. In particular, a supplied moral deprives the fable of one of its prime functions, to make the reader think. My study showed that Chambry is indeed the source here. They handle him with a good translator’s sense of adaptation and shortening. In fable after fable, I found Daly and Handford literally closer to Chambry’s Greek—and the Gregories’ version a good, adapted, brief version. They include a very high number of fables neglected elsewhere, so that in many of the files that include a Levine/Gregory entry, there are few others besides—very often only Perry, Daly, Handford, and Jones. The fable they may change the most from its Chambry original is TB (38). FG (12) shows how they enrich a fable and "The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox" (4) how they strategically shorten a good punch line into an even better one ("Who taught you?" "The ass").

1975 The Fables of Aesop: 112 Moral Tales Retold. Selected and edited by Ruth Spriggs. Introduction by Anne Wood. Illustrated by Frank Baber. Printed in the USA. (c)1975 by Eurobook Limited. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company. $3.98 at Half Price Books, Des Moines, April, '93.

I thought I was buying an extra copy of the 1975/76 edition of 143 fables. Surprise! See my comments there. Pages 15-17 are slightly folded. You certainly cannot tell a book by its cover!

1975 The Fables of Aesop with Designs on Wood. By Thomas Bewick. Introduction by Michael Marqusee. NY: Paddington Press Ltd: Two Continents Publishing Group. 1975 reprint of 1818 edition. See 1818/1975.

1975 The Fantastic Kingdom. A Collection of Illustrations from the Golden Days of Storytelling. Edited by David Larkin. Biographical notes by Margaret Maloney. Second Printing. NY: Ballantine Books. See 1974/75.

1975 The Haughty Toad and Other Tales from Bali. Selected and Retold by Victor Mason. Illustrated by Artists of Pengosekan, Bali. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Sanur, Bali/Sydney: PT Bali Art Print/H. Paul Hamlyn. $15 from Second Story Books, Rockville, MD, Dec., '10.

This large-format (12" x 12") picture-book contains ten short stories and one last seventeen-page story. Each has one colored, ornate Balinese painting. Several among the first stories are either derived from or very close to fables. "The Golden Axe" (9) has only one round with the celestial being who offers the woodsman a golden axe when he has lost his normal axe from high above the waters. He moves away from her and falls asleep; when he awakes, she is proferring him a steel axe. "The Sanctimonious Stork" (13) makes himself a religious figure and then proclaims danger, from which he will save the fish by transporting them "to the promised land." As in Kalila and Dimna, a crab chokes the stork when he sees the remains of the fish that the stork has eaten. "Four Wayward Sons" (17) is the Aesopic "Bundle of Sticks." "The Mocked Turtle" (19) is TT. The two geese fly all night and are getting ready to land, when a scrawny, scabby, cunning pyedog sees them and insults the flying turtle. The latter of course immediately snaps back. "King Crow and Pyedog" (27) is the Aesopic FC. In this case, the crow had a piece of choice carrion in his beak. When he opened his beak, he "made a noise like the rasp of a saw on a split bamboo." "One Good Dove Deserves Ant's Succour" (33) is the Aesopic AD. The attacker in this case was a farmboy with a bamboo blow-pipe and poisoned darts. As for the ant, after she saved the dove, the boy "squashed her flat!" "A Pretty Kettle of Fish" (37) is a version of "Wise Fish, Clever Fish, and Stupid Fish." The second survivor here is not as clever as he usually is in the Kalila and Dimna version.

1975 The Lion and the Dog. L. Tolstoi. Translated from the Russian by Jacob Guralsky. Drawings by Victor Duvidov. Printed in the USSR. Moscow: Progress Publishers. $.99 at Children's Bookstore, Chicago, Sept., '92.

A large-format booklet containing this excellent Tolstoi short-story and his fable "The Eagle." The colored illustrations are simple and dramatic. I am not sure that I understand what is going on in "The Eagle."

1975 The Little Clay Hut: Russian Folk Tales About Animals. Drawings by Evgeny Rachev. No authors acknowledged. Various translators. First Printing. (c)Progress Publishers 1975. $2.50 at Booksellers Row, downtown Chicago, March, '93.

Most of the stories here are quintessential folklore. Some, like "The Fox and the Thrush," display a curious mingling of episodes that do not seem to belong together; perhaps there has been some conflation of several stories into one. I continue to enjoy Rachev's wonderful illustrations. This is my fourth book of his work (see 1965, 1968, and 1983 for works of his in Russian). An English-language edition also gives me a reliable spelling of his difficult name! Unfortunately, this edition shifts his first name from "Evgeny" (facing the title page) to "Yevgeni" three pages later. See the 1988 edition from Raduga publishers and my comments on the changes there. Aesopic fable is represented, as so often in Russian material, by "The Fox and the Crane" (46), which is well told. Some illustrations may be superior in the 1988 printing.

1975 The Magic Pear and Other Legends and Fables from Russia and Other Lands. Translated from the Russian by Anne Zwerin. Stated first edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press. $8.99 from The Matthew Family, Grenville, Quebec, through eBay, August, '00. 

There are eighteen pages (35-52) of Armenian fables by Mkrtitch Koryun between two fairy tales and myths by Tolstoy. The introduction (35) speaks of their "dry, straight humor." This collection includes remakes of Aesop along with jokes and several fables that are new to me. The first of the stories here, "The Magpie and the Fledgling," has the Aesopic motif "First save me, then preach at me." "The Ass and the Bag of Gold" features celebration not of the ass but of what the ass is carrying. The best of those new to me are "The Pig and the Swan" (39), and "The Caged Nightingale" (41). In the former, the pig sees a swan for the first time and declares "A freak! I should die of grief, if I thought I looked like that!" In the latter, the caged nightingale asks why she is in cage and receives the answer that it protects her from the cat. The nightingale asks if it would not then be better to put not her but the cat into the cage!

1975 The Mice, the Fox and the Cheese.  Hannah Gruenebaum.  Illustrations by Siegmund Forst.  Pamphlet.  NY: Reading Fun for Everyone: Stories and Poems for all Ages:The Jewish Child Series, No.9.  $15 from Joshua Yakobovich, Shiloh, Israel, May, '22 

1975 The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, 1566-1910: A Catalogue, Volume I. Prepared at Boys and Girls House by Judith St. John. With an Introduction by Edgar Osborne. Third edition (1958, 1966). Hardbound. Printed by the University of Toronto Press. Toronto: Toronto Public Library. $12.50 from Marianne Novak, After Five Booksellers, Cleveland Heights, Jan., '98.

I am delighted to have found these two volumes. The bibliographical work is very nicely done. Fables comprise the first chapter (1-8). The entries for the books I have--the works of Dodsley, Garrett, Rundell, and Taylor--are all helpful.

1975 The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, 1566-1910: A Catalogue, Volume II. Prepared at Boys and Girls House by Judith St. John, with the Assistance of Dana Tenny and Hazel I. Mactaggart. Hardbound. Apparently first edition. Printed by the University of Toronto Press. Toronto: Toronto Public Library. $12.50 from Marianne Novak, After Five Booksellers, Cleveland Heights, Jan., '98.

I am delighted to have found these two volumes. The bibliographical work is very nicely done. Fables comprise the first chapter (563-71). Now the catalogue shows that the collection can boast of early--but not first--editions of l'Estrange, Croxall, and Dodsley. There are also first editions of Faerno, Abraham Aesop, Fenn, Taylor, and Billinghurst..

1975 The Three Bears and 15 other stories. Selected and illustrated by Anne Rockwell. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Dust jacket. $4.95 at McDonald's, San Francisco, Aug., '88.

This may be my oldest copy of this book. The obverse of the title-page offers a printing history that makes this book a first printing. It has a bookplate with "Leah" on its first blank page and some scribbling facing the title-page. This copy has no dust jacket. This is a cute, clever, lively book. The illustrations are done with imagination. Unfortunately, the two Aesop's fables (LM and DS) do not receive drawings as good as the rest. Compare Rockwell's later work on LaFontaine, The Turtle and the Two Ducks (1981). The stories here are well told.

1975 The Three Bears & 15 other stories. Anne Rockwell. Anne Rockwell. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Dust jacket. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell. $2 from Alley Book Store, Highland Park, August, '96.

This is my best copy of the original publisher's edition of this book, but it may not be the earliest copy. See a second copy of the book without a dust jacket found at McDonald's in San Francisco. The difference I notice in the two books is the obverse of the title-page. The framework of the page here seems more recent, and it does not refer--as the McDonald's copy does--to its printing history. As I say there, this is a cute, clever, lively book. The illustrations are done with imagination. Unfortunately, the two Aesop's fables (LM and DS) do not receive drawings as good as the rest. Compare Rockwell's later work on LaFontaine, The Turtle and the Two Ducks (1981). The stories here are well told.

1975 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Version based on R. & J. Dodsley, Select Fables of Esop and other Fabulists (1764). Illustrated by Paul Galdone. First American edition? Dust jacket. 10.2" x 7.5" sideways. NY: McGraw-Hill. $20 at Bibelots & Books, Seattle, July, '93. Extra copy without dust jacket for $1.25 at the Minneapolis Public Library, Jan., '97.

A beautiful edition in excellent condition. The text is indeed after Dodsley, who presents this story as I, 30 "The Court and Country-Mouse." This version changes Dodsley's female country mouse into a male, adds the court mouse's remonstration over country life and food, and adds finally the notion of the country mouse's considering overnight whether he will go to the city. "Wetting whiskers" in champagne is true to Dodsley. Galdone is lively, as he is elsewhere. He gives the country mouse a great smock. Whoever designed the book does a nice job of contrasting city and country in things like symbol and typeface.

1975 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.  After Dodsley.  Paul Galdone.  First American edition?  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  NY: McGraw-Hill.  $5 from Children's Books, San Diego, July, '98.

1975 Theories of the Fable In the Eighteenth Century. Thomas Noel. Dust jacket. Second printing. NY: Columbia University Press. $10 at Bluestem, Dec., '93.

The subject of this good study is the short didactic narrative, the Aesopian fable. "The eighteenth century seems to be the only period in which the fable has been considered a legitimate literary genre" (2). La Fontaine (who died in 1695) and La Motte (who published Fables nouvelles, including "Discourse on the Fable," in 1719) mark the beginning of the period in France. More than one hundred fabulists published there during the eighteenth century. More than fifty Germans were plying the fable art between 1740 and 1800. In England fable enjoyed strong popularity, but not the prestige which it had in France and Germany. (The fable impulse did not reach Spain until the 1780's.) The orderly, analytical eighteenth-century mind was even more fond of theory than it was of the fable. Their theories, then, Noel investigates methodically and carefully. Herder in 1801 stands at the other end of the stream of theoretical treatments begun by La Motte in 1719; Herder laments the decay of the genre. By the early years of the nineteenth century, both commentaries and published volumes of fables become fewer. Interest in the genre rapidly wanes. Fable returns to the realm of children's literature, from which it had risen up. Notes and bibliography.

1975 Tierfabeln des Leonardo da Vinci. Gesammelt und herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort von Bruno Nardini. Ins Deutsche übertragen und mit einem Vorwort versehen von Rudolf Hagelstange. Illustrationen von Adriana Saviozzi Mazza. Erste Auflage. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Italy. Würzburg: Arena-Verlag Georg Popp. DEM 19.80 from Basis Antiquariat, Munich, August, '98.

Here is a surprising addition to the nice book of Leonardo's fables done by the same team in 1973. According to the flyleaf, with this edition, the collection of Leonardo is finished. I find a sometimes not very subtle distinction between the stories here and those in the original volume. These move out into the realm of the mythological and the mysterious and may frequently go beyond the realm of fable. The very title that specifies Tierfabeln, while legitimate in German, may point to a different reality here. Notice the number of fables about fantastic creatures: phoenix, basilisk twice, macli, cerasta, bonaso, jaculo, and two-headed snake. Some items flesh out a normal fable; "Der Löwe und der Hahn" (34) gives a good sense of why the lion might be afraid of the rooster. Perhaps my favorite in this set of stories is "Grossmut" (69), in which an eagle teaches her young that the head of a court has to feed those who pay him/her homage by making up the court. "Wer hofhalten will, muss grosszügig sein…." See my comments on the original volume and the English version of the same year by Hubbard Press.

1975 Two Chanticleers. Children's Folk Rhymes and a Folk Tale from the Ukraine. Illustrated by Volodimir Golozubov. Various translators. Bilingual. Kiev: Veselka Publishers. $8.60 at David Morrison, July, '93.

Five colorful stories, among them the excellently illustrated "Mrs. Fox and Mr. Crane" (49) translated by Gladys Evans. Are the sexes not usually reversed? Mr. Crane makes a stew of meat, potatoes, and beets. Kids, bugs, and mice have a great time in the background of the lovely visuals. Mrs. Fox's skirt seems to be a huge red pin-cushion with two very thin legs sticking out. There are delightful, playful visuals throughout. This book looks so familiar: might I have somewhere the illustrations from "Mrs. Fox and Mr. Crane" or another of its stories?

1975 Two Roman Mice by Horace. Quintus Horatius Flaccus. Retold and illustrated by Marilynne K. Roach. Hardbound. Dust jacket. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell. $35 at Treasures from the Castle, Rochester, MI, Oct., '98.  Extra copy in poorer condition for $3 from Second Story, Bethesda, Dec., '98.

"Rusticus" and "Urbanus" are proper names of the two mice. Urbanus, who wears a toga, is from Rome itself. Black-and-white designs, e.g. of the country's grains and the city's exotic fruits and vegetables, decorate pages; whole pages and double-page spreads are given to illustrations. The story follows Horace generally, but is not the "fairly literal translation…somewhat adapted for non-Romans" proclaimed in the notes. It thus includes a reference to the shortness of life, but omits the long Epicurean exhortation. It also adds, effectively, elements not in Horace, like "cool water from a clear-flowing spring" (identified in the notes as Horace's Bandusian Spring). The book opens sideways and is about 7" x 5.5". In the city, they travel through trees and eventually wear wreaths. The mice flee the watchdogs through the garden and up some vines. In the last scene of Rusticus running back home in the country, there is a shrine to a mouse by the wayside. An appendix presents the Latin. Two pages of notes about Horace and one about Marilynne Roach. I am surprised that I never knew of this book until now.

1975 Vad var det jag läste? 2.  Bertil Forsberg and Eve Malmquist.  Illustrated by Svend, Otto S. and others.  Hardbound.  Lund: LiberLaromedel Lund: Gleerups.  5 Swedish Crowns from Antikvariat Varberg, Stockholm, July, '14.  

1975 Wise Animals. The Hamish Hamilton Book of. Edited by Eilís Dillon. Illustrated by Bernard Brett. Dust jacket. London: Hamish Hamilton. $7 at Jackson Street Booksellers, Omaha, Nov., '92.

A very pleasing collection of stories, including such things as the Odyssey's Argus story and selections from the Book of Proverbs, Pliny, and the ninth-century Book of Beasts. Fables are represented by the Aesopic DW (47), "The Fox, the Wolf, and the Mule" (61), and LaFontaine's GA and FC (102, 104). There is a strange attribution after DW: "AESOP: translation either Croxhall (1722) or James (1848)." This attribution not only cannot decide where it comes from; it misspells Croxall's name in the process! In fact, the version is from Croxall with some emendations. This edition features the misspelling "fiirst" within its text. The moral to "The Fox, the Wolf, and the Mule" is surprising: "Not everyone who can read is wise." The black-and-white block prints are unspectacular. Dillon translates or recreates many of the stories.

1975/76 The Fables of Aesop: 143 Moral Tales Retold. Selected and edited by Ruth Spriggs. Introduction by Anne Wood. Illustrated by Frank Baber. Printed in Italy. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company. $3.50 at Constant Reader, Jan., '90.

I thought I had this book. I still think so after searching everywhere! Lively and realistic art. The best of the illustrations are for WC (22-3) and MM (34-5). There is a long version of "The Young Man and the Cat" (80). New to me: "The Parrot and the Cat" (18). Notice the statue of Mary and Jesus on the donkey's back on 17! Around 98-110 one of the sections of the book gets misfolded at the center. Compare this edition--published in the U.S. and printed in Italy--with the original copyrighted by Eurobook in 1975 and printed in the U.S. This has thirty-one more tales, dull-finished pages, and different cover material. The pages of the two books up to 92 match up frequently but not always.

1975/79 H Alepou ki o Korakas. Pote Stratike. Illustrated by Nikos Neiros. Pamphlet. Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones #5. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $6.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is a single story that is #5 in the series "Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones" and reappears in the collection Paramythia tou Aisopou, Deuteros Tomos, listed under 1978/97. I have six of the eighteen pamphlets in the series. The beginning and ending pictures feature a weeping crow. The story is told expansively and includes, e.g., the story of the stealing of the cheese. 1975 is the date given on the title-page and 1979 on the back cover, which lists the titles in the series.

1975/79 Skylos, Kokoras kai Alepou. G. Tsoukala. Illustrated by Nikos Neiros. Pamphlet. Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones #6. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $3.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is a single story that is #6 in the series Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones and reappears in the collection Paramythia tou Aisopou, Deuteros Tomos, listed under 1978/97. I have six of the eighteen pamphlets in the series. The story seems to devote a fair amount of space to life in the rooster family before introducing the dog as a friend. 1975 is the date given on the title-page and 1979 on the back cover, which lists the titles in the series.

1975/84 L-ewwel ktieb ta Hreijjef Esopu. Versi ta Brother Henry, F.S.C. Stampi ta Robert Ayton. Hardbound. Malta: Serje 740 (M): Ladybird Library: Merlin Books. £ 4.99 from runcommon (Ball), England, through eBay, March, '06. 

This seems to be a Maltese version of A First Book of Aesop's Fables from Ladybird in 1974. There are twelve fables. All have at least one illustration in duochrome and one strong full-page colored illustration. Among the strongest are the images of SW (45, also on the cover) and GGE 41). The book is small in format (4¾" x 7"). This is my second book of fables in Maltese.

1975/84 The Fables of Aesop. Selected and Illustrated by David Levine. Translated by Patrick and Justina Gregory. Paperback. Fourth Printing. Harvard and Boston: The Harvard Common Press: A Gambit Book. $8.95 in '85. Extra copy for $5.40 at Green Apple, San Francisco, Aug., '94.

See my comments under the original hardbound (1975) of which this is a reprint.

1975/87 Jean de La Fontaine: The Fables. A selection rendered into the English language by Elizur Wright and adorned throughout with illustrations and decorations after Gustave Doré. Bilingual. Dust jacket. (c)1975 Jupiter Books. London: Bloomsbury Books. $6.98 at Crown Books, Georgetown, March, '92.

Almost identical with the earlier Jupiter edition, except that this one has a dust jacket and uses better, thinner paper. The Doré illustrations thus come off the page better. The book's producers also make sure that the glorious last full page engraving of "The Two Goats" does not stick to the last page!

1975/89 The Fables of Aesop. Selected and Illustrated by David Levine. Translated by Patrick and Justina Gregory. Hardbound. Dust jacket. First printing? NY: Dorset Press. $5.95 at Strand, Jan., '90. Extras for $3 at Bookman's Corner, Dec., '91, and for $5 at Estuary, Lincoln, NE, Dec., '94.

Clean, crisp edition. The illustrations are still wonderful! This book has almost no margins.

1975? Aesop's Fables. A new translation by V.S. Vernon Jones with an introduction by G.K. Chesterton and illustrations by Arthur Rackham. Facsimile of the 1912 edition. NY: Avenel Books: Crown Publishing Co. See 1912/75?.

1975? Aesop's Fables. Edited by Sidang Pengarang. Hardbound. Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia: Nan Yang Series Cartoon for Children C4: Pustaka Nan Yang. $3.75 from Barton Haythorn, Mentone, CA, through eBay, May, '06. 

There is much that is curious about this well-worn children's book. It is a stiff-board book throughout its ten pages. The cover presents a graphic depiction of the man holding the goose on the chopping block, while the woman gets ready to cut its neck. The five fables inside are FC; DS; GGE; "Golden Axe"; and BW. Each title uses small letters throughout after the very first capital. The book belonged to a school library--perhaps "Sin Min High School" somewhere in China. It seems from their markings that they bought it for $3 in 1976. On the back cover beneath the Malaysian information on editor, publisher, and printer, there is an additional item naming Kwang Fu Book Co. in Taipei, Taiwan. The correctness of the English deteriorates along the way in this book. In DS we read "This greedy dog then bark Wang! Wang! quickly jumped into the river." Soon we read "This goose only lay an egg each day, really too little." Even worse is "To their surprise they wasn't any gold at all." "The water gold got very angry, he didn't gave him the golden axe neither did he helped him to search back his original axe." "Condemned" stamps occur several times in the book. The spine is giving way. The back cover indicates that there were five other Aesop's fables books in this series. The hunt goes on!

1975? Aesop's Fables. "Well Loved Tales." No author or illustrator. Printed in Italy. Bridlington, England: Peter Haddock, Ltd. Printed in Italy. $2.50 from Constant Reader, June, '96.

Perhaps a better copy than the reproduction done by Book Essentials, which I have listed under the same year. See my comments there. This copy has the British price marked on the corner of the end-paper.

1975? Aesop's Fables. "Well Loved Tales." No author or illustrator. (c)Peter Haddock, Ltd. Printed in Italy. Larchmont, NY: Book Essentials Inc. $1.95 at New England Mobile Book Fair, Newton, MA.

A good example of mostly bad art, bad tellings, and even bad orthography. The best of the tales might be "The King of the Animals." An example of a story poorly told is "The Wild Goats."

1975? Aesop's Fables. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in England. Cardiff: Dyma-Gymru Publications Ltd. $10.61 from March House Books, Stalbridge, UK, through ABE, August, '00.

This square 8" book is a surprise to me. I had never heard of it, and it contains little bibliographical information to go on. Even its flyleaves are blank! It has the smell of having sat on musty old bookshelves for some time. There are 113 fables, with a simple black-and-white drawing for most, followed by an AI. TMCM (5) is told in strongly Horatian fashion. A typical sample of this book's approach would be "The Moon and her Mother" and its illustration on 14. There is an unusually good moral to "The Hound and the Hare" (26): "Better a certain enemy than a doubtful friend." Some texts, e.g. MM (50), "The Cat and the Mice" (52), "Hercules and the Carter" (92), and TH (97), seem to be based squarely on James' versions. The same may be true of many of the other texts.

1975? Aesop's Fables (Arabic).  Sennamar Elmar.  Paperbound.  Saeed Gouda Al-Sahar.  $15 from an unknown source, June, '20.

1975? Fables and Other Short Poems Collected from the Most Famous English Authors. Illustrated by George and George Bickham (father and son). London: Thomas Cobb. Williamsburg reprint undated. See 1731/1975?

1975? Fables de La Fontaine. Art by Beniamino Bodini, unacknowledged. Hardbound. Conty, France: Editions Touret. $5.98 from Marie Gervais, St.-Urbain-Premier, Quebec, Canada, through eBay, June, '09.

This French edition, which does not acknowledge its artist, uses the same plates that can be found in two Italian editions of La Fontaine listed under 1960/76 and 1960/80, both by AMZ. There are, however, only eleven illustrations here as against twenty-six full-page and several partial-page illustrations in the former and seventeen full-page and several partial-page illustrations in the latter. The first six pictures here occur on the left-hand page, and the latter five on the right hand. Two fables are added as page-fillers; they have no full-page illustrations. The second, DS, has a single black-and-white image of a disgruntled dog that closes the book. There are a number of these humorous black-and-white designs, done in a film-cartoon style. GA is still a favorite of mine in this collection of images! As I mention a propos of the other editions, there are good faces too on the fox looking at the grapes and struggling with the stork's vase. The front cover's laminated covering is striated with ripples over the picture of "The Ant and the Pigeon."

1975? Jean de La Fontaine: Die Fabeln. Gesamtausgabe in deutscher und französischer Sprache, mit über 300 Illustrationen von Gustave Doré. Dust jacket. Wiesbaden: Emil Vollmer Verlag. Gift of Gerd and Adele Filbry, Aug., '88.

A beautiful book very similar in format to the Jupiter edition of 1975. Like it, this edition is bilingual and uses background color to set off the original text and Doré's small illustrations. This book is more complete than the Jupiter edition, which drops a number of fables. The full page illustrations--not quite as complete as in the Chartwell edition in 1982--are well done.

1975? Lafontaine: Dialechtoi Mythoi. (Greek.) Translated by G. Tsoukala. Illustrated by P. Leroy and A. Michel. Athens: I.K. Papadopoulos and Son. $2 at Shakespeare, Berkeley, June, '89.

LaFontaine in Greek! Forty fables, with sixteen simple and poorly reproduced color illustrations and a few black-and-whites. Meant for children of age seven through eleven.

1975? Mes Fables d'Animaux. Illustrations de Nemo. Hardbound. Milan: Touret. $0.99 from André Péladeau, Quebec, Canada, through eBay, July, '04. 

Four of the six stories listed on the cover of this large-format (9¼" x 12") book are traditional Aesopic fables: TMCM, TH, LM, and GA. Aesop is credited as the author of the first three. The mice of TMCM are dressed and drive cars. For the hare in TH, eating along the way leads to a siesta. The moral is announced by the tortoise to the hare: "Sois donc moins présomptueux à l avenir." The rat in LM is out hunting butterflies. He plants a butterfly-net with vigor on the lion's nose. When he asks for pity, he mentions his short-sightedness. GA is attributed to La Fontaine. This grasshopper complains constantly; his invitations to the ants seem to turn to derision of them. The other two stories are Anderson's "Ugly Duckling" and Bamberger's "The Three Little Pigs." The colored illustrations are lively and tasteful. Many cover a whole page, while others are integrated around text.

1975? More Aesop's Fables. "Well Loved Tales." Printed in Italy. Bridlington, England: Peter Haddock, Ltd. $1.99 at Dalton in Great Falls, Montana, May, '85. Extra copies for $2.49 from Combs and Ketterson and for $4 from Constant Reader, June, '93.

The sequel to Aesop's Fables (1975?). The price is marked in British currency. This book features rather long (eight-page) renditions of the fables, sometimes with expressive faces. The best might be GA. I have come across some strange things in book collecting, but I would love an explanation for the lip imprint with lipstick on 29 of the Constant Reader copy!

1975? Skaski i Basni (Russian: Fairytales and Fables). L. Tolstoy. Paperbound. $1 from Ukraine, through eBay, Nov., '10.

This is one of the simplest items in the collection. It is a 16-page pamphlet -- that includes both covers -- that has a simple thread through two holes emerging between 8 and 9. The top of the first text page has "L. Tolstoy," and so I will presume that all three stories here are taken from him. The cover shows a stag standing proud and looking at an eagle. The first illustration inside the booklet shows a wolf who has captured a hare. To judge from the pictures, he lets him get up onto a branch of a tree. Not a good idea, Wolf! The next story involves a tiger and a stag. The next set of images has a fox riding the tiger: this motif is well known to fable narratives. Soon the tiger has grasped the fox in his jaws. The final fable involves a bird and a lobster. The bird seems to let the lobster fall into the water. This pamphlet is, shall we say, open to further investigation! This collection exists particularly to rescue ephemeral pieces like this one! 

1975? The Hare and the Tortoise. A Mulberry Motion Book. Illustrated by Sal Murdocca. No editor acknowledged. Printed in Japan. Mulberry Press. £5 at Quinto, Charing Cross Road, London, June, '02. Extra copy with a different screen for $1.50 at Logos in Santa Cruz, Aug., '89.

I had found this book in Santa Cruz thirteen years ago, but it came there with a screen that does not reveal well the "motion" of the illustrations. At Quinto, then, I found another copy with a much sturdier screen that works well. It pays to keep looking! This book has the hare pausing for a swim and a nap before he gets going. The choice of this fable for a "moving picture" book is excellent. The book has very sturdy pages.

1975? Treasury of Well-Loved Tales. No author or illustrator listed. (c)Peter Haddock, Ltd. Printed in Italy for Book Essentials Publications. USA distributor: POP-M Co., Ivyland, PA. $8 in Milwaukee.

A larger volume that includes the two smaller "Well-Loved Tales" volumes (1975?). The cover pictures of the shorter books become the title pictures of the sections of this larger one. Two pages are eliminated from each of two stories. The reproductions of the art are generally superior. The approach to the stories is definitely Disneyesque, even "pop."

1975? Young Years: Best Loved Stories and Poems for Little Children. Editor: Augusta Baker. Originally illustrated by various people, along with classical illustrations by famous artists. NY: Parents' Magazine Press. See 1960/75?.

1975? 4 Contes Choisis. Monique Gorde. Hardbound. Collection "Contes Choisis": Éditions Lito. $4.25 from Marie Gervais, St.-Urbain-Premier, Canada, through eBay, Sept., '04. 

The title-page is missing. The book includes three contes and a section of eleven fables, each on a two-page spread, introduced by a single image of a fox in a cape and trousers. In fact, these are the same fables and illustrations that make up Lito's Fables de la Fontaine, for which I have guessed the same date of 1975. As I mention there, perhaps the most charming among the illustrations is that of a fisherman in a newspaper hat. The town and country mice, well contrasted in their clothing, have been enjoying champagne. There are three other books in the series, listed on the back cover. None of the other books contains fables.

 

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1976 A Clutch of Fables. Teo Savory. Nine Drawings by Emil Antonucci. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press. $1.84 from Donna Donahue, Goshen, NJ, through eBay, August, '02.

Here is the hardbound version of a book I had found earlier only in a paperback version. There are several strange things about this book. This book seems to have none of the paperback's difficulties with either the placement of the Unicorn Press (it is in Greensboro) nor the date of publication (it is 1976). Let me take some of my comments from that 1977/79 listing. I expected that this would be yet another book using the concept "fable" very loosely, and I was wrong. This is a book of fables. They are like the works of Monterroso, but developed one stage further. So they are often four pages in length rather than two. They are certainly thought-provoking. Social satire is evident in "The Alley Cat and the Laws of Status" (13). One of the most trenchant is "Little Brown Burros" (25), and one of the most provocative is "The Birds: A Fable With Alternative Endings" (29). Maybe the saddest is "A Dried Mermaid" (33). Great for its category-jump at the end is "The Purple Martin And His Cook" (39). My final award, for most poignant, goes to "The Silver Swan" (73). Savory has fun throughout with the transformation of standard speech to fit the particular animal world of an individual fable. Thus in the battle between tyrannical mutant buffaloes and drab indigenous buffaloes, a "white-harness" (rather than white-collar) class of drabbians grows up serving the mutants (43). Further examples include "humanpox" (57) and local birds who belong to a Man-Watchers Club (65). The illustrations are reminiscent of Thurber, but Antonucci shows a less definite sense of line than Thurber does. "The Ants and the Grasshopper" (9) builds directly on the Aesopic fable. I like Savory's work here very much. This copy was withdrawn from the Cape May, NJ, library. Their loss is our gain!

1976 A Fable of the Earth. Miniature. Leonardo da Vinci. #28 of 275 copies, initialed by Susan Acker. Hardbound. San Anselmo, CA: Feathered Serpent Press. $13.27 from D. Richards, Bookman, Pittsburgh, PA, Sept., '10.

This miniature book presents a fable I had not heard before, beautifully illustrated with thirteen linocuts. "Every now and again, a toad opened his mouth and swallowed a little earth." A ladybug asked him why he was so thin. "Because I am always hungry." She asked why he did not eat his fill. "Because one day even the earth might come to an end." The lettering and animals are delightfully done in red and green. I think I am very lucky to have come upon this book! Rare indeed! I trust that the art and lettering were done by Susan Acker. 26 pages. 2⅜" x 1¾". 

1976 Aesop's Fables. Laurel Hicks, Editor. Illustrated by Stan Shimmin. Pamphlet. Pensacola, FL: A Beka Book Publications: A Division of Pensacola Christian College. $1.98 from Half Price Books, Dallas, Dec., '99.

This is a 96-page pamphlet measuring 8½" x 11", with a cover showing a fox reading FC. There are twenty-seven fables included. Texts and simple illustrations, sometimes fully colored and sometimes of two colors, are often integrated into the same space. After each fable space is given to questions about the fable under headings like "Do you know?" and "Do you remember?" Some fables have a section for a scripture verse or a reflective question ("Think about it"). There is a T of C at the front. In "The Fox and the Lion" (7), the lion is surprised at the fox the third time they meet, so surprised that he stops his roar. Does good English say "as best he could" (15)? "The Battle of the Birds and the Beasts" (21) takes a curious approach to the fable. The bat is introduced as a coward who attempts to join each side in turn when it is winning, but is rejected by the beasts because he is a bird and by the birds because he is a beast. He denies it in each case. This version follows the wrong order of events. Let him come and be accepted but then change sides, and we will know that he is a coward! The rat who sees the elephant is not only chased but eaten by the cat, who has nothing to do with the elephant (30). The crow in CP first tries to tip the pitcher and to put a hole in it before he gets his bright idea (34). Not a fowler but a "bad boy" with a stone threatens the dove in "The Bee and the Dove" (43). The provoking statement in TT is "Who was so wise to think of that?" It was indeed the turtle, and he lets it be known (52). "The Cat and the Fox" (55) teaches that "One good plan is better than a hundred tricks." In CJ (86) the rooster finds not a jewel but a piece of gold. GA (88) deals with plural grasshoppers. Most of the answers are pencilled in. See a later edition in 1979 and a teacher's edition in 1988, for both of which the title has become Aesop's Fables for young readers.

1976 Aesop's Garden. Don Byrd. Paperbound. Plainfield, Vermont: North Atlantic Books. $4 at Dundee Book, Summer, '92.

A book of poems, one of which (41-66) is "Aesop's Garden." This is the kind of poetry that does not use punctuation except the parenthesis and the dash. I noted five levels of indentation. The poetry is heavy on imagery, including intercourse, birth, paradise, and the river. The first section of the six uses Zeno's paradox on the tortoise and the hare. The fifth section mentions Aesop's daughters (the muses?) and (63) says "it is not the moral of the story/ but the endless narrative play/ of the moral."

1976 Altchinesische Fabeln. Aus dem chinesischen Uebertragung von Kaethe Zhao und Senta Lewin. Paperbound. Leipzig: Verlag Philipp Reclam jun. $1 from an unknown source, August, '99.

This simple collection of yuyan has a great deal of overlap with "100 Allegorical Tales from Traditional China" (1982), down to the fact that the Nachwort here like the preface there discusses the genre of yuyan. There are also exactly 100 tales here. Note the difference that this edition calls yuyan "fables" while the English settled for "allegorical tales." I recognize many well-known stories right away, including "Wie man Berge versetzt" (5); "Der stolze Kutscher" (8); "Der Frosch im Brunnen" (11); "Schild und Speer" (21); "Kann man auf Hasen warten?" (23); and "Umzug einer Eule" (28). There is a T of C at the back.

1976 Animal Fun Time. By Janet and Alex D'Amato. Pleasantville: Reader's Digest Services. (c)1964 Doubleday & Company. See 1964/76.

1976 Biblion Askeseon: Work Book for the Reader AESOP'S FABLES. Helen Kardamakis Dorizas. NY: D.C. Divry. $2.50 at Dundee, Nov., '92.

A serious 102-page workbook for the 1950 and 1950/70 readers, with some minimal English translations of Greek instructions. It surprises me that I could still get this book now from the publisher.

1976 Caxton International Congress Organized by the Printing Historical Society, London, 20 to 24 September 1976. Caxton. Paperbound. London: Printing Historical Society. $3 from Great Northwest Bookstore, Portland, OR, August, '08.

This is a 12-page brochure offering information and a schedule of the program of the Caxton Congress organized by the Printing Historical Society in London in September of 1976. It caught my eye because it includes as part of its title presentation on the cover the illustration Caxton used in his 1484 Aesop for DLS. It is one of Caxton's most successful woodcuts, I think. The back cover has a detail of, I believe, "The Lobster and His Mother." How nice to run into an old friend while scanning the shelves of this bookstore! Aesop gets around! The program includes a registration form and a notice of a book, A Pride of Printers, sent to members. 

1976 Childcraft: The How and Why Library, Volume 2. Joseph Jacobs et al. Hardbound. Chicago: Field Enterprieses Educational Corp. See 1973/76.

1976 Children's Literature in the Elementary School. Charlotte S. Huck. Third Edition. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. See 1961/68/76.

1976 Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch. Diane Wakoski. Fifth printing. Paperbound. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press. See 1973/76.

1976 Der Wolf und das Lamm: Die schönsten Fabeln. Herausgegeben von Andreas Simon. Dust jacket. Inscribed in 1977. Printed in Austria. Munich: Verlag Die Bibliothek. $15 at Moe's, Aug., '93.

A nice chubby little treasure with a taped dust jacket. Inscribed three times in 1977. The preface has the interesting remark from Erasmus Alberus that the devil has his fables too! The illustrations come from Doré, Grandville, and a few others. The fables come from forty-nine fabulists, of whom five are classical (Aesop, Babrius, Phaedrus, Avianus, and Romulus) and three others non-German (Leonardo, LaFontaine, and Krylov). Best represented are Lessing (31), Pfeffel (20), Gellert (15), and Gleim (12). Each fable receives its own page; I find that this format helps to make for pleasant reading. Complete T of C at the rear. This is the kind of book to work through in a week. On this search, I noticed that Luther's version of TMCM is careful about the "hole" question in a way that most versions are not.

1976 Deutsche Fabeln und Lieder der Aufklärung. Herausgegeben von Ingrid Sommer. Mit Stichen von Daniel Chodowiecki. Paperbound. Apparently second printing. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Taschenbuch #208: Insel Verlag. DM 12 from Hassbecker's Galerie und Buchhandlung, Heidelberg, June, '98.

There are six authors in this paperback book: Lessing, Hagedorn, Gellert, Lichtwer, Gleim, and Pfeffel. I am surprised that Gellert has even more fables here than Lessing. The runs of Chodowiecki's engravings are not very good, but they are plentiful. There is a Bildverzeichniss on 307-10. A Quellenverzeichniss and a T of C follow. Songs and fables are not distinguished in the organisation of this book.

1976 Die Schoensten Fabeln von La Fontaine. Nacherzaehlt von Auguste Lechner. Illustriert von Edda Reinl. Hardbound. Innsbruck, Vienna, Munich: Tyrolia Verlag. $8.99 from Barbara Clarke, Riverside, CA, through eBay, July, '03. 

Sixty-nine fables in 112 pages in a large-format book. There is a T of C at the beginning. Perhaps the special virtue of this book lies in its full-page colored illustrations. These include: "Der Schaefer und das Meer" (13); "Der Bauer und die Schlange" (17); "Die Geschichte von der Baerenhaut" (25); FS (28); BF (33); OF (37); "Das Pferd und der Esel" (45); "Der Alte Loewe, der Wolf und der Fuchs" (53); "Die Eichel und der Kuerbis" (57); "Der Wolf als Schaefer" (61); GA (69); FWT (72); FC (77); "Der Reiher und die Fische" (85); DW (92); "Die Alte Frau, die Maegde und der Hahn" (97); "Die Reiselustige Schildkroete" (100); MM (105); and "Der Mensch und Sein Spiegelbild" (108). My prize among these goes to "Das Pferd und der Esel" (45).

1976 Disney Magazine. April, 1976. Editorial Contributors: Sam Cornell et al. Various art contributors. Walt Disney Productions. $.50 at Omaha Collectors' Fair, Nov., '89.

"Make Your Own Tortoise and the Hare Race" shows up on 42-3 of this magazine. The game's idea is clever, and the art is vintage Disney.

1976 Esopo: Favole. Traduzione di Elena Ceva Valla, testo greco a fronte. With the 1491 Venetian woodcuts. Rizzoli: Milan. Fourth edition. See 1951/76/82.

1976 Esopo: Favole. Traduzione di Elena Ceva Valla, testo greco a fronte. With the 1491 Venetian woodcuts. Rizzoli: Milan. Fifth edition, brought back by Pat Donnelly. See 1951/76/84.

1976 Esopo No Fabulas. Photographic facsimile of the original edition owned by the British Library. Explained by Kunimichi Fukushima. Ninth edition. Tokyo: Benseisha Co. See 1593/1976/96.

1976 Fabeln aus den Zeiten der Minnesinger.  (Johann Jacob) Bodmer.  Hardbound.  Zurich/Leipzig: Orell und Compagnie/Zentralantiquariat der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik.  See 1757/1976.

1976 Fabeln aus Drei Jahrtausenden. Auswahl und Nachwort von Reinhard Dithmar. Mit 23 Holzschnitten (Heinrich Steinhöwel: Augsburg, 1498), davon 16 koloriert (von Kurt Oggier). Dust jacket. Zurich: Manesse. DM 26,60 at Herder, Münster, Aug., '88.

A wonderful and carefully translated collection. Aesop gets only six fables, but many of his are represented by his successors. Beautiful reproductions and colorings of Steinhöwel's woodcuts. Bilderverzeichnis on 243, Inhalt on 245.

1976 Fabels van La Fontaine. Jan Prins. Engravings of Grandville. Utrecht/Antwerp: Prisma paperback/Spectrum. See 1940/46/76.

1976 Fables. By Shchedrin (Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov). Translated from the Russian by Vera Volkhovsky. Originally published in 1941 by Chatto and Windus, London. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. See 1941/76.

1976 Fables from Aesop. Translated by James Sabben-Clare. With Woodcuts by Richard Atkinson-Willes. #305 of 426. Signed by James Sabben-Clare and Atkinson-Willes. Hardbound. Winchester College Printing Society. $119.38 from Alibris, August, '02. 

This is the kind of book that makes printers proud. It is very nicely printed and bound. Unfortunately, it has no pagination, T of C, or AI. The rhyming verse translations of the thirty fables are witty and careful. Each fable has its own page. The fox, who has just given the lion everything in the division of spoils and has been asked by the lion who taught him to be so intelligent, answers "My teacher's well known to us both,/But recently, sadly, deceased." My prize for the best text of all goes to "The Patient Who Recovered and the Bad Doctor." The patient who has revived despite the bad doctor tells of the King and Queen of the dead being angered by the doctors who keep people among the living. He mentions the present doctor as one of those singled out for criticism. But, he goes on, he set them straight by saying that no one is less of a doctor than this man. In "One Swallow and Spring," the text makes the man sympathetic instead of critical of the swallow who misled him about the coming of spring. The typesetter has particular fun with "The Crab and His Mother," since he sets two key lines diagonally across the page. I find six full-page illustrations: "The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass"; "The Fox and the Goat"; "The Patient Who Recovered and the Bad Doctor"; "The Boar, the Lion, and the Vultures"; FG; and BW. FG is the most creative. The fox ends up hanging from the grape vine, and the latter includes a fine sour face. The illustrations are, I believe, less impressive than the translations.

1976 Fables from Trastevere. Translations by Blossom Kirschenbaum from verses by Trilussa. #6 of 50 hardbound copies signed by the translator. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Woods Hole, MA: The Pourboire Press. $18 from Cellar Story Books, Providence, RI, April, '99. 

The introduction rightly says that "Trilussa uses fables less for instruction than for revelation." These rhymed verse offerings are presented bilingually on facing pages, with the Italian on the left and the English on the right. Only a few move onto a second page. Two offerings are never crowded onto one page. There are twenty-seven offerings on sixty pages. My sense is that neither the author nor the translator would want to claim that all the works here are fables. "Fables and other poems" probably captures the collection well. The sentiments are strongly anti-government and anti-war. Notice TMCM on 39: "No trap ever has rich mice in it!" The most intriguing pieces for the fable researcher are probably: "The Fly and the Spider" (7); "Teaching" (11); "The Sheep" (15); "The White Bear" (21); and "The Ape" (23). Somehow I had feared Trilussa. I find these works much more accessible than I would have thought. The book had a total run of six hundred copies, of which apparently five hundred and fifty were paperbound. Trilussa is a nom de plume for Carlo Alberto Salustri. He died in 1950. This copy is also inscribed by Kirschenbaum at Thanksgiving, 1976 with a lovely pun: "for Jessan and Alfred, good neighbors, dear friends, and artists in their own write, with love from Blossom." 

1976 Fedro: Animali Nelle Favole. Disegni ed impaginazione di Attilio Cassinelli. Traduzione di Tiziano Loschi. Florence: Giunti/Marzocco. 10,000 lire in Rome, Fall, '83.

Colorful if not very subtle illustrations, often running across two pages or around the text. The medium and style look to me like those of linoleum blocks.

1976 Fiabe di La Fontaine. NA. Illustrazioni di Beniamino Bodini. III edizione completamente rinnovata. Hardbound. Milan: Gli Aristolibri: AMZ. See 1960/76.

1976 Fiabe russe. Traduzione dal russo di Aldo Canestri. Disegni de E. Raciov. Traduzione in italiano. Mosca: Edizioni Progress. $7.20 from The Book Cellar, Bethesda, Jan., '96.

A delightful find! Here is a book of Russian stories in Italian. It works off of the 1974 original GmCm;-GmCm;?7 from (I believe) Progress Publishers in Moscow. See my comments there. This book has apparently the same twenty stories in it as that one. Ten of these stories appeared already in The Little Clay Hut: Russian Folk Tales About Animals (Progress, 1975; see also Raduga, 1988). See my comments there. This edition follows the order of the ten stories there except in the case of "Rabbit Talk Big" and adds to those ten these stories: "La focaccia," L'uovo d'oro," "Il gallo e il fagiolo," "La casetta del leprotto," "Il galletto Cresta d'oro," "L'airone e la gru," "Sora volpe e il lupo," "Il gatto e la volpe," "La volpe e il matterello," and "Mascia e l'orso." Of these, I believe that only "Sora volpe e il lupo" from the Renard tradition joins FS (98) as a fable. The English edition is generally but not always superior in its rendition of the illustrations. This Italian edition becomes fuzzy sometimes. On 147 the printer missed his overlay and so made two geese out of one! An unusual address to children on what would be 159 asks for feedback.

1976 Ivan Andrejevic Krylov: Clovek a stin.  Hana Vrbova.  Illustrated by Zdena Taborska.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  Prague: Clenska Kniznice Premie:  Svoboda.  $4.90 from Czechchildrensbooks on eBay, Jan., '16.

1976 Katz und Fuchs und Hund und Hummer: Fabeln von Asop.  Nacherzählt von Ennis Rees; Ins Deutsche gedichtet von Claudio Schmölders.  Illustrated by Edward Gorey.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Zurich: Diogenes Kinder Klassiker:  Diogenes.  €8.80 from Paderbuch through ZVAB, March, '23.

1976 La Fontaine: Fables choisies. Livres VII à XII: 1678-1679 et 1694. Avec un tableau de concordances chronologiques, une notice littéraire, des notes explicatives, des questionnaires, des documents, des jugements, une lecture thématique et un lexique établis par Hubert Carrier. Nouveaux Classiques illustrés Hachette. Imprimé en France. Hachette. $1 at Europa Books, Evanston, Dec., '95.

This slim little paperback (with its 1975 companion volume) offers a variety of good helps indicated in the title-page description reproduced above. There are unfortunately only seven single-pages of illustrations. The book's strengths may lie in the questions, the vocabulary, and the judicious selection of 57 fables of the 114 in the last six books. Oudry, Doré, and Grandville seem to be the standard illustrators most frequently presented in works like this. This edition has some good engravings and paintings not from fable-books.

1976 Le Lièvre et la Tortue. Jean de La Fontaine. Romain Simon. Paperbound. Paris: Gentil Coquelicot: Hachette. €13 from St. Ouen flea market, Paris, June, '09.

This book, about 7" x 8½", contains three fables of La Fontaine. It may be the twelfth book I have with Simon illustrations. At his nap, the rabbit of TH has a pipe and newspaper. He even juggles fruit along the way. The turtle, with an umbrella, stands at the end where there is a bag of "bonbons fins." In TMCM, the country rat is delivered in a handle-litter carried by two other rats. There is a fine last picture showing the smiling country rat at home in wooden shoes drinking wine and eating grains and vegetables with great pleasure! "The Cat, the Weasel, and the Little Rabbit" features lively characters. "Gentil Coquelicot," the presumed series title, promises "Une Histoire -- Une Chanson -- Des Jeux." Here we get three stories. Then there is an invitation "Et Maintenant Jouons Ensemble," followed by questions on the three stories, with the answers printed upside down in blue (22-24). The back cover has the song: "A la volette." The song seems unrelated to the fables in this little volume.

1976 Mes premières fables de la Fontaine.  Images de Jacques Galan.  Hardbound.  Paris: belles histoires, belles images: Librairie Fernand Nathan et Cie.  See 1974/76.

1976 Milesian Fables. By Alexis Lykiard. Illustrations by Ric Hyde. Signed by Alexis Lykiard; 1 of 450 copies. Paperbound. Lancs, UK: Arc Publications. €3.50 from Richard Carr, Suffolk, England, Oct., '06.

Now, six years later, I at last get to catalogue this booklet of about 24 pages. "Milesian Tales" are generally known, I believe, as saucy tales. The expression tends to suggest tales of love and adventure of the sort strung together in Apuleius' Golden Ass or Margaret of Navarre's Heptameron. The genre seems to be tied especially to Aristides, a writer, says "Wikipedia," of "shameless and amusing tales with some salacious content and unexpected plot twists." Lykiard speaks here in his introduction of this booklet as the result of an experiment of a poetry-journal. There is plenty of reference to the Irish setting in which the book was written. I find fewer "Aesopian references," in fact only one that I catch in a poem titled "Progression": "Here, our whole life/ becomes a poem./City strife, country home." I find here a lovely echo of TMCM. Perhaps I miss other Aesopic references. The poems do express in engaging fashion the love of nature and the sense of exile that he refers to in that introduction. There are a number of tributes from fellow poets on the back cover.

1976 Open Court Basic Readers: A Magic World. Fourth reader. Revised edition. Edited by Marianne Carus, Thomas G. Anderson, and Howard R. Webber. Various illustrators. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company. $2.25 at Books of Imagination, Silver Spring, Oct., '91.

A good example of a modern reader, with carefully chosen selections and attractive layout. Two fables are labelled as from Aesop: "The Lion in the Den" (3) and BW (13). "The Deer" is presented as an "old fable" (5); in it the deer flees from a lion and frees his antlers in the nick of time.

1976 Open Court Basic Readers: Reading Is Fun. Fourth reader. Revised edition. Edited by Marianne Carus, Thomas G. Anderson, and Howard R. Webber. Fable illustrations are by Barbara Cooney, Hal Frenck, Imero, Gobatto, and Halldor Petursson. Various illustrators. LaSalle, IL: Open Court Publishing Company. Gift of Vera Ruotolo, Feb., '97.

A good example of a modern reader, with carefully chosen selections and attractive layout. Four fables are labelled as from Aesop: FG (72), TH (81), LM (90), and MSA (136). Also included are Tolstoy's "The Rich Man and the Tailor" (83) and the Jataka Tale, "Granny and Her Elephant" (124). The hare intends to nap when he lies down, "sure that he would wake up in time to beat the tortoise" (82). The tailor is female, and the rich man pays her precisely to stop singing; the fable is not about cares attached to riches. In the Jataka Tale, a good-natured pet elephant goes out and gets a job to help his aging owner. MSA has two unusual features: in the text, people laugh so hard at the carrying of the beast that they frighten the donkey, and in the illustration the laughing people are in the windows of buildings in town. What level is this book intended for?

1976 Pierwsza czytanka.  Irena Slonska.  Illustrated by Hanna Czajkowska & Witold Poplawski.  Paperbound.  Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne.  $15 from Boston flea market, July, '16.

1976 Seven Tuck-Me-Up Tales. Illustrated by Gerry Embleton. Pajama Series. Printed in Great Britain. Cambridge, England: Brimax Books. $.75 at Rummage-O-Rama, Nov., '87.

These tales balance black-and-white ink sketches with full color (acrylics?). The only Aesopic fable is "Taking a Donkey to Market" (35). The black-and-whites here are good. Some characters switch from their traditional roles (e.g., here the women harp at the son for riding). Father and son actually carry the beast in their arms, and that absurd action gets a good colored painting. No sad ending.

1976 Stories from Panchatantra: Book I. No author acknowledged. Illustrated by Pulak Biswas. Second edition (1965), sixth printing. New Delhi: The Children's Book Trust. See 1965/68/76.

1976 Tales from Aesop.  J.P. Miller.  NY: Random House.  Gift of Sonja Carlson from the Sebastopol flea market, Jan., '80.

1976 The Annotated McGuffey. Selections from the McGuffey Eclectic Readers 1836-1920. Stanley W. Lindberg. Dust jacket. NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold. $8.95 at Black Star, Chicago, Sept., '89.

An entertaining and informative book. Three fables appear: "The Lark and the Farmer" (26) from the second reader and BW (107) and "Seven Sticks" (120) from the third. Facsimile reproductions of lessons from the Reader's long history. The annotations mention that McGuffey used fewer fables than competitors.

1976 The Arbuthnot Anthology of Children's Literature. Fourth Edition. May Hill Arbuthnot, Dorothy Broderick, Shelton Root, Jr., Mark Taylor, and Evelyn Wenzel. Various illustrators. Revised by Zena Sutherland. NY: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company. See 1961/71/76.

1976 The Fables of Aesop. Joseph Jacobs. Richard Heighway. Fourth printing. Paperbound. NY: Schocken Books. See 1894/1976.

1976 The Fables of Aesop: 143 Moral Tales Retold. Selected and edited by Ruth Spriggs. Introduction by Anne Wood. Illustrated by Frank Baber. Printed in Italy. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company. See 1975/76.

1976 The Fantastic Creatures of Edward Julius Detmold. Edited by David Larkin. Introduction by Keith Nicholson. Toronto/NY/London: Peacock Press: Bantam. $5 at Time Traveller, Feb., '87.

Beautiful reprints of fifteen of Detmold's Aesop illustrations. The best might be "She Goats and Their Beards" (#20). No index or T of C. The pictures here are superior to those in the 1985 reprint I have of the original 1909 edition.

1976 The Fox and the Crow and 10 Other Tales. (Original Title: Jack Kent's Fables of Aesop.) Jack Kent. Paperbound. Pleasantville, NY: Reader's Digest Services. $.75 at Bim Bam Books, New Orleans, April, '88.

This book omits without comment the last two fables from Jack Kent's Fables of Aesop (1972). Kent is very witty here, as he is in the 1974 sequel. "The Gnat and the Bull," FG, and OF are my favorites here. The watercolors are lively.

1976 The Hare's Race. By Hans Baumann. Translated from the German by Elizabeth D. Crawford. Illustrated by Antoni Boratynski. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Apparently first printing. Printed in USA. NY: William Morrow and Company. $7.50 from James & Mary Laurie, March, '99.

There are a number of twists on TH here. The mole thought of the famous race and so suggested to hare a fair race for ten meters: "You run, I dig." Hare thought it would take mole forever to dig through ten meters. He ran to a cabbage field and "made a whole cabbage into a holey one." Fox, badger, and crow mark the mole's progress meter by meter--thus helping young readers learn to count to ten. Next hare thought he had time enough for a snooze and immediately fell asleep with his eyes open. At three meters, hare jumped onto a tractor and rode into town with it! At four meters, he got his moustache trimmed by the barber in town! At five, he rode on the merry-go-found at the fairgrounds. At six, he nibbled a turnip at the vegetable market. At seven, a gigantic dog chased him. At eight, the dog, whom he had led into a brook, splashed out of it, and the hare's ears whirled so furiously that he was lifted into the air. He got back to the starting line, but then faced having to jump one molehill after another. The biggest surprise comes at the end when the triumphant mole hears the hare's retort: "Of course you were first. Only tell me, what did you get out of it? You scratched and scraped, but I really had some fun!" Translated from Hasenwettlauf, aber ehrlich ©1975 K. Thienemanns Verlag, Stuttgart. There is a 3/4" tear in the front of the dj.

1976 The Higher Animals: A Mark Twain Bestiary. Edited by Maxwell Geismar. Drawings by Jean-Claude Suarès. First printing. Dust jacket. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. $4.50 from Silver Spring Books, Spring, '92. Extra copy of second printing, formerly in the Naval Air Station Library in Norfolk, VA, from Claire Leeper, Spring, '92.

These well selected passages are really not Aesopic fables, but they are something very close, and they are delightful. There is "A Fable" on 44, and it is fun. For starters, try "The Ant" and "Bicycle Dogs." Suarès' art is just right for the book.

1976 The History and Fables of Aesop. Translated and Printed by William Caxton, 1484. Reproduced in facsimile from the copy in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, with an introduction by Edward Hodnett. #79 of 500 copies. London: The Scolar Press. See 1484/1976.

1976 The Lion in the Well. Translated by Victoria Symchych and Olga Vesey. Paperbound. Toronto & Montreal: A Language Patterns Book: Holt, Rinehart and Winston of Canada. $15.00 from The Bookstall, San Francisco, Dec., '01. 

Here is a pleasant pamphlet of 32 pages, 7" x 6¾". It contains two stories. "The Lion in the Well" is a familiar old Bidpai story. Here the fox is the first victim, and he fools the lion. The second story is new to me: "A War Between the Dog and the Wolf." It is a delightful tale about impressions in a war between two groups. The art has a kind of "stained glass" quality, with heavy black lines outlining areas for vigorous color. Perhaps the Canadian origin of the book explains why I have not found it until now.

1976 The Mouse King: A Story from Tibet. Retold for This Edition by Yeshe Tsultim. Illustrated by Kusho Ralla. Paperbound. Middlesex, England: Puffin Folktales of the World #4: $3.60 from The Book Ark, NY, July, '98. 

This little book of perhaps thirty pages is remarkably well executed. The book's overarching story is of war in which the king of the lake has mice who can overthrow an invading army (of cats?). In LM, the lion is colored white and green. This is one of the most dramatic inclusions of a fable that I have seen. The India-like art has its own charm.

1976 The Tortoise and the Hare and The Lion and the Mouse. Pictures by Tadasu Izawa and Shigemi Hijikata. A Preschool Puppet Book. Tokyo: Zokeisha Publications, Ltd. $1.49 at Newton New England Mobile Book Fair.

The biggest, hardest pages I have ever seen. This book is nearly indestructible. It features soft-sculpture figures photographed in three or four scenes per story. The pictures are enjoyable. LM is better than TH. The best picture has the lion learning from the mouse: "No kindness, however small, is ever wasted."

1976 The World of Yesterday Magazine, No. 8, October, 1976. Linda and Ron Downey, Editors. Clearwater, FL. $2 from Carlos J. Martinez, Palm Bay, FL, through Ebay, August, '00.

"Aesop's Fables, sugar coated pills of wisdom" by Jeff Missinne takes up 5-10 in this magazine. It deals with the history of the motion picture cartoon series known as "Aesop's Fables." Paul Terry started the series around 1923. [I have two movie advertisements for the series, and they are dated to 1922.] Many of Terry's Aesop cartoons featured farmer Al Falfa as a straight man to the animals. In 1929, the series went all-talking. Terry left the series behind to form his own Terrytoons company. The Aesop series was taken over by its distributor, Amedee J. Van Beuren. The Van Beuren Corporation produced many popular short subjects for Pathe and RKO and the latter's predecessor, FBO. "A Close Call" occasioned a suit from Disney over two mice that looked too much like Mickey and Minnie. Cubby Bear became Van Beuren's equivalent to Mickey Mouse. For this author, the cartoon series seems to have hit its peak in 1932 with "a steady stream of smooth vehicles." In 1933 the Little King was added to the Aesop stars. In 1934, the series was discontinued. Van Beuren died in 1937. In the 1940's, Paul Terry revived Aesop's Fables as part of his Terrytoons series. The article is accompanied by several helpful black-and-white visuals.

1976 Tomás de Iriarte: Poesías. Tercera Edición. Edición, Prólogo y Notas de Alberto Navarro González. Clásicos Castellanos. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S.A. See 1963/76.

1976 10 Farbradierungen zu den Fabeln von La Fontaine.  Colored etchings by Simon Dittrich.  Loose illustrations inside a portfolio inside a case.  Braunschweig: Galerie Schmücking.  CHF 1400 from Peter Bichsel, Zurich, July, '23.

1976 75 Fabeln für Zeit-genossen. Den unverbesserlichen Sündern gewidmet. James Thurber. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag. See 1967/76.

1976/78 Footprints. William K. Durr, Jean M. LePere, Mary Lou Alsin. Illustrated by Chris Czernota, Kevin Callahan, Jared Lee, Hilary Hayton, and Bill Morrison. 1978 impression. Canvas-bound. Printed in USA. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. $1 from Second Story Books Warehouse, Rockville, MD, Dec., '99.

This canvas-bound children's reader contains seven stories. The fourth, "My Lucky Day" (42), builds off of TH. It is presented as a drama with one or two cartoon-like illustrations per page. Rabbit challenges Turtle to run to the schoolhouse. Along the way, cat and dog ask both to help, but only Turtle stops to help. Turtle finds Rabbit in a hole and gives in to Rabbit's pleading to help him out of the hole. As he pulls him out with a rope, Turtle falls backward--over the finish line! A surprised Turtle asks "How did I win? All I did was stop." Young readers are left to learn for themselves from the story that stopping to help may actually help a person to win.

1976/78 Once Upon a Time. R.P. Maison (apparently both author and illustrator). Wonder Story Books. NY: Harper and Row. $2 at Second Story Books, Bethesda, June, '89.

Very lively and engaging illustrations mark the two Aesopic fables included in the six stories here. Both BC and FS are carried out at some length. The pictures help with the words before the story starts.

1976/79 Favourite Animal Stories. Octopus Pop-up Picture Stories. Illustrations (c)1976 by J. Pavlin and G. Seda. (c)1976 Artia, Prague. Printed and made in Czechoslovakia. London: Octopus Books. $2 at Red Bridge, Kansas City, May, '93. Extra copy for $4 at Elder's Bookstore, Nashville, April, '96.

Pavlin and Seda are familiar from their Aesop's Fables of 1975 (Artia) and 1980 (Octopus). Here we have "The Mouse and the Elephant," "The Two Goats," "The Fox and the Raven," TH, "The Eagle and the Owl," and "The Fox, the Monkey and the Animals." A simple, well-made pop-up book.

1976/83 Once upon a Bayou: Original Louisiana Cajun Fables.  Howard Jacobs.  Illustrated by Jim Rice.  Third printing.  Paperbound.  New Orleans, LA:  Phideaux Publications.  $5 from Berkeley, July, '15.

1976/86 Easy Aesop. Hak-Yon-Sa Pocket English Library. Korean introduction, footnotes, and following translations. Edited by Ki Dong Yee. Artist not acknowledged. Seoul?: Hak-Yon-Sa Publishing Company. $.90 at Kyobo in Seoul, June, '90.

One simple illustration for each of the twenty fables, which include several (35-42) non-Aesopic stories. The wolf does not eat the lamb (11). There are English "Helps to Study" after the fables. Both the texts and the illustrations are easy indeed!

1976? Fables Choisies. Illustrations de J. Gouppy. Paperbound. Chevron-lez-Liège and Paris: Editions Hemma. €25 from Art Histoire & Livres, Chateau Thierry, France, July, '07.

There are three types of art in this 48-page pamphlet 8" x 11½" in size. There is a large colored cameo on the front (cardboard) cover. Signed "Maury," it is a sentimental picture of a child as the milkmaid whose pitcher has broken. Beginning on 3, there is a fable on every one or two pages, and every fable has at least one simple appropriate one-colored design. Among the better designs are those picturing the coachman with the fly on his nose (6), OR (20), "The Acorn and the Pumpkin" (29), the financier on 35, TT (41), and TMCM (48). Every few pages there is a full page of colored illustration signed "J.G"; these are, then, certainly the work of J. Gouppy, as acknowledged on the title-page. Each of these eight colored pages combines different irregularly-shaped panels illustrating various fables. The first on 5, e.g., combines "The Worker and His Sons," "The Ass Carrying Relics," and BF. Two of these pages are placed together at the centerfold of the book. The best of these full-page colored illustrations is perhaps the combination on 38 of WL and "The Horse and the Donkey." I chanced to find a used book shop in Chateau Thierry in my few hours there, and they chanced to have one fable book.

1976?    Fables Choisies.  (Illustrations de J. Gouppy).  Hardbound.  Chevron-lez-Liège and Paris: Editions Hemma.  €18 from a Buchinist, Paris, August, '14.  

This book has the same cover as a softbound book by the same publisher, but where that has Série 76/3 and a design of GA on its back cover, this hardbound book has Série 80/3 and three colored scenes: "The Father and His Sons," The Crow with Peacock Feathers," and "The Mule Carrying a Relic."  That book had 48 continuously paginated pages.  This has one set of 16 pages set inside another, specifically between 8 and 9.  This copy has no title-page.  The images are signed "J.G." but without a title-page there is no indication that J. Gouppy is the artist.  There are three types of art in this book 8" x 11½" in size.  There is a large colored cameo on the front cover.  Signed "Maury," it is a sentimental picture of a child as the milkmaid whose pitcher has broken.  The eight colored pages by Gouppy are all here; they again combine different irregularly-shaped panels illustrating various fables.  One (the first 8) combines "The Worker and His Sons," "The Ass Carrying Relics," and BF.  Two of these pages are placed together at the centerfold of the book.  The best of these full-page colored illustrations is perhaps the combination on the first 9 of WL and "The Horse and the Donkey."  These colored illustrations are simple but lively.  Every fable has at least one simple appropriate one-colored design.  Among the better designs are those picturing the coachman with the fly on his nose (16) and OR (1),  Several others that I liked particularly in the other edition are not here.  This particular Buchinist searched for me, but I was lucky enough to find this book myself. 

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1977 Alessandro e il topo meccanico.  Leo Lionni.  11th printing.  Hardbound.  Milan: Emme Edizioni.  See 1968/77.

1977 Altägyptische Tiergeschichte und Fabel: Gestalt und Strahlkraft.  Emma Brunner-Traut.  5th unchanged edition.  Hardbound.  Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. See 1968/77. 

1977 Animal Land: The Creatures of Children's Fiction.  Margaret Blount.  Paperback.  NY: Avon Books.  $1.98 at Odegard, early in the 80's.  One extra copy.

1977 Borrowed Feathers and Other Fables. Illustrated by Freire Wright and Michael Foreman. Edited by Bryna Stevens. Dust jacket. NY: Random House. $3.95 in Oregon, '85. Extra copy of the first printing (with different bibliographical material on title page) for $2 from Second Story Books, DC, Oct., '90. And the paperback for $1 from O'Gara and Wilson in Chicago, May, '89.

An enjoyable book, but none of the (watercolor?) pictures is captivating. The best illustration might be that of the defeathered crow escaping. The funniest is of the milkmaid with the pail on her head. Other tales: "The Fox and the Goat," SW, FC, "The Great and the Little Fishes," and "The Stag and His Reflection."

1977 Depe Insichten: Plattdeutsche Fabeln.  Hans Henning Holm.  Illustrated by Kurt Schmischke.  Dust-Jacket.  Hardbound.  Hamburg: Quickborn-Verlag.  €3.75 from Antiquariat Annelore Westerheyde, Oldenswort, Germany, through ZVAB, March, ‘21.  

1977 Ezop Masallari.  Gani Yener.  Pamphlet.  Istanbul: Yasayan Unlu Masallar: Inkilap ve Aka.  $10 from The Glad Trading through Ebay, Oct., '21.

1977 Fabel von Bahndamm und andere Fabeln & Texte.  Viktor Otto Stomps.  Mit Holzschnitten von Günter Bruno Fuchs & Albert Shindehütte.  Mit einem Nachwort von Hans Bender.  Paperbound.  Düsseldorf: Broschur 73: Verlag Eremiten-Presse.  €6 from Versandantiquariat Krull, Neuss, Germany, through zvab, July, '15.

1977 Fables. Jean de La Fontaine. Illustrées par Benjamin Rabier. Printed in Belgium. Paris: l'école des loisirs. $9.95 at The French and Spanish Book Corporation, NY, Feb., '88.

A lovely find! I first saw these illustrations in the original as separate pages matted at Orrie's in St. Paul. The illustrations are ingenious multipart presentations. The reproductions are only adequate. The best may be GA and AD. See the full original under 1906.

1977 Fables. Yvonne Mitchell. With Illustrations by Bert Hollander. Signed by Yvonne Mitchell. #60 of the signed, limited edition. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Newcastle upon Tyne. Washbeck Square, Northumberland, England: Mid Northumberland Arts Group. $12 from Adrian Saich, Inniskeen, Ireland, through Ebay, Jan., '00.

The flyleaf proclaims "These are fables for adults in the tradition of Aesop but without a moral. Rather they accept human nature as it is, and offer no advice." The statements are accurate. The texts here are generally longer and more developed than fables. They do have a strong emblematic quality. If I were to write about them, I would title my essay "Dysfunction Revealed" because that is the effect of Mitchell's fables. In the second offering of seventeen, a kind king leaves beggars waiting until they starve and children waiting to play until they have grown up (7). Mitchell here catches the "Lauf der Welt" that Luther saw and expressed in fables. In a strong display of egocentrism, the White Knight on the fat black pony thinks only of himself and sees Christ as forgiving the pony for the knight's sake (11). The son who wants to go off and fight a dragon eventually tells his fearful mother that he will sacrifice his ambition for her and remind her of it the rest of her days (13). The pigeon trying to cross the street is sure that the pedestrians have conspired to stop him (45), since they keep moving whenever he starts to cross. The pessimism is relieved only once, I think, namely in "The Boy and the Wolf" (43), in which the wolf whom the boy has feared ends up protecting the boy. The art is not as good, I believe, as the texts. The illustration on 40 is disfigured by someone's addition of a bit of color. This book is almost square, and the cover-design and title-design play with that fact by building concentric squares out of the title and the author.

1977 Fables and Fun, Vol. 1.  Paperbound.  Minneapolis: Marketing Ventures.  $6.48 from spittinunagecards through eBay, Nov., '13.  

1977 Fables and Fun, Vol. 2.  Paperbound.  Minneapolis: Marketing Ventures.  $6.47 from spittinunagecards through eBay, Nov., '13.  

1977 Fables Choisies: Jean de La Fontaine.  Illustré par Annie Auphan.  Hardbound.  Chevron, Belgium: Hemma:  M.A. Hemmerlin.  £5 from stickapopovitch, uk, through eBay, May, '14. 

1977 Fables: La Fontaine. Tome 2 annotées et commentées par Pierre Michel et Maurice Martin. Paperbound. Nancy: Bordas: Univers des Lettres. See 1964/77/80.

1977 Fabule.  Aurel Baranga.  Paperbound.  Bucharest: Editura Eminescu.  $25 from Joshua Jakobovich, Shiloh, Israel, Jan., '23.

1977 Fibber's Fables: Stories for Children. Richard H. Boytim. Paperback. Beaverlodge, Alberta, Canada: Horizon House Publishers. $4.25 from Autumn Winds Books, Depew, NY, through abe, Oct., '02. Extra copy for $3.50 from Emmy's Bookstore, Cincinnati, through abe, Nov., '02. 

In his preface, Boytim explains that his fables "are simply Aesop's stories retold in today's language for today's boys and girls. There is a difference. I have given them a Christian lesson and tried to illustrate biblical teachings by the fables" (9). The first of twenty-seven numbered stories is the Aesopic fable of the bat and the battle of the birds versus the beasts. It is well told. Both sides call to the bat, but he refuses both. Before battle can ever start, the owl persuades both sides to stand down and celebrate instead. Then the bat finds that he is excluded from the celebrating. Boytim quotes Joshua: "Choose this day whom ye will serve." MSA has Farmer Jones walking his donkey Jennie to the county fair, where she won a prize last year. Boytim's lesson: "Seek to please the Lord only and always and never mind what other people think" (16). "The Man with Two Wives" is turned into the story of three skunks, one white, one black, and one striped (17). The boy who cries wolf becomes a teasing daughter who makes up stories of crises. SW is told in the poorer version (28). The Satyr in Aesop's story becomes a game warden in Boytim's. The lion grown old has become a cat who reads his will to those who want to come close and listen.. Some stories stretch a bit, as when the countryman with a squealing pig becomes a schoolchild with a singing canary (38). I do not know the Aesopic pattern for one of my favorites here, "The Fable of the Stuffed Owl" (52). Two perpetual critics visit a taxidermist's shop and criticize his work on an owl, who promptly bites the finger that has just pointed at him! The companion startled by a bear goes into a car rather than up a tree; in fact he just watches from there when he could drive to help his isolated friend (58). The fox announcing universal peace becomes the neighborhood bully. The "face without brains" is now a carved pumpkin. The miser's buried treasure becomes a young woman's unworn diamond necklace. I had avoided reading this book for some time. I presumed that it was tangential to this collection at best and that it probably presented anything but fables. Now I like what it does with Aesop's fables.

1977 Folktales of Greece. Edited by Georgios A. Megas. Translated by Helen Colaclides. Foreword by Richard M. Dorson. Paper. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Phoenix Edition 1977. See 1970/77.

1977 François Chauveau: Vignettes des Fables de la Fontaine (1668). Avec une Introduction par J.D. Biard. Paperbound. Printed in England. Textes Litteraires #24. Exeter: University of Exeter. $25 from Hackenberg Booksellers, El Cerrito, CA, Sept., '00.

After an introduction, a note on the illustrations, and a bibliography, there are 118 vignettes, followed by a table listing their fable titles. The vignettes have been slightly enlarged, from 67mm x 52mm to 85mm x 68mm. Their quality is only moderate. Be careful: only right hand pages are numbered, but the left-hand pages are still counted. And there are two numbered illustrations on each numbered page. When I reviewed another reproduction of Chauveau's work, under "1668/1930," I found these illustrations strong: "Simonides Protected" (#14), MSA (#41), and "The Doctors" (#91). Now I will add from this edition: OR (#21), SS (#31), "The Drunkard and His Wife" (#47), "The Wolves and the Sheep" (#53), "The Donkey and the Lapdog" (#65), "The Oracle and the Impious Man" (#78), "The Stag and the Vine" (#94), TB (#99), and "The Horse and the Ass" (#115). Formerly owned by the French Seminar at the University of Melbourne.

1977 Friedrich von Hagedorn: Fabeln.  Mit einer Radierung von Roswitha Quadflieg.  #62 of 300.  Hardbound.  Hamburg:  Gesellschaft der Bücherfreunde.  €14 from Antiquariat Tautenhahn, Lübeck, Germany, through ZVAB, Jan., '16.

1977 Goethe: Reineke Fuchs in Zwölf Gesängen. Mit Bildern von A. Paul Weber. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Berlin: C.A. Koch's Verlag. DM 18 from Antiquariat Rolf & Monika Ihring, Berlin, July, '00.

This edition was done particularly for Die Europäische Bildungsgemeinschaft, for Bertelsmann Reinhard Mohn, and for Die Buchgemeinschaft Donauland, Kremayr & Scheriau. It is an impressive large-format (8½" x 11") edition. Some of my favorites among Weber's lively illustrations are the reaction to the cat's assault on the priest (45); Reynard as a pilgrim (93, also on the front dust-jacket); the revelation of the severed head of the rabbit messenger Lampe (109); and Reynard as a preacher to the assembled congregation (139). There are four pages of comments after the text at the back of the book.

1977 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Ausgewählte Fabeln.  Etchings by Simon Dittrich.  #103 of 239; interior illustrations signed by Dittrich.  Hardbound.  Frankfurt: Trajanus Press.  €320 from Peter Bichsel, Zurich, July, '23.

1977 Harry and Shellburt. Dorothy O. Van Woerkom. Pictures by Erick Ingraham. Ready-to-Read. Weekly Reader Children's Book Club Edition. NY: Macmillan. $.80 at Second Chance Antiques, Omaha, March, '89. One extra copy.

A delightful little book heavy on greens for watching and for eating. This is second generation Aesop: the original tale is told and then re-enacted in a new way. A stick in the road is meant to give Harry a wake up call, but Shellburt beats him and serves him the prize cabbage afterwards. Aesop lives on in many ways!

1977 Im Spiegelbild: Fabeln für jung und alt.  Cora Gädke-Timm.  Illustrated by Lotte Arndt.  Paperbound.  Stuttgart: J. Ch. Mellinger Verlag.  €8 from Hassbecker, Heidelberg, July, '17.

1977 Jataka Tales. Edited by Nancy DeRoin, with original drawings by Ellen Lanyon. Paperback. First Yearling printing. NY: Yearling: Dell Publishing Company. $.85 from A. Amitin, St. Louis, March, '96.

This book has been on my "want list" for a long time, and now within a few months I have found it in both hardbound and paperback versions. See my extensive comments on the text and illustrations under the listing for the former, with the same title, in 1975. This paperbound version corrects the two typos noted there. This copy belonged to the library of St. Mary's College of O'Fallon, and still has the library card in it with the names of the three people who took the book out between 1981 and 1988.

1977 Krylov's Fables. Translated into English Verse with a preface by Bernard Pares. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press. See 1926/77/87.

1977 La Cigale et la Fourmi.  Jean de La Fontaine.  Illustrated by Romain Simon.  Canvas bound.  Paris: Gentil Coquelicot: Hachette.  € 15 from a Buchinist, Paris, July, '19.

1977 La Fontaine Masallari: Fransiz Masallari. Türkçelestirenler: Nükte Ugurel, Seyit Kemal Karaalioglu, and Nevzat Kizilcan. Paperback. Yasayan Unlu Masallar B14. Istanbul: Inkilap ve Aka. Gift of Rev. Gregory Schissel, June, '99.

My first Turkish book! Greg has been threatening to find this little volume in his books since he came last August. Now he has found! Forty-seven fables are listed in the T of C at the end of this paperback. The Henri Rousseau-like cover of LM is signed something like "dermani." Two sets of black-and-white illustrations seem involved in the fables. One has a gray background, uneven edges, and indistinct images--like something xeroxed too often. The other is a classic set of line drawings whose provenance I cannot pin down. I presume that the pre-title-page's monkey with drawing board and the title-page's stork with "baby" on its scarf come from this second source. From either the illustration or the title, one can guess what many of the fables are. The bad news is that the back cover's list of volumes in the series includes as Number 6 "Ezop Masallari." I will have to go to Turkey to get it!

1977 Les Fables de La Fontaine II.  René Hausman.  Hardbound.  Paris: Terre Entière:  Dupuis.  $23.99 from Lorraine Cleff, Santa Rosa, CA, through eBay, Jan., '16. 

1977 Mashal Hakadmoni ("Proverbs of the Ancients"). Isaac Ibn Sahula. Over fifty unusual woodcut illustrations. Limited edition of 300 copies. Hardbound. Jerusalem: Kedem Publishing Ltd. $99.98 from Joshua Jakobovich, Shiloh, Israel, May, '12.

The original of this facsimile edition was done in Resia, Italy, in 1491. The facsimile was printed in a limited edition of only 300 copies in Jerusalem. I understand this book to be a rare Italian bibliophile edition of a collection of allegories, fables and puns with moral inferences all written in rhymed prose. A number of the small woodcuts look as though they may well be illustrating fables, as when the dog and the stag appear before the king lion, or when the donkey and bull confront each other on the facing page. Might that be FK pictured in one of two pictures in which we find a stork and a frog towards the end of the book? In the latter of the two, the stork is eating the frog!

1977 Meister Esopus: Untersuchungen zu Geschichte und Funktion der Fabel im Mittelalter.  Klaus Grubmüller.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Munich: Artemis Verlag.  €13 from Antiquariat Thomas Haker, Berlin, through ABE, Oct., '18.

1977 Mesholim bai Idn: Antologie/Fábulas entre Judios: Antologia/Fables Amongst Jews. Director: Samuel Rollansky. Hardbound. Printed in Argentina. Buenos Aires: Ateneo Literario en el Instituto Cientifico Judio. $25 from Henry Hollander Bookseller, San Francisco, April, '02.

Copyright 1977 by Ateneo Literario en el Iwo. This looks like a fine collection of Hebrew/Yiddish fables. There is a detailed T of C at the front (i.e., right-hand) end of the book, followed by 284 pages of fables.

1977 My Own Storybook. A Book of Stories and Poems. No editor acknowledged. Various illustrations, with no acknowledgement. (c)1974 Waverly House; (c)1977 Grolier Ltd. NY: Banner Press. See 1974/77.

1977 My Picture Story Book. Victor Sivetidis. Illustrated by D. Dobrica. Translated from the Romanian by Susanne Dörr. Printed in Romania. Original published in Romanian in Bucharest in 1973. Bucharest: Murrays Childrens Books. $2.50 at Avenue Victor Hugo in Boston, Dec., '89.

One of the most creative children's books I have come across. In the midst of the good puzzles and activities there is one story "The Crow at the Birds' Fair After Aesop"--the "Hermes and the Statue" story with a crow buying a crow (86-7).

1977 Patterns of Language. Level F. H. Thompson Fillmer et al. Illustration by International Design Organization. NY: American Book Company. $1 in Madison, Aug., '90.

A trendy textbook that illustrates the small but steady place fable has in contemporary literary education. It offers four fables (170-75): FC (Anne Terry White), "The Weaver and the Worm" (Thurber), "The Rich Dog and the Poor Dog," and "The Fox Who Gave Advice." The latter two are incomplete: students supply the ending and the moral. The grammar and analysis work concentrates on quotation marks, dramatization, and cause-and-effect discrimination.

1977 Phaedrus: Fabeln: Text.  Herausgegeben von Otto Leggewie.  Dritte, verbesserte Auflage.  Paperbound.  Münster: Aschendorffs Sammlung Lateinischer und Griechischer Klassiker:  Verlag Aschendorff.  See 1972/77.

1977 Phaedrus: Fabeln: Kommentar.  Herausgegeben von Otto Leggewie. Dritte, verbesserte Auflage.  Paperbound.  Münster: Aschendorffs Sammlung Lateinischer und Griechischer Klassiker:  Verlag Aschendorff.  See 1972/77.

1977 Plattdüütsche Fabeln.  Elsa Peters.  Illustrationen von Holger Christiansen.  Paperbound.  Heide, Germany: Dittmarscher Presse-Dienst Verlag.  €10 from Sönke Klocksien, Kellinghusen, June, '09. 

This is my second book of Platt fables. The first has been De Mück un de Lööv: Fabeln from 2006. The fables here seem not to be well known Aesopic fables. I have given reading this Plattdüütsche the old college try, but have trouble understanding these texts. There are about fourteen fables, and about half are illustrated with a full-page black-and-white illustration. 

1977 Russkai Basni: XVIII-XIX Vekov. Edited by D.M. Krimova. (Some function is performed by N.L. and B.P. Stepanova.) Bibliotecka Poeta. Leningrad: Otdeleinie: Sobetskii Picatelb. $14.50 at Magus, Seattle, July, '93.

This is a major-league find! I hope someday I will be able to read it. It certainly paid off in this store to check the "Foreign Language" shelf. The book starts with an introduction to Russian fable and then presents 569 fables by seventy-five fabulists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The text section is followed by notes on each author and fable, a dictionary, and a T of C. The most represented fabulists are Sumarokov, Chemnitser, Dmitriev, Krilov, and Izmailov. I would love to find something close to this book in English!

1977 Senegalesische Fabeln as dem Lande der Serer N'Dut. Aus dem Französischen übertragen von Liselotte Bernard. Zeichnungen von Claude Diène. 1. Auflage. Hardbound. Munich: Landesvorstand der Katholischen Landjugendbewegung Bayerns. DM 12 from Antiquariat Wengerzink, Paderborn, July, '95.

There are ten local stories here. The book situates them in two different contexts that I as reader find engaging. The first context is lively contact between Catholic rural groups in both Southern Germany and Senegal. Visits to Senegal led to the interest in these stories. There was an apparent effort in Senegalese schools to have children learn the old stories from their grandparents and bring them to school. Here are some of the results. The second context is Senegal itself. Pages 53-64 are like a section of a tourist's introduction to the country, its climate, population, history, and food. I read several of the stories. They seem to me more folklore than fable. The first story may avoid magic best. It is a story of one wife who tricks another into falling into a tree. There she has and raises her child until a young archer finds her and sees to her release. Other stories move further into witchcraft and magic, I believe. The black-and-white art is wonderfully lively. It is particularly remarkable for its use of beautiful stripes. I have the feeling that this book comes out of a fresher time in Africa. Hopes were easier, and creating an international book was more achievable. 

1977 Stories for Children. Lev Tolstoi. Illustrated by A. Pakhomov. Translated from the Russian by Jacob Guralsky. Moscow: Progress Publishers. See 1965/77.

1977 Tales from Times Past. Edited by Bryan Holme. Many (original) illustrators. A Studio Book. NY: The Viking Press. See 1857/1977.

1977 Tasha Tudor's Bedtime Book. Edited by Kate Klimo. NY: Platt and Munk. $15 at Silver Spring, Sept., '91.

An eclectic collection of eighteen fairy tales and poems. Tudor's is not my taste in children's art: the accent is on soft focus and a kind of nostalgia. TMCM is the one fable here, told in a very full version. The mice visit both pantry and cellar; they encounter the cook, the cat, and a trap; they make multiple trips to hiding places. There are nice graffiti on the wall by which the country mouse leaves.

1977 Sittenlehre für die Jugend in den auserlesensten aesopischen Fabeln: Nachwort zur Faksimileausgabe. Thomas Höhle. Boxed. Paperbound. Leipzig: Insel Verlag. € 1 from Dresdener Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '06.

This 28-page booklet accompanies a facsimile of the German 1757 translation of Samuel Richardson's 1749 London edition, Aesop's Fables, with Instructive Morals and Reflections, Abstracted from all Party Considerations, Adapted to All Capacities; and Designed to Promote Religion, Morality, and Universal Benevolence. The facsimile reproduction was also done by Insel Verlag in 1977. Höhle's remarks on Richardson and Lessing are helpful. Apparently Lessing's first fables in 1753 were mostly poetic fables after the manner of La Fontaine, and apparently that is the way the predominant German tradition had gone, in fabulists like Hagedorn and Gellert. Richardson took a different path, and Lessing came to take a similarly different path. Höhle describes Richardson's fable book as defending virtue and fighting vice. Writing in the DDR in 1977, Höhle also sees Richardson as a middle-class critic of aristocracy, the profit-motive, and the hard-heartedness of the bourgeoisie. He was fighting for the simple people. Richardson's fables in contrast with those of LaFontaine were consciously short and undecorated. The morals show the same sobriety. (Richardson gives himself much more room to expand in the "Reflections," which may constitute his greatest contribution to the genre.) Höhle emphasizes the surprisingly political nature of Richardson's reflections; for him, the influence of La Fontaine and the following tradition had avoided overt political critique. Höhle also indicates, by the way, that the German edition's illustrations are better conceived and executed than those in the English original. The illustrations do not interpret; they represent the situation. In so doing, the illustrations often tell more than the fables. For Höhle, Lessing was an exact translator, making only rare changes in the texts he was translating. If he changes anything, it is to sharpen the point of social critique and to remove religious thought. A major result of Lessing's translation lies in his own fable book two years later, including some ninety fables, five articles on fables, and a foreword. Höhle includes excellent examples finally of Lessing's transformation of Richardson's texts.

1977 Tell Me a Tale: Stories, Songs and Things to Do. Jean Chapman. Illustrated by Deborah and Kilmeny Niland. Song Settings by Margaret Moore. Printed in Hong Kong. Hornsby, Australia: Hodder and Stoughton, in association with Brockhampton Press, England. See 1974/77.

1977 The Blue Jackal. Marcia Brown. Apparently first printing. Hardbound. Dust jacket. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons. Printed in USA $7 from Daedalus Books, Portland, OR, July, '11. Extra copy of the first printing in very good condition without dust jacket for $.75 from Outlet Books, Berkeley, August, '94, and from Loganberry Books, Inc. Cleveland, for $8, May, '00..

The text used here is adapted from The Panchatantra, translated by Arthur W. Ryder. A lovely book with lovely color work! Brown follows Ryder (122) carefully except for the ending which she softens: her blue jackal makes it back safe to his old cave dwelling. My favorite illustration presents visual howls of three jackals rising up into the sky in front of the mountains. I had found two slightly marked copies earlier. Now this copy is spotless.

1977 The Country Mouse and the City Mouse. Illustrated by Lilian Obligado. A Random House Pictureback. No editor acknowledged. NY: Random House. $.50 at Second Story Books in DC, June, '89.

A delightful little "Please read this book to me" paperback for kids. The cat and the dog both get into the act, and the country mouse does not even wait to say good-bye. The best illustration is that of the cat's surprising appearance. I am surprised I have not run across this booklet earlier.

1977 The Days When the Animals Talked. Black American Folktales and How They Came To Be. William J. Faulkner. Illustrations by Troy Howell. Signed by the Author. Dust jacket. Chicago: Follett Publishing Company. $6.50 at Amaranth, Evanston, Sept., '94.

I learned more from this book than its good fables. I learned that the great American author is William Harrison Faulkner. The book has a clear ethnic agenda, signalled in the cover's giving black hands to Brer Rabbit and white hands to Brer Wolf. Fable motifs and material play frequently through the twenty-two folktales in Part II of the book. "Brer Possum and Brer Snake" (99) is a combination of the Aesopic "Frozen Snake" and "The Brahmin and the Caged Tiger." It has a great moral: "Don't you ever trouble trouble, until trouble troubles you!" "Brer Rabbit and Brer Cooter Race" (132) is the Aesopic TH but with the "hedgehog" twist, namely, that all those in one species look alike to those of other species. "Brer Rabbit Rescues His Children" (168) has the motif of tracks going in but not coming out. There are three planting tales with strong fable elements (102, 106, 110). The respective tricks in the three are eating the peanuts (like the monkey with the cat) instead of planting them, agreeing to give the "tops," and agreeing to give "tops and bottoms." "How the Cow Went Under the Ground" (152) is not only a good fable; it illustrates well the motif of repression that Faulkner, himself a Black, finds frequent in these stories. Other good stories, though not fables, in this section include "Brer Tiger and the Big Wind" (89) and "Brer Rabbit Keeps His Word" (95).

1977 The Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi. Translated and edited by Eberhard Hermes. Translated into English by P.R. Quarrie. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Great Britain. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. AUD $65 from North Coast Rare Books, Brunswick Heads, N.S.W., Australia, April, '00.

Petrus Alfonsi was a Christianized Spanish Jew who had converted in 1106. This work, which was written first in Arabic and then translated into Latin, is an edifying and didactic conversation book. It features thirty-four stories, with a discussion generally following each, consisting especially of quotations from sages and philosophers. The collection includes some clear borrowing from the fable tradition: "The Man and the Serpent" (V), which includes the "Show me just how it happened" motif; "The Countryman and the Little Bird" (XXII), which includes the "Let me go free and I will give you three tips" gambit; and "The Oxen Which the Countryman Had Promised to the Wolf, and the Judgment of the Fox" (XXIII), which includes the fox tricking the wolf with the image of cheese in the well. The collection also includes other well known stories, e.g. "The Weeping Puppy Dog" (XIII) -- a ploy to undermine a faithful wife's fidelity -- and "The Two Townsfolk and the Countryman" (XIX) -- in which the best dreamer gets the one loaf. There are lots of clever wives getting away with things against their husbands. Other tricksters are good at getting their money back from thieves.

1977 The Emperor's New Clothes.  Hans Christian Andersen; A new English version by Ruth Belov Gross.  Pictures by Jack Kent.  Paperbound.  NY: Scholastic, Inc.  $1.50  from the West Coast, July, '15.

1977 The Fables of Aesop and La Fontaine (Hebrew).  Cremonini.  Hardbound.  Masada Publishing.  $30 from Baruch Falach, Netanya, Israel, Sept., '23.

1977 The Frogs Who Wanted a King. And other songs from LaFontaine. Collected by Edward Smith. Illustrated by Margot Zemach. Dust jacket. NY: Four Winds Press: Scholastic Magazines. $3.95 from Scribner's.

An ingenious idea, and some ingenious illustrations to match in watercolors. I will try to work one song or slide into a lecture, like the one on the two "rats."

1977 The Grasshopper and the Ants. Walt Disney Productions. For use with tape of same name. See 1971/77.

1977 The Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection. A Catalog of the Gifts of Lessing J. Rosenwald to the Library of Congress, 1943 to 1975. Preface by Frederick R. Goff. Washington: Library of Congress. $35 from Chimney Sweep Books, Santa Cruz, July, '92.

A surprise find in Santa Cruz's most religious used-book store. A magnificent volume representing a magnificent collection. Unfortunately none of the twelve magnificent tipped-in illustrations come from the Aesopic material. Fable material represents at least thirty-six of the 2653 items in the collection. Aesop counts for twenty-one, including Steinhöwel, del Tuppo, Gheeraerts, Croxall, and Bewick. (Avianus has five crosslistings among Aesop's twenty-one.) LaFontaine has eight, Bidpai five, and Hitopadesa and "fables" (Bewick's) one each. I had thought that this book was produced in paperbound form for about $40. This hardbound volume is a treasure worth a lot more than that! I note in May of '93 that Oak Knoll is selling a copy of this book for $65.

1977 The Literary Cat. Jean-Claude Suarès and Seymour Chwast. Various artists. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. NY: Push Pin Press: Berkeley Windhover Books. $4.99 from Uncle Mikeys, West Chicago, IL, through eBay, June, '10.

This is a book for cat-lovers! It includes one Aesopic fable and several Bierce fables, and so I include it here. The Aesopic fable can easily be missed on 31-32, It is a good telling of the cat who suspended herself head-down from a peg in the closet wall. She also somehow uses a torn pillow case. One old gaffer mouse says "Many a bag have I seen in my day, but never one with a cat's head at the bottom of it" (31-32). Ambrose Bierce has three of his fables on 72, though the first two are pushed together: "The Cat and the King"; CW; and "The Cat Physician." The array of colored cat-illustrations found here is quite surprising! 

1977 The Minstrel. Bernard Benson. Dust jacket. Hardbound. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons. $5, July, '00.

I have this book because of the first sentence on the inner flap of the dust jacket: "This lovely, magical book, written in the form of a fable and charmingly illustrated by the author, was inspired by the life and music of Elvis Presley." I now include the book in the collection to keep myself from buying it again on the same basis! The quotation just before the start of this book's text is an excellent piece from Rabindranath Tagore: "God respects me/when I work,/but he loves me/when I sing." Amen to that! A boy brings joy wherever he goes. He is given an instrument by a dying old man. As he grows up, he hears the call to take away people's sadness with music. His dying wish was to be everywhere and with everybody making his music and bringing them joy. After hundreds of years, another little boy is born into a world that is now gone mad over making war and rushing around. Scientists though also have made devices that can bring voices everywhere at the same time. In this new world, the boy grows up and makes music, and his music is God's smile upon people.

1977 The Rooster Santiclair: Fables for Children. Nickos Themelis. Illustrated by Steve Karp. First edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. NY: Vantage Press, Inc. $10 from Heirloom Bookstore, New Boston, NH, through Choosebooks.com, May, '03. 

"Fable" is used in an extended sense for these four literary fairy tales. In the first, Santiclair the wise and good rooster uses his bottom to suck a river dry and then to put out an oven's fires and again to suck up a treasure of gold coins and to deposit them when he is beaten. Through these means Santiclair ultimately sees to the death of her harsh mistress, on behalf of her good master. In the second story, Santiclair helps a young commoner win the hand of a princess with the help of a good deal of magic. The third story involves Santiclair suggesting Solomon's solution in a dispute over ownership of a horse: the horse should be split. The trick works again, as the real owner begs for the horse to be spared. In revenge, the evil "Big-Ear" wants to cook Santiclair in a soup! The rooster's defense involves sucking india ink into his bottom and then releasing it as the flunkies of Big-Ear try to kidnap him. In the fourth tale, the clever rooster remains unnamed and is not at the center of the action. This tale of a young man gifted with understanding animals' languages has perhaps the most sexist ending I have read in a fable book. The English is sometimes a bit surprising in this book. The vocabulary and grammar do not seem those of a normal English speaker. The copy needs a proofreader too, as typos like "distrcit" (24) show.

1977 The Sly Cormorant and the Fishes. New adaptations into poetry of the Aesop Fables. Brian Patten. Illustrated by Errol Le Cain. First edition. Dust jacket. Middlesex: Kestrel Books: Penguin. $45 by mail from St. Nicholas, Toronto, Spring, '94. Extra copy for $5 from Estuary Bookstore, Dec., '95.

How nice to find another recent adaptation of Aesop! Thirty-nine fables with lively illustrations in color and in black-and-white. Some of the fables are invented, some reconstructed, some turned on their heads. The view of the fables allows Patten to adopt original perspectives and resolutions as he plays with the tradition. In the first fable, the fly says to the spider (7): "I insist you are quite unable/To throw me out of an Aesop fable!" An egg too big to fit into the hole of the rats who steal it turns out, when they return it, to be the bait of the fox, who eats them and then waits for more rats (11). Some fables change, like that of the fox who waits for the child to be thrown out of the window (18) and FK, where the first king given the frogs is a bullfrog. In the final story, which gives the book its title, the sly old cormorant does take the fish to a new pool, a nice shallow one where catching fish is easy for him (62). Some fables are new to me, like "The Cock and the Horse" (22). "The Rat and the Elephant" may typify what happens to fables here: the rat visited the zoo and woke up a cat with its squealing, and the latter "gobbled up the egocentric rat" (24). The hare wins the race in TH (35), especially after he reads a fable book along the way! Among the best illustrations are those of the weasel before and after eating (26 and 27) and of the cat who has hanged itself (38). Both covers present imaginative composites of several fables' illustrations. There are similar illustrations of FS on 52 and 64; I wonder why. I find the rhyming and the rhythms of the verse weak. Notice the price difference between the two copies, both in excellent condition, which I have found!

1977 The Stories and Fables of Ambrose Bierce. Selected and with an introduction by Edward Wagenknecht. Illustrated by Ferebe Streett. Dust jacket. Owings Mills, MD: Stemmer House. $10 from Logos in Santa Cruz, Aug., '89.

Delightful, slightly weird art graces some eighty fables here selected from the hundreds that Bierce wrote. The best are surprising in finding new sardonic possibilities. Among the best are "The Crimson Candle," "The Inconsolable Widow," and "The Man with No Enemies." Compare with the more comprehensive selection in Dover's Fantastic Fables (1898/1970), though some here seem not to appear there.

1977 The Stories and Fables of Ambrose Bierce. Edward Wagenknecht. Illustrated by Ferebe Streett. Paperbound. Owings Mills, MD: Stemmer House. $10 from Royal Books, Baltimore, May, '03.

Here is a paperback copy of a book I already have in its hardbound version. As I mentioned there, delightful, slightly weird art graces some eighty fables here selected from the hundreds that Bierce wrote. The best are surprising in finding new sardonic possibilities. Among the best are "The Crimson Candle," "The Inconsolable Widow," and "The Man with No Enemies." Compare with the more comprehensive selection in Dover's Fantastic Fables (1898/1970), though some here seem not to appear there. 

1977 The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse: Aesop's Fable Retold. By Ruth Manning-Sanders. Illustrated by Harold Jones. Hardbound. Printed in England. London: Angus & Robertson Publishers. $36.50 from Alibris, June, '01.

I knew Harold Jones from his Tales from Aesop (1981), and so I was excited when I learned of this book--excited enough to pay a good deal for it. (It sold originally for £3.50). The book is worth its high price. Jones' illustrations are again delightful. Even more impressive here, I believe, is Manning-Sanders' excellent version of the story. The Country Mouse's one nemesis is the owl. However, he gives her a warning call, and so he never catches her. The Town Mouse criticizes from the beginning of her visit. Not all is negative for the Town Mouse in the city. She can laugh, for example, at one old lady's screaming at the sight of the two mice. And she can easily get away from the city's dogs; in fact, the mice even "frisk" their way by them. The cook enters the pantry with a candle and smells the presence of the mouse; he immediately calls the cat into the pantry. The cat catches the Country Mouse several times and even has her in his teeth once, but he lets her go each time. One of these times she gets away under a door and runs straight for home, without so much as a word to the Town Mouse.

1977 The World's Best Fairy Tales. A Reader's Digest Anthology. Edited by Belle Becker Sideman. Illustrated by Fritz Kredel. Pleasantville: The Reader's Digest Association. See 1967/77.

1977 Tomás de Iriarte: Fábulas Literarias. Ilustraciones de P. Muguruza. Quinta Edición. Colección Austral. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. See 1955/77.

1977 Tortoise Brings the Mail. By Dee Lillegard. Illustrated By Jillian Lund. First edition, first printing. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. NY: Dutton Children's Books. $0.25 from Crane Branch Library, Buffalo, NY, Sept., '09.

A walk during a Buffalo meeting for Conversations Magazine took us past a neighborhood library that had a book sale, and this was a find there. Tortoise is the mailman and loves his job, but everyone thinks that he is too slow. Crow volunteers, and everyone wants him to be mailman, but Crow is sloppy and drops letters all over. After a fuss, Crow quits. Rabbit volunteers, and everyone wants her to be mailman. Rabbit runs so fast that she does not have time to read names. She puts the mail in the wrong mailboxes. Tortoise goes all over, redelivering the falsely delivered packages and letters. But soon Fox volunteers, and everyone wants Fox to be mailman. Fox sniffs every package first; when he smells a package he likes, he keeps it for himself. Tortoise happens to find all the saved up packages in Fox's house and delivers them himself, thinking that Fox has got behind in his work. Fox thinks that Tortoise has outsmarted him, and Fox packs his bags and leaves the forest forever. Finally, everyone wants Tortoise to bring the mail. He does so with delight! The flyleaf speaks in its first three sentences of Tortoise as "steady" and "slow." I think that TH plays strongly in the background of this children's book.

1977 une oeuvre: Fables I, II, III La Fontaine; un thème: l'étrange animal humain Anouilh, Gamarra, Hugo, Prevert….  Pol Gaillard.  Various fabulists and artists.  Paperbound.  Paris: Les classiques illustrés Hatier: oeuvres et thèmes: Hatier.  $2.98 from Better World Books through Ebay, Sept., '19.

1977/78 The Wily Witch and All the Other Fairy Tales and Fables. Godfried Bomans; Translation by Patricia Crampton. Illustrations by Wouter Hoogendijk. Second printing. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Owings Mills, MD: Stemmer House Publishers, Inc. AU $25 from Arcadia Books, Mylor, South Australia, through abe, May, '03.

This is a book of forty-five tales. I find the tales engaging. I have read five. They seem to me to be parables, engaging the values of those who read them seriously. The first story, "The Wily Witch" (3-8), describes a delightful competition between witch and wizard, who eventually marry each other. "The Death of the Storyteller" (141-21) is perhaps the shortest of these tales. The storyteller wants to see a gnome, dies, and faces judgment. When God asks what his last thought was and hears that it was to see a gnome, God smiles and lets him in. Yes! "A White Christmas" (174-75) is a challenging story about letting the Christmas story be now. Similarly, "The Chest and the Student" (193-96) depicts a situation in which a student makes a lifelong decision, and will learn to regret it. A final story that I read seems to me to be perhaps forced a bit: "The Twelfth King" (185-92) is true enough, but it may impose a religious solution on a reader. This story involves perhaps the most impressive of the illustrations (187-88): here are the books people produce in dealing with "the crisis." 

1977/79 A Clutch of Fables. Teo Savory. Nine Drawings by Emil Antonucci. Paperback. Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press. $6 from Internationalist Books, Chapel Hill, NC, August, '99.

There are several strange things about this book. First, the title-page puts Unicorn Press in Greensboro, but then the verso puts Unicorn in West Stockbridge, MA. Next, the date spoken of generally for this book--e.g., in the booklist facing the title-page--is 1977. It also gives a copyright date of 1977 for Schwartz' forward. Still, the verso of the title-page lists a first printing in September, 1976. In any case, this is the third printing (1979). I expected that this would be yet another book using the concept "fable" very loosely, and I was wrong. This is a book of fables. They are like the works of Monterroso, but developed one stage further. So they are often four pages in length rather than two. They are certainly thought-provoking. Social satire is evident in "The Alley Cat and the Laws of Status" (13). One of the most trenchant is "Little Brown Burros" (25), and one of the most provocative is "The Birds: A Fable With Alternative Endings" (29). Maybe the saddest is "A Dried Mermaid" (33). Great for its category-jump at the end is "The Purple Martin And His Cook" (39). My final award, for most poignant, goes to "The Silver Swan" (73). Savory has fun throughout with the transformation of standard speech to fit the particular animal world of an individual fable. Thus in the battle between tyrannical mutant buffaloes and drab indigenous buffaloes, a "white-harness" (rather than white-collar) class of drabbians grows up serving the mutants (43). Further examples include "humanpox" (57) and local birds who belong to a Man-Watchers Club (65). The illustrations are reminiscent of Thurber, but Antonucci shows a less definite sense of line than Thurber does. "The Ants and the Grasshopper" (9) builds directly on the Aesopic fable. I like Savory's work here very much.

1977/79 La lechera y su cubeta/The milkmaid and her pail. Eugenia De Hoogh. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Third printing. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. $3.70 at The Yesteryear Shoppe, Nampa, Idaho, March, '96. Extra copy of the 1990 printing for $6.95 at The Modern Language Bookstore, Georgetown, Oct., '90.

A wonderful little book! The dream is done with vigor; surprised animals look on. Moral: pay attention to what you are doing. The distinctive feature of this series is that near-identical books in Spanish and English are bound together.

1977/1982 La Fontaine: A tücsök es a hangya.  Második Kiadás.  Illustrations by Jean Effel.  Hardbound.  Budapest: Mora Ferenc Könyvkiadó.  1200 Forints from Budapest, August, '17. 

1977/84 Funny Fables of Fundy and Other Poems for Children. Written and Illustrated by Grace Helen Mowat. Third printing. Paperbound. St. Stephen, New Brunswick: Print 'N Press Ltd. $3.98 from Ann Carol's Books, Hyannis, MA, through eBay, August, '00.

This is a book of rhyming couplets for children. The prologue mentions Aesop. The twenty-one stories have explicit attached morals. A typical story might be that of the crow whose wife suggests that he put together a radio for the family. Significant adventures convince him that it is not worth it. "Bird Law" (23) gets complex but is close to a fable. "The Duck's Device" (41) is sentimental but does what a fable does. The fox attacking the ducks is ultimately drowned.

1977/87/89 El muchacho que gritó ¡el lobo!/The boy who cried wolf. Eugenia De Hoogh. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. $6.95 at Modern Language Bookstore, Georgetown, Oct., '90.

The illustrations, though simple, are particularly lively. In this version, the wolf stands with hands on hips and tells the boy that he plays so many jokes that he will not get help. The distinctive feature of this series is that near-identical books in Spanish and English are bound together.

1977/87/90 La lechera y su cubeta/The milkmaid and her pail. Eugenia De Hoogh. Paperbound. Lincolnwood, IL: Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series: National Textbook Company. $6.95 from The Modern Language Bookstore, Georgetown, Oct., '90.

I already have in the collection a copy of the 1979 printing of this book. It has no writing on its spine. This 1990 version takes care of that problem, changes the printing venue from the USA to Hong Kong, and makes minor changes in the typesetting, like giving the full ISBN number on the back cover. As I wrote of the 1979 printing, this is a wonderful little book! The dream is done with vigor; surprised animals look on. Moral: pay attention to what you are doing. The distinctive feature of this series is that near-identical books in Spanish and English are bound together. 

1977/89/90 Poniendo el cascabel al gato/Belling the cat. Eugenia De Hoogh. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. $6.95 at Modern Language Bookstore, Georgetown, Oct., '90.

Another delightful little book! The family discussion is done with care, and the illustrations are fun. The distinctive feature of this series is that near-identical books in Spanish and English are bound together.

1977/92 Fábulas de La Fontaine. Illustrator not acknowledged. Printed in Mexico. Mexico City: Editorial Epoca, S.A. Gift of Linda Schlafer, Jan., '95.

As in the Epoca edition of Samaniego in 1990/92, the illustrations here are full-page black-and-white cartoons that are primitive but lively. After a page on La Fontaine and a T of C, this book is nothing but La Fontaine's fables. There are ninety-seven fables listed in the T of C. The binding of the book seems to have been done carelessly after 128. Thus for example the same illustration of the log-king appears as 141 and as 153, and many pages are out of sequence.

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1978 A Political Bestiary: Viable Alternatives, Impressive Mandates, and Other Fables. Eugene J. McCarthy and James J. Kilpatrick. Illustrated by Jeff MacNelly. Dust jacket. NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company. $18 from Greg Williams, Aug., '94.

I have read every one of these forty beast-descriptions and enjoyed them. In a book of this sort, there is sometimes a tendency for either text or illustration to dominate, but that does not happen here. Both the verbal and the visual are well done and challenging. The cliches themselves are to some extent dated already, seventeen years later. Among the best texts are "The Credible Deterrent" (34) and "The Dilemma" (54), and among the best illustrations are "The Viable Alternative" (19) and "The Mounting Crisis" (31). Among the best combinations are "Tight and Other Budgets" (24), "The Flexible Goal" (28), "The Parameter" (52), "The Investigative Reporter" (78), and "The Reliable Source" (82).

1978 A Political Bestiary: Viable Alternatives, Impressive Mandates, and Other Fables.  Eugene J. McCarthy and James J. Kilpatrick.  Jeff MacNelly, Illustrator.  Signed by Eugene McCarthy.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  NY: McGraw-Hill.  $45 from Renaissance Book Shop at the Milwaukee Airport, March, '14.  

1978 African Fables That teach about God (Book 1). Compiled by Eudene Keidel. Illustrated by Kathy Bartel. First edition, second printing. Paperback. Printed in USA. Scottdale, PA and Kitchener, Ontario: Herald Press. $5.24 from Rebecca Victoriaboom, Lawrence, KS, through eBay, Dec., '03.  Extra copy for $10 from Roberta's Books, Surprise, AZ, through ABE, August, '00.

I had first found this book in its 1999 reprinting by Wipf and Stock Publishers of Eugene, OR. Let me repeat my comments from there, except to note first the yellow cover picturing an elephant and monkey and secondly the second volume, also found under 1978/99. This book contains twenty-one folk tales gathered by a missionary who has worked extensively in Zaire. The T of C is unusual in that it gives after each title the topic addressed in the story and the time it takes to read the story. I have read the first seven. Some may be expanded fables. They are strong on trickery and etiology. The couple of paragraphs after each story are heavy on moralizing, buttressed with scripture references. These comments fail to help articulate the individual tale's meaning. The seventh tale may be the best: "The Frog's Strange Rules About Dinner" (33). The frog invites the monkey to a friendship meal but insists that he have white hands to eat it. The monkey goes away angry. Later he invites the frog to a meal and serves it in a tree, insisting that the frog sit up straight on the branch to eat it. The frog of course falls out of the tree.

1978 Animals, Animals, Animals. Written by Lester Cooper. Cartoons by Bette Griffin. Photography by H. Michael Steward. First edition. Dallas: Handel & Sons Publishing, Inc. $1 at Beck's, Iowa City?, April, '93.

A strange melange of songs, photographs, cartoons, and lore done in association with an ABC television series. Two sections: "Dogs...at Work" and "Dolphins...at Play." The second contains "The Dolphin and the Lion" (40-43) told faithfully (though neither Aesop nor "fable" is mentioned) and accompanied by four cartoons. Here is evidence of how Aesop gets around.

1978 Antike Fabeln. Herausgegeben von Johannes Irmscher. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Berlin & Weimar: Bibliothek der Antike: Aufbau-Verlag. Gift of Buchhandlung Revers, Berlin, Sept., '95. 

This is one of the most helpful of books on classical fables, because it presents a complete set of translations of ancient fables. Thus it has five different versions noted under "Der Fuchs u. die Trauben" in the AI, which is organized by characters. The book begins with a careful introduction on the history of fables. The texts themselves are on 11-451. They run from Hesiod to Ignatius Diakonos. For each author, the fables are numbered successively in parentheses after the texts; the texts for Ignatius run thus from #1 to #57 on 437-51. There are only ten pages of comments (455-465). The following bibliography includes a concordance of numbers comparing Irmscher, Hausrath, Perry, Halm, and Chambry. Irmscher's numbers are in fact identical with Hausrath's from #1 through #307, with the exception of a few marked with an additional "a" and #287. Then follows the very helpful AI. I also have the third edition, printed with a new dust jacket, in 1991. It reflects the change in political organization. See my comments there under "1978/91."

1978 Au temps où les bêtes parlaient: de l'être et du savoir. Jean Effel. Hardbound. Paris: Julliart. $27 from Jean Piwnik, Bois-Colombes, France, through Amazon.com, Jan., '12.

I was delighted to order this book when I learned that it was available. I love Jean Effel's works on fables. This book turns out to be a delightful book with several clear references to fables. The strongest is the frontispiece. Various animals are gathered under, around, and in a tree. Jean de La Fontaine, recognizable both by his face and long hair and also by his "La Fontaine" briefcase, walks into the scene. A crow cries out "Attention. L'espion!" Touché! Page 136, titled "De l'Apologue," presents trees confronting a squirrel. Is one of the trees addressing the squirrel? What is said is ""Les fabulistes sont pour un botanisme (sic) à visage humain." Maybe the funniest single cartoon of the book, which presents one cartoon per page, comes on 164 under the caption "D'Ici-bas." Two turkeys (or are they peacocks?) with open fan-tails look at a duster with a feather-pattern just like their own: "Nous sommes poussière et nous retournerons en poussière.." Delightful!

1978 Bayki ta Gumoreski: Fables and Humoresques. Pavlo Kluchina. Woodcut illustrations by D.D. Gribov and Y.V. Severin. Hardbound. Kiev: Dnipro Publishing. $10 from Viktor Romanchenko, Ukraine, through eBay, Sept., '04. 

This little hardbound book gives over one hundred pages to Kluchina's verse fables and another ten to fables in prose. The booklet includes parodies and lyrics besides. The illustrations include a frontispiece portrait of Kluchina, a lobster making tea on the title-page, a bear introducing the fables on 7, three people in a snowstorm introducing the humoresques on 121, and a rural scene introducing the lyrics on 137. The seller's advertisement describes Kluchina as a known poet and humorist and the book as the best of his work.

1978 Bennett's Fables from Aesop and Others. Translated into Human Nature by Charles H. Bennett. Foreword by Gerald Gottlieb. NY: A Studio Book: Viking Press. Reprint of 1857 edition published by W. Kent, London, under title: The fables of Aesop and others, translated into human nature. See 1857/1978.

1978 Bennett's Fables from Aesop and Others. Charles H. Bennett. Foreword by Gerald Gottlieb. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Reprint of 1857 edition published by W. Kent, London, under title: The fables of Aesop and others, translated into human nature. NY: A Studio Book: Viking Press. See 1857/1978.

1978 Chiquita y Pepita: Dos ratoncitas/Chiquita and Pepita: Two Little Mice. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Nov., '95.

This book is almost identical with the edition listed under 1978/89, but there are several differences. The title of the story in English is different; in that edition it is titled "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse." There is a different introduction on the reverse of the title page. There is no text on the back cover. See my comments under 1978/89.

1978 Country Mouse, City Mouse. Walt Disney Productions. Book Club Edition. NY: Random House. $3 from Ichabod's Books, Denver, April, '98.  One extra copy for $1, Feb., '86.

A cute Disney version that strings the tale to some length. It dresses the mice, gives them names and even a mouse car that screeches around bigger cars. This version departs from the tradition in that the city mouse, Monty, likes the food in the country, but says that you have to work too hard to get it. The vacuum cleaner goes after the mice first in the city home, followed by a good cat. This book has a nostalgic air about it.

1978 Das Perlhuhn und Andere Fabeln aus Südwest Afrika. Joachim Voigts. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Windhoek, Namibia: Gamsberg Uitgewers. €12 from Ihring, Berlin, August, '07.

Here are six stories, first told by Voigts to his children. The texts are in German rhyming couplets, and each set of six or eight lines on the left-hand page is accompanied by a strong colored illustration on the right-hand page. The verses are fun. The images are strong. The first of the stories is the title-story about a guinea-hen. This character is so convinced of its beauty that it wants to see it in a mirror. While it is admiring its image in water, a baboon throws a rock into the water. While one laughs and the other complains, a jackal hears and wonders how he can eat the guinea-hen. The guinea-hen takes off after the baboon and forgets the jackal. The guinea-hen catches the baboon by the tail and calls the jackal to skin the baboon. The jackal of course grabs the guinea-hen and is ready to eat it. In the meantime, the baboon dances away from the scene. Soon the jackal laughs at him, and the guinea-hen flies free of him. The only one who can laugh in the end is the baboon. In the second story, a pair of zebras and an ass argue about who has it better. The zebras seem to win this one when a young man jumps on the ass, grabs his ears, and digs his spurs into the ass. In the third story, a new lamb is born and Isaak is carrying him home with the herd. Isaak falls asleep, and a leopard stalks the flock. Only the newborn lamb sees the leopard and is curious about him. The lamb jumps up onto the leopard's protruding rock and says "baah." The alarmed leopard stands upright and knocks a hive of wasps apart. After lots of stings, the leopard leaves. Isaak wakes up, suspects nothing, and takes the full herd, including the lamb, home. In the fourth, a sparrow tries to take over an ostrich's nest and does not succeed. In the fifth, a frog sings but rouses opposition from a duck. The duck and then underwater a turtle each take one digit from one of the frog's front paws. Now he and his children have only four digits on each of their front paws. In the last story, the mouse gets in one good bite on King Lion's tail.

1978 De fabel van de fabelachtige veenmol. Tekst van Alexander Pola. Illustraties van Eppo Doeve. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Wageningen: Veenman. €9 from Antiquariat Hofman, Utrecht, August, '09.

This is a dear little book. Its 48 pages are filled with lovely illustrations of animals doing all sorts of things, but apparently mostly producing books, newspapers, and other texts. I struggled a long time to try to discover what a "Veenmol" is in Dutch. The clue came when I noticed the name of this publisher: Veenman. Apparently a veenmol is a Veenman worker! Two of the last illustrations suggest perhaps the price of not valuing books: barbed wire and burning books. There is an inserted slip announcing this little book as a 75th-anniversary gift of the publisher. 

1978 Der Fuchs und die Trauben: Deutsche Tierdichtung des Mittelalters. Herausgegeben und übertragen von Wolfgang Spiewok. Die Blumen der Tugend and Reinke de Vos. First edition. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Wiesbaden: VMA-Verlag. DM 16, 80 from Antiquariat Richart Kulbach, Heidelberg, August, '01. 

Here is another thick German anthology of fables. It includes 466 pages, but the last 250 or so are taken up with Renard. Four to twelve fables each are taken from Der Stricker, Gerhard von Minden, Hugo von Trimberg, Ulrich Boner, the Magdeburg Aesop, Steinhöwel, Johannes Pauli, Martin Luther, Hans Sachs, Erasmus Alberus, Burkard Waldis, and Hans Wilhelm Kirchhof. There are comments then about each of the authors and his works; four pages of clarifications and explanations; a good listing of sources, and a comment on this edition. Much of the material in this book may come from Alte deutsche Tierfabeln, put out by Rütten and Loening in Berlin in 1955. In fact, the verso of the title-page here acknowledges that publisher. Or perhaps there was a larger work that included the material in both Alte deutsche Tierfabeln and this book. The colored illustrations here come from a manuscript "Die Blumen der Tugend" from the fifteenth century; the black-and-white illustrations come from a 1549 edition of Reinke de Vos. It seems unusual that a West German publisher would have had its printing work done in East Germany, but that seems to be the case here.

1978 Dua Tovarischa: Basni.  Lev Tolstoy.  Illustrated by M. Romadina.  Hardbound.  Moscow: Detskaya Literatura: Children's Literature.  $29 from Andrei Teploukhov, Perm, Russia, through eBay, Nov., '12.  

1978 Fables for Today.  Jack Exum.  Paperbound.  Fort Worth, TX: Star Bible Publications.  $7.70 from Mad Hatter Bookstore, West Kelowna, Canada, through abe, March, '16.

1978 Fábulas de Esopo/Vida de Esopo/Fábulas de Babrio. Introducción General: Carlos García Gual. Introducciones, traducciones y notas de P. Bádenas de la Peña y J. López Facal. Biblioteca clásica Gredos, 6. Madrid: Editorial Gredos. $10 from Turner in Madrid, June, '86.

My first Spanish find, on my first day in Madrid. My guess is that the Spanish translations are accurate and careful. Sixteen illustrations, most from the Zaragossa Ysopet; they seem to be identical with the Ulm woodcuts. This version follows Perry's numbering, with cross-references to Hausrath and Chambry.

1978 Fabulous Creatures and a Fabulous Bicycle/Fabeltiere und ein fabelhaftes Fahrrad. Übersetzung von Angela Uthe-Spencker. Illustrationen von Irene von Treskow. Paperbound. Munich: dtv zweisprachig: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. $11.43 from Taschenbuch-Versandantiquariat Damsons, Karlsruhe, through abe, March, '03. Extra copy for $7 from labrys.de Modernes Antiquariat für Frauenliteratur, Münster, through abe, May, '03.

"Children tell fables: Four price [sic] winning stories" is matched on the cover by "Kinder fabulieren: Vier preisgekrönte Geschichten." From reading one and a half of the stories, I can say that they are Geschichten but not fables. There is plenty of magic at work in them. The first is a charming story of a class of students who ride a 31-seater bicycle and end up in France (and their teacher in America) in a rather wild travelogue. I also tried "The Aildoors" (53), which has two children transformed for a day into cats. The four stories came from a 1973 competition sponsored by The Times (of London, I presume) to create new stories for children. Many of the stories in a very popular competition came from children. Four of those are presented here. The other two are "The Unicorn Stone" and "The Dragon's Egg." That I have two copies of this book, ordered within two months of each other, is testimony to some disorganization on my part!

1978 Flower Fables. Charles L. Gary. Carol Watson, Illustrator. Dust jacket. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, Inc. $5 at Holmes, Oakland, Aug., '94.

This book expands the "flowers" section of my collection, parts of which can be found in 1910?, 1946, and 1982. Here are twenty-eight pleasing aetiological tales about flowers, as the flyleaf says, "plucked from classical mythology, Eastern legends, religion and Charles Gary's own imagination." Each story is followed by the official Latin name for the flower. The most unusual include "Fivespot," "Rose" (which gives the original meaning for sub rosa), "Rosinweed" (which is set in Bellevue, NE, and features Peter Sarpy), and the touching "Peony." The flyleaf promises twelve colored illustrations, but I find only eleven! There are also twenty pen-and-ink sketches, similarly simple. There are no fables in the strict sense here.

1978 Footprints. William K. Durr, Jean M. LePere, Mary Lou Alsin. Illustrated by Chris Czernota, Kevin Callahan, Jared Lee, Hilary Hayton, and Bill Morrison. 1978 impression. Canvas-bound. Printed in USA. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. See 1976/78.

1978 Fox Mykyta. Ivan Franko's Ukrainian classic. English version by Bohdan Melnyk. Illustrated by William Kurelek. First printing. Dust jacket. Inscribed 1990. Plattsburgh: Tundra Books of Northern New York. $6.75 at Bookworks, Chicago, December, '93.

The first English version of Franko's 1890 classic Lys Mykyta. From my impressions, Franko stays very close to the Reynard legend. An Aesopic reader will be happy to find several fables appearing as episodes with illustration, particularly "The Price Tag on the Horse's Hoof" (107), "The Wolf's Frozen Tail" (129), and "The Fox and the Wolf in the Well" (130). Kurelek's seventy-two drawings are very well done. The dust jacket offers a good lead on Franko's theme, taken from the Ukrainian proverb: "Where there is wisdom, there you will find good luck." Note that the cat bites off the chicken-farmer's nose, not his genitals (39). This book has been offered to me for several times the price I paid here.

1978 Francis Barlow: First Master of English Book Illustration. Edward Hodnett. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Berkeley: University of California Press. $25 from The Iliad Bookshop, North Hollywood, CA, Feb., '97.

After a chapter on Barlow's career, Hodnett surveys book illustration in England before 1700 and then examines in two chapters three important artists: Gheeraerts, Cleyn, and Ogilby. Two chapters are then dedicated to minor works of Barlow and "Theophila." By Chapter VII, Hodnett is ready to look carefully at Hollar and then, in Chapter VIII, at Barlow's "Aesop's Fables." A final chapter investigates more carefully Barlow's designs for Ogilby's "Aesopics" and "Androcleus" and Barlow's "Life of Aesop" series. Good stuff! Hodnett starts off by noting that the four etchers need to be considered together -- Gheeraerts, Cleyn, Hollar, and Barlow -- and they need to be viewed as interpreters of the literary scene they are illustrating. "This book is mainly concerned with his [Barlow's] work as an interpretive illustrator" (11). The final sentence in the chapter on illustration before 1700 is telling: "Of the artists resident in England between the introduction of printing in 1476 and 1700 not one can be said to be a significant book illustrator except Gheeraerts, Cleyn, Hollar, and Barlow" (55). The climax of reading this book, for me at least, has been walking through Chapter VIII on Aesop's fables. The book is gloriously illustrated. Hodnett is a first-rate art historian and a very good critic. He makes sense of each of the four great etchers. I am now so proud to have a 1666 Barlow in the collection! 

1978 Further Fables for Our Time.  James Thurber.  Illustrated by the author.  Paperbound.  Apparently first printing.  NY: Simon and Schuster.  $2.95 at Powell's, Beaverton, March, '96.

1978 Further Fables for Our Time.  James Thurber.  James Thurber.  Hardbound.  NY: Simon and Schuster.  $3.67 from Rocket Reuse, Berkeley, CA, July, '13.

1978 Gillie and the Flattering Fox. Adapted by Lisl Weil. First edition. Hardbound. Printed in Hartford, CT. NY: Atheneum. $12 from Me and My Mom's, Salem, VA, through ABE, May, '01.

Here is a pleasant adaptation for children of the Chanticleer story. The proud rooster here lives in Italy with Carlo the Cat and Giovanni the Goat. Seven admiring hens live down the road. The fox disguises himself first as a bringer of an invitation to sing from the King of Dacar. Gillie believes immediately, comes down, and is grasped by the fox--but Carlo and Giovanni are home and attack the fox. Gillie is saved. The next day a kindly lady appears as Gillie sings again atop the house. She praises his voice but says he needs her magic cookies to make his feathers shine like gold. Gillie comes down again and is carried off. Carlo and Giovanni are away at market. But the hens shake sand from their feathers into the fox's eyes and flap their wings around his head. The fox not only releases Gillie; he also falls down the hill to his death. Gillie's friends stuff the fox as a reminder for Gillie not to trust flatterers. With that moral, I believe, the story cinches belonging to the fable family. For one look at Weil's playful art, try the second-to-last illustration showing the party after Gillie's rescue. This book once belonged to the Roanoke County Public Library. It has received extensive use in its day!

1978 Hundert Fabeln für Kinder. Wilhelm Hey. In Bildern gezeichnet nach Otto Speckter. In two parts reproducing the original publications of fifty fables in 1836 and of the same number in 1837. Hünstetten: Opera-Verlag. See 1836+7/1978.

1978 I.A. Krilov: Lisica I Vinograd (Fox and Grapes). Illustrations by Ja. Manuxin. Paperbound. Moscow: Malys. $3.49 from Valentina Kudinova, Kharkiv, Ukraine, through eBay, Dec., '11.

This is a well produced large-format pamphlet of 16 pages. Almost every page features some color. The front cover presents a lively squirming fox with mouth watering. The back cover features a crane with something in its beak. The inside covers have the same design of lattice and flowers but differently colored in either case. The fables presented include CJ; "The Bear, the Monkey, and the Mirror"; FG; "The Donkey and the Nightingale"; WC; "The Cock and the Cuckoo"; "The Crow and the Boar"; and "The Soup of Master John." The crane on the back cover may be flying away with the bone from the wolf's throat. The illustrations here, both partial and full-page are well done. My favorite is Master John offering yet more soup at the beginning of the last fable.

1978 I.A. Krylov Basni. I.A. Presnova. Illustrations by B. I. Sennovskogo. Hardbound. Moscow: Pravda. $5 from Sergey Hvostov, Sumy, Ukraine, through eBay, June, '05. 

This looks to me like a standard Krylov edition from the Communist era. The paper is cheap, and the black-and-white illustrations rather sketchily printed. The good news is that the illustrations occupy a full page and occur every three to five pages. A representative example of the art is "The Elephant and the Pug" on 88. A frontispiece portrait of Krylov is done on slicker paper. The cover includes a small printer's design in gold. One finds both an AI and a T of C at the back.

1978 I Will Fable for You a Fable: Stories and Fables According to the Bible, the Sages, Aesop, Krylov, La Fontaine. Deborah Omer. Illustrations by Aharon Shebo. Hardbound. Tel Aviv: Levine Epstein-Modan. $4 from Irit Nir, Kisaba, Israel, through eBay, Sept., '05.

There are eight fables on 24 pages: "The Lion and the Stork"; "The Frog and the Bull"; "The Precious Stone and the Gray Stone"; "The Locust and the Ant"; LM; "The Woodchopper and the Ring"; "The Trees Wishing to Crown a King"; and FG. I am delighted to see that the biblical fable from Judges 9:8 made it into this text. Notice that several traditional animals are let go here for replacements, specifically the lion for the wolf and the locust for the cicada. The fox in this illustration is eating the grapes! The strongest of the illustrations may be that for OF. Of course, the book moves in the opposite direction from ours. 

1978 Jungle Fables: Paintings and Poems. By Gustavo Novoa. Introduction by Charles Wieland. Signed, #451 (no indication of the size of the edition). Dust jacket. Hardbound. Apparently privately printed. $24.99 from Jim Bahle, West Des Moines, Iowa, through eBay, Nov., '05. 

This large-format book presents nineteen paired paintings and poems. Both are quite sentimental and romantic. The paintings are strong images of jungle life. Among the most striking are "Patience" (23) and "Vanity" (39). Several of the poems include stories and may qualify as fables. Among them are "Compassion" (14), the story of a panther who opens their cage for some doves; "Jealousy" (20), in which the Blue River tells the Lion King to forget the lover who left him; "Narcissism" (32), in which a leopard falls in love with himself; and "Vanity" (38), perhaps the closest to fable of them all, in which peacocks wave their heavy tails as flocks of birds fly by--birds who really do not care about the peacocks' tails.

1978 Koty i Mysli: Basni.  Sergei Mikhalkov.  Illustrated by E. Racheva.  Essay by Irakly Andronykov.  Hardbound.  Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya.  $15 from Perm, Russia, through eBay, Feb., '16.

1978 La Fontaine: Le Lion et le Rat, La Colombe et la Fourmi. Illustrations de Giannini. Hardbound. éditions du chat perché. Printed in France. Flammarion. $3 from Pierre Cantin, Montreal, Feb., '02.

This small (5" x 6½") book is most remarkable for Giannini's mix of broad backgrounds and very detailed foregrounds, especially in faces, in his colored artwork. The hunter on 19 is outfitted with crossbow, dagger, sword, horn and a few other things! Twenty pages. I notice that there are four other books of fables in this series….

1978 Langages et Textes Vivants 5^e: expression personelle. Par Louis Arnaud. Paris: Éditions magnard. 35 pesos at Neveria Acapulco, Juarez, August, ’96.

This classroom text has a unit of fifteen pages on fables and also includes three fables of Phaedrus later on in a unit on Greeks and Romans (278-9). The fable unit caught my eye in this drug-store that seems to be a major supplier of used books and magazines. It starts with animal stories of Kipling and of Walt Disney. Next comes an illustration from Java of TT and a text of it from the Jatakas. From La Fontaine comes "Le cochet, le chat et le souriceau" and DW with good cartoons from Chabot, and FM, with a classic engraving.. There are two pages of language activities of all sorts. The unit is set between units on water and animals.

1978 Le Meunier, son Fils et l'Ane.  Jean de La Fontaine.  Illustrations de Martine Bourre.  Hardbound.  Paris: Éditions du chat perché: clair de lune:  Flammarion.  $9.50 from Marie Gervais, St.-Urbain-Premier, Quebec, Canada, through eBay, Sept., '16.

1978 Leonardo Da Vinci: Favole e Leggende.  Interpretate e trascritte da Bruno Nardini.  Illustrazioni di Adriana Saviozzi Mazza.  Quinta edizione.  Hardbound.  Florence: Giunti-Nardini Editore. See 1972/78.

1978 Les Animaux des Fables.  Mary MacDonald; Adaptation de Marine Bellanger.  Illustrated by Peter Latimer.  Hardbound.  Paris: Éditions des Deux Coqs d'Or.  $13 from Marie Gervais, St.-Urbain-Premier, Quebec, Canada, through eBay, Feb., '17.

1978 L.N. Tolstoy: Dva Tovarisca. Illustrations by M. Skobelev. Paperbound. Moscow: Malys. $9 from Dron 7770, Russia, through eBay, Oct., '10.

This is a surprising full-sized (8½" x 10¾") 16-page pamphlet offering, apparently, thirteen traditional fables. The surprise for me is that Tolstoy did this many traditional Aesopic fables. The stories offered here seem to be: TB, "The Dying Father and his Sons," "Finding a Treasure on the Road," BS, "The Wolf and the Mother," "The Woodcutter and His Axe," "The Rake and the Spectacles," "A Necklace of Doughnuts" (?), BC, "The Wolf and the Squirrel," "The Farmer and the Larks," "The Hares and the Frogs," and FS. The art tends to put an important symbol above the illustration itself, like shovels above the picture of the sons digging. The front cover shows the two travelers in the woods with their baskets. The bear is above (and behind?) them. The back cover's illustration may be the best: the fox tries in vain to get his snout into the tall vase; he even stands on a stump to do it. 

1978 Miss Browne: The Story of a Superior Mouse. Illustrated by Madeline Hall. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. NY: Hart Publishing Company, Inc. $15 from Green Apple Books, San Francisco, March, '97.

Rhymed quatrains from the 1890's tell this story that looks in its first half very much like TMCM. Mrs. Grey from Sweet Briar Farm gets a letter from fancy Miss Browne that she will visit the next day. Mrs. Grey and her children work feverishly to get the house clean, and they offer their visitor a delicious meal when she arrives the next day. She puts down the food and praises the city life, where they "nibble on velvet and genuine oak,/On cassocks and prayer books and rice,/On old ladies' fans, and fruits out of cans--/And the jellies are so very nice!" The illustration for this verse shows several mice in a fancy church. The story takes a new turn when the cats from next door hear her boasts and grow angry. While the Gray family scampers away, Miss Browne rattles on. Before she can say much more, a Tom cat has eaten her up. The images seem to be done in a style fitting the 1890's. Among the best scenes is that of the cat licking his chops, with a fancy hat, umbrella, and hand-held spectacles lying around. The frontispiece of the rustic family is also nice. This is a very pleasant book. As the back cover says, we have all met Miss Brownes. Of course the Grays are gray, and Miss Browne was brown.

1978 National Lampoon Magazine. April 1978, Vol. 1, No. 97. Charles Rodrigues. NY: Twenty First Century Communications, Inc. $3.95 from Randy Tusha, Prescott, AZ, through Ebay, Oct., '00.

On 45-49 and again on 78 we find "The Aesop Brothers in the Old West." This black-and-white cartoon strip features siamese twin sheriffs in Daphne et Chloe Gulch. Three pages of panels present characters in town, while the fourth presents a "story" that plays mostly, I gather, on the impossibility of siamese twins mounting a horse. The reprise on 78, "The Aesop Brothers, Siamese Twins," has the brothers turned black. This specimen may not be worth all that I paid for it!

1978 Once Upon a Time. R.P. Maison (apparently both author and illustrator). Wonder Story Books. NY: Harper and Row. See 1976/78.

1978 Paramythia Tou Aisopou (Tomos B). Edited by Nestoras Chounos. Illustrations by Nt. Anastasopoulos. Hardbound. Athens: Biblia Dora gia Mikra Paidia: Agkura. $10.50 from Amy Wagner, Arvada, CO, through eBay, Feb., '04. 

This book presents the bibliographer with some questions. It seems that the publisher made some changes as time went by. Thus the cover here shows no volume number, but the advertisement just after the last story shows the same cover as one of four with the notation that this is Volume "B." The back cover lists sixteen fables. They are the fables found in these four advertised volumes. Secondly, it appears that the same publisher came back to publish the same stories about twenty years later, but now in a series of six volumes, most containing three stories. I have these six volumes. The second of those six, published in 1997, corresponds to this volume but drops the last story, "The Lying Shepherd." The other three of the four stories in this volume are thus FC; "The Rooster, the Dog, and the Fox"; and LM. This volume mentions D.A. Papademetriou only on the back cover, not as part of the publishing firm's name. It also does not list Nikos Neiros as illustrator. It does give a series title: "Biblia Dora gia Mikra Paidia." Let me repeat some of my comments from there. Simple colored illustrations often take a little more than half the page. The last scene of the first fable has the crow shedding tears in the (laughing?) company of other animals. The first picture in each story (after the title-picture and promythium) is not necessarily of the first scene; it sometimes pictures the highpoint or even the result of the story. FC on cover.

1978 Paramythia Tou Aisopou (Tomos B). Nestoras Chounos. Nt. Anastasopoulos. Hardbound. Athens: Biblia Dora gia Mikra Paidia: Ekdotikos Oikos "Agkura." $5 from eBay, Sept., '08.

This is a second copy of a book already in the collection -- but with a slight change to its title-page. Instead of the simple Greek "agkura" under an anchor we now have in Greek "Ekdotikos Oikos 'Agkura' -- Dem. A. Papademetriou, A.B.E.E. -- Peiraios 18, Athena (101)." I will repeat some of my comments from the other copy. This book presents the bibliographer with some questions. It seems that the publisher made some changes as time went by. Thus the cover here shows no volume number, but the advertisement just after the last story shows the same cover as one of four with the notation that this is Volume "B." The back cover lists sixteen fables. They are the fables found in these four advertised volumes. Secondly, it appears that the same publisher came back to publish the same stories about twenty years later, but now in a series of six volumes, most containing three stories. I have these six volumes. The second of those six, published in 1997, corresponds to this volume but drops the last story, "The Lying Shepherd." The other three of the four stories in this volume are thus FC; "The Rooster, the Dog, and the Fox"; and LM.

1978 Paul dan Sally dengan Dongeng Aesop. Faith Graham and A.R. Whitear. (c)Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd. 1971. Singapore: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. See 1971/78.

1978 Pigs & Eagles: An Ecological Parable.  Avon Neal.  Illustrated with a wood engraving by Fritz Eichenberg.  #275 of 500; signed by Neal and Eichenberg.  Boxed.  Folio.  North Brookfield, MA: Thistle Hill Press.  $65 from Tom Joyce at Chicago Rare Book Center, Evanston, June, '15.

1978 Pigs & Eagles: A Wood Engraving by Fritz Eichenberg for an Ecological Parable by Avon Neal.  #275 of 500; signed by Eichenberg.  Boxed.  Folio.  North Brookfield, MA: Thistle Hill Press.  $70 from Tom Joyce at Chicago Rare Book Center, Evanston, June, '15.

1978 Pop-Up Fable Fun. A Magic Glasses Book. Based on the Fables of Aesop and La Fontaine. Retold by Larry Shapiro. Designed and Illustrated by Roger Beerworth. Paper Engineering by Tor Lokvig. Printed and Bound in Cali, Colombia. London: Chatto and Windus. Los Angeles: Intervisual Communications. $1.90 at Charing Cross Road Bookshop, July, '92. Extra copy with glasses but some slightly broken pop-ups for $9.99 from John Harris through eBay, March, '04.

A new combination for me: a pop-up with picture-changing (not 3-D) glasses, unfortunately not present with this book. The boy crying "Wolf!" and the woodchopper needing an axe-handle are cleverly put into the same pop-up forest. Similarly, "The Two Crabs" and "The Big and the Little Fish" join in the same panorama. The clouds in SW are broken. The idea is great; I will have to wait for the glasses to see about its execution. Now it is 2004, twelve years later, and I have found the glasses.  Sometimes perseverance pays off!

1978 Reinaert in de Andes: vossenvertelsels der Keshwas.  Edgar Ernalsteen.  Gift, Feb., '14.  

1978 Seid klug wie die Schlangen: Ein Arbeits- und Vorlesebuch: Fabeln zur religiösen Erziehung. Herausgegeben und kommentiert von Johann Friedrich Konrad. 1. Auflage. Hardbound. Gütersloh, Germany: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn. €4.99 from Jaromir Hladik, Munich, through eBay, July, '09.

I look forward to extensive use of this book. It first gathers some 130 pages of fables and organizes them, according to themes, into some fourteen chapters. The first chapter, "In der Höhle des Löwen oder: homo homini lupus" has six sub-chapters. Even their titles are too good to miss: "I. Anklage: Kein Erbarmen!"; "II. Klage: Kein Hirn!"; "III. Aufklärung: Nicht ausweglos!"; "IV. Ratschläge fur die Schwachen: Klarer Kopf und schnelle Füsse!"; "V. Die Macht der Winzigkeit"; and "VI. Die Grösse der Gewaltlosigkeit." Further sections deal with "Mann und Frau"; "Eltern und Kinder"; "Freundschaft"; "Glück"; "Freiheit"; "Grossspurigkeit"; "Habgier"; "Die Macht der Zunge"; "Unbedachtsamkeit"; "Meisterung der Gefahr"; "Die Würze des Lebens"; "Tod und Leben"; and "Kliene Lebensweisheiten." At 131 the author begins a "Didaktischer Teil" commenting on the fables of each section. This book could be very helpful in stimulating and organizing my fable lectures this fall! 

1978 Texte zur Theorie der Fabel. Erwin Leibfried, Josef M. Werle. Paperbound. Stuttgart: Sammlung Metzler Band 169: Realien zur Literatur: J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung. €16.90 from Antiquariat Thomas Haker, Berlin, June, '12.

I have been cataloguing books heavily as part of recuperating from surgery. In the process, I read of this book's existence and sought it out. Lucky me! I found it! What a gold-mine! Twenty-three German-language authors contribute, starting from Ulrich Boner, Heinrich Steinhöwel, and Martin Luther and coming down to Theophil Spoerri, Dolf Sternberger, and Karl Emmerich. In between there are greats like Christian Wolff, Johann Jacob Breitinger, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Gottfried Herder, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. How I would love to find a companion who could read his or her way through this book with me and talk through each theory! This paperback has a couple of developing splits in its spine, specifically after VI and 72. 

1978 The Animal Storybook. Illustrated by Robert Frank. Edited by Beverly Reingold. NY: Platt & Munk, a Division of Grosset & Dunlap. $5 at Powell's in Chicago, March, '91. Extra copy for $3.50 from Second Chance, Omaha, May, '92.

A pleasing large-format book. Five of the six fables included are touched up from V.S. Vernon Jones (1912) without acknowledgement. As in Jones, the lion pursues the stag from the pool. Other fables include: FG, TH, LM, DLS, and "The Fox Without a Tail." The illustrations are simple fun. The best illustrated story is "The Cat on the Dovrefell." The illustrator plagiarizes too: Alice's Duchess here is taken from Tenniel.

1978 The Art of Problem Solving Accompanied by Ackoff's Fables. Russell L.Ackoff. Illustrations by Karen B. Ackoff. Apparently fifth impression. Dust jacket. A Wiley-Interscience Publication. NY: John Wiley & Sons. $17.86 through Bibliofind from Palace Royal, Front Royal, VA, August, '97.

This is a book for making more creative managers, filled with good case studies of problems in decision-making. These case studies are called fables, and they regularly yield a moral. The fables are scattered throughout the development of the book.

1978 The Book of True Love. Juan Ruiz, The Archpriest of Hita. Translation in Verse and Introduction by Saralyn R. Daly. Old Spanish edited by Anthony N. Zahareas. Illustrated by Lisa Fedon. Introduction by Saralyn R. Daly. Paperback. Printed in USA. University Park/London: The Pennsylvania State University Press. $12 from Midway Book Store, St. Paul, Dec., '98.

This is a thick paperback with a good lively translation in rhyming quatrains. Having the Spanish on the left page and the English on the right makes it easy to consult the original. There are helpful line-drawings for a number of fables: FK (73), BF (93), "The Lion and the Horse" (97), "The Wolf and the Fox Before Judge Monkey" (103), "The Ass Without Heart or Ears" (230), and TMCM (344-45). I just recently read one other translation and took a close look at a second. See my remarks on them: The Book of Good Love of the Archpriest of Hita, Juan Ruiz (1933) by Elisha Kane and The Book of Good Love: Juan Ruiz (1970) by Rigo Mignani and Mario A. Di Cesare. BF here has no sexual dimension; in other translations the jay in peacock's feathers is unmasked in the sex act (93). The sapphire found by the cock answers him back and accuses him of ignorance and bad taste (347). The ass envying the lapdog here accosts his mistress, not his master (351). The fables are clearly marked with bold titles outside the verse text. There are, early in the book, frequent but not disruptive pencil marks.

1978 The Caldecott Aesop. Twenty Fables Illustrated by Randolph Caldecott: A Facsimile of the 1883 Edition by Alfred Caldecott. With an Introduction by Michael Patrick Hearn. Dust jacket. NY: Doubleday. (Original: London: MacMillan.) See 1883/1978.

1978 The Emperor's New Clothes.  Hans Christian Andersen.  Illustrated by Paul Degen.  Paperbound.  NY: The Best Book Club Ever: A Random House Pictureback:  Random House.  $4 from Robin Bledsoe, Boston, July, '16.

1978 The Fables of Phonecius. Yvonne Grozny. Dust jacket. Ann Arbor: Ann Arbor Book Company. $15 from Dundee Book Company, Fall, '92.

Fifty contemporary short stories, each followed by an excellent Latin moral with a liberal English translation. The stories are not for kids. The vast preponderance of stories seems to be about relationships and erotic themes, particularly extra-marital affairs. I would say that Grozny comes from the school of George Ade. This book could serve as an insightful storehouse of contemporary human cases, for example for use with ancient fables. Thus #8 is Aesop's DS, right down to the moral, and #25 is FG. Not all are scurrilous; #4 and #30 are surprisingly simple and straightforward. I read all fifty: the proof is that I have found typos on 202 (esti for etsi) and 215 (spend for spent). There are some delightful word plays and double entendres, e.g., "Familiarity breeds content" (18). The first moral on the same page plays nicely with the expression "handling." Particularly risqué is #6. Particularly funny: #32.

1978 The Hare and the Frogs. An Aesop fable retold and illustrated by William Stobbs. First edition. London: The Bodley Head. $25 by mail from Carol Docheff, Lafayette, CA, July, '97.

This booklet takes the hare through a number of attempted escapes from danger. He runs from the storm, a deer, a bird, a hedgehog ("an army of swords and daggers," the hare cries), a bull, a ram, a fox, a hyena, a rooster, mice!, and horses. I can see why Stobbs is a Greenaway award winner. The art is beautiful! He is at his best with diving frogs. The book does an exceptional job getting facing pages to correlate well with each other at the seam. There is a good "Warning" at the end: "This fable shows how unreasonable many people are, living in such continual fear and distress about the misery of their condition when there is always someone worse off than themselves."

1978 The Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson, Schoolmaster of Dunfermline.  Edited from the Earliest Manuscripts and Printed Texts by H. Harvey Wood.  Paperbound.  Edinburgh: James Thin: The Mercat Press.  $6.58 from World of Books, Sussex, England, through eBay, Sept., '13.  

1978 The Saturday Evening Post Animal Book. Jean White, editor. Various illustrators; all illustrations are taken from the Post or The Country Gentleman between 1900 and 1941. Dust jacket. Indianapolis: Curtis Publishing Co. $5 at Biermaier's, Minneapolis, March, '90.

A pretty book with nostalgic art. Pages 68-73 offer "Animal Stories that Teach," thirteen well chosen fables, of which eleven come from Aesop. There is an excellent triptych by Paul Bransom and other typical Post illustrations.

1978 The Wily Witch and All the Other Fairy Tales and Fables. Godfried Bomans; Translation by Patricia Crampton. Illustrations by Wouter Hoogendijk. Second printing. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Owings Mills, MD. Stemmer House Publishers, Inc. 1977/78.

1978 Two Fables. Bernard Malamud. Signed by Malamud; #204 of 320. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. Pawlet, Vermont: The Banyan Press. $63.75 from Richard de Thuin, NY, through Ebay, July, '99.

The two fables here, "The Jewbird" and "Talking Horse," are set by hand in Garamond and were published by Bennington College as part of the celebrations that marked the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the College. The two pieces apparently appeared first in 1963 and 1973, respectively, and were first published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. I had been watching for a copy of Malamud's two fables for some time, and I am happy to have found this beautiful copy. "The Jewbird" is a story of the skinny bird Schwartz who flies into the life of the Harry Cohen family in a New York apartment. The presence of this talking bird who is running from Anti-Semites sets up all sorts of fascinating dynamics. The story does not end happily. "Talking Horse" is something of a Kafka "Metamorphosis." The beginning of the story asks "Am I a man in a horse or a horse that talks like a man?" This horse/man, Abramowitz, performs in a circus act with the mute Goldberg, who wants no questions or deviations from the routine. Their circus act, paradoxically, is a series of moronic joke answers and questions called "Ask Me Another." Abramowitz wants to be free and even breaks out into telling that to circus audiences, who do not know what to make of it. This piece has a happy and surprising ending.

1978 Von grossen und kleinen Tieren: Lustig-listige Fabeln. Rudolf Hagelstange. Illustriert von Bernhard Kühlewein. Erste Auflage. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Würzburg: Edition Popp. DM 40 from Buchhandlung & Antiquariat Friederichsen, Hamburg, July, '98. Extra copy for DM 40 from Antiquariat Sibylle Böhme, Berlin, July, '95. 

This is an almost-square book almost 8" x 8¼". There are eighteen stories on 77 pages. Many of the stories seem to me derivative or at least close to traditional fables, like "Die Spitzmaus und der Wolf" (5), which uses some of the basic dynamics of LM. Similarly in the following fable, the huge coconut ridicules the walnut, as the oak does the reed in the Aesopic fable, but the walnut finds a way to to get planted instead of getting eaten. When a giant threatens a village, two ladybugs overwhelm him (11). The haughty giraffe destroys the hills of the mole; the clever mole digs them deeper, and soon the giraffe is limping (20). The kids love the "Ice Queen" so much that they carry her in parade. Unfortunately for her, they lick her into non-existence (24)! A gluttonous pig dies long before a reflective and disciplined hamster. The king is brought around to end up on his knees before a Putzfrau. A morning glory climbs up on a hollyhock and thus proves itself superior. Perhaps the weirdest story is that of the temporary experiment with the "Kreuzkrokodil" or "Kreukodil," which--for its short existence--consisted in the crossing of two crocodiles into one X-like character (52). I am not as enthusiastic as the flyleaf about the Lebensphilosophie incorporated in these fables, but I do agree that they have to do with reversing power roles. The playful, slightly weird illustrations are worked into and around the texts. They sometimes involve two colors. Sometimes illustrations from two adjoining stories are worked into each other (e.g. 43).

1978 Wege zur Fabel.  Franz-Josef Payrhuber.  Paperbound.  Freiburg im Breisgau: Deutschunterricht #9313: Herderbuecherei.  €5 from Zeil, Frankfurt, June, '23.

1978 you turned the fables on me. As Aesop Complained To The Brothers Grimmly. Written and illustrated by Barry Geller. Inscribed with a cartoon by the author. Los Angeles: Price/Stern/Sloan. $2 at Green Apple, San Francisco, June, '89. Extra copy for $1.50 from Hooked on Books, Denver, March, '94.

The only touch of Aesop in this pun-happy simple cartoon book is on the cover. At least it is clear that Aesop gets around!

1978 [Chinese]. (Collection of Aesop's Ancient Stories). Volume 1. "The Gnat and the Bull" on the cover. Edited by Ding Hong. Illustrated by Liu Seow Yuen. Hong Kong: Sun Ya Publications. $1.80 at Toys R Us in Hong Kong, May, '90.

A really delightful booklet of fables. The best of the illustrations are of the cat's party (8-9), the hanged wolf in sheep's clothing (12-13), the gnat and the bull (14-15), the one-eyed deer (16-17), and the rooster, the fox, and the dog (22-23).

1978 [Chinese]. (Collection of Aesop's Ancient Stories). Volume 3. "The Lion and the Mouse" on the cover. Edited by Ding Hong. Illustrated by Liu Seow Yuen. Hong Kong: Sun Ya Publications. $1.80 at Toys R Us in Hong Kong, May, '90.

Slightly less well done than Volume 1. The best illustrations here are of the man and the frozen snake (8-9), FWT (18), and OF (21).

1978/80 The Animal Storybook.  Beverly Reingold.  Robert Frank.  1980 printing.  Hardbound.  NY: Platt & Munk, a Division of Grosset & Dunlap.  $2.95 from Know Knew Books, Palo Alto, Feb., '99.

1978/84 Der Löwe mit der besonders schönen langen Mähne. Kurt David. Bilder von Horst Bartsch. 4. Auflage. Hardbound. Berlin: Der Kinderbuchverlag Berlin. €2 from Buchhandlung Revers, August, '07.

This is a long and enjoyable development of a Kalila and Dimna story usually told about a hare and a lion. Here a mouse takes the place of the hare. At least in some versions of Kalila and Dimna, the story has to do with regulated sacrifice. Here the inciting incident is that the mouse not only does not proclaim "You are the king of the animals" but even says out loud "You are not the strongest." The mouse then, when he has the lion's attention, cleverly says that he is sad because the lion will not much longer be king. He gets the lion to be inquisitive about this stronger competitor. The mouse even asks the king if he might be afraid of this competitor, and all the animals recognize that the lion lies in his answer. The mouse then offers to help the lion by showing him the way to this competitor. The lion rejects that offer, since it would take days to get there; of course he then offers to take the mouse on his back. The lion has overnight to think about it -- and of course to let his fear increase. In this version, the mouse throws a little stone into the well to make the "lion" there move and seem to swim. The best illustration of a strongly illustrated book comes next as the lion is absolutely perpendicular to the horizon in his dive into the well. At last the animals have quiet, but do not know that it has come from a mouse. 

1978/86 Leonardo el León y Ramon el Ratón/Leonard the Lion and Raymond the Mouse. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Paperbound. Lincolnwood, IL: Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series: National Textbook Company. Gift of Pack Carnes, Sept., '91.

Here is an earlier version of a book for which I also have the 1990 printing. I will keep both in the collection. Well told, with simple but lively illustrations. The distinctive feature of this series is that near-identical books in Spanish and English are bound together. 

1978/86 Walt Disney's Da bymusen besokte fetteren sin på landet.  2. opplag.  Hardbound.  Oslo: Donald Ducks Bokklubb:  Hjemmets Bokforlag.  120 Kroner from a used book store, Bodo, Norway, July, '14.  

1978/86/90 Leonardo el León y Ramon el Ratón/Leonard the Lion and Raymond the Mouse. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. $6.95 at Modern Language Bookstore, Georgetown, Oct., '90. Extra copy gift of Pack Carnes, Sept., '91.

Well told, with simple but lively illustrations. The distinctive feature of this series is that near-identical books in Spanish and English are bound together.

1978/88/92 Le Lion et la souris/The Lion and the Mouse. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fables Bilingues. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. $4.95 at Allá, Santa Fe, May, '93.

See the parallel Spanish/English version by the same author/artist and publisher: Leonardo el león y Ramón el ratón (1978/86/90). Only the names (and thus the titles) are changed here, as we now have Léon (and Leonard in English) the lion and Raymond the mouse. Except for the names, the text in English is exactly the same as that in the Spanish/English version.

1978/89 Chiquita y Pepita: Dos ratoncitas/Chiquita and Pepita: The City Mouse and the Country Mouse. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. $6.95 at Modern Language Bookstore, Georgetown, Oct., '90.

This is a lively telling that takes liberties with the story. Pepita holds a party in the country for Chiquita and serves bread and cheese. They take a bus to the city. The illustrations are animated. Near-identical books in Spanish and English are bound together.

1978/90 Aesop's Fables/Greek Myths/Bible Stories. No editors or artists acknowledged. Sisa Choice Reading Companions. Seoul?: Si-Sa-Mun-Hwa-Sa. $1.40 at Kyobo in Seoul, June, '90.

Ten fables with Korean footnotes, many with clever "Checkup" exercises at the bottom of the page. The tellings and the art are both traditional, apparently borrowed from a standard source (not Jacobs). The illustration for "The Farmer and the Larks" on 20 is particularly good. An English grammar, English exercises, and a Korean commentary are at the back.

1978/90 La Tortue et le lièvre/The Tortoise and the Hare. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fables Bilingues. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. $4.95 at Allá, Santa Fe, May, '93.

See the parallel Spanish/English version by the same author/artist and publisher: Tina la Tortuga y Carlos el Conejo/Tina the Turtle and Carlos the Rabbit (1972/84/90). Only the names (and thus the titles) are changed here, as we now have Merlin the hare and Lulu the tortoise. Except for the names, the text in English is exactly the same as that in the Spanish/English version.

1978/91 Antike Fabeln. Herausgegeben von Johannes Irmscher. Third edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Berlin & Weimar: Bibliothek der Antike: Aufbau-Verlag. DM 28 from Engel & Co., Buchhandlung-Antiquariat, Stuttgart, August, '98. 

This volume reprints with a new dust-jacket my first edition of 1978. It presents a complete set of translations of ancient fables. Thus it has five different versions noted under "Der Fuchs u. die Trauben" in the AI, which is organized by characters. The book begins with a careful introduction on the history of fables. The texts themselves are on 11-451. They run from Hesiod to Ignatius Diakonos. For each author, the fables are numbered successively in parentheses after the texts; the texts for Ignatius run thus from #1 to #57 on 437-51. There are only ten pages of comments (455-465). The following bibliography includes a concordance of numbers comparing Irmscher, Hausrath, Perry, Halm, and Chambry. Irmscher's numbers are in fact identical with Hausrath's from #1 through #307, with the exception of a few marked with an additional "a" and #287. Then follows the very helpful AI. The few changes from first to third edition reflect the change in political organization. Thus the place of printing has shifted from "the German Democratic Republic" to "Germany."

1978/91 Antike Fabeln. Herausgegeben von Johannes Irmscher. Third edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Berlin & Weimar: Bibliothek der Antike: Aufbau-Verlag. DM 29,80 from Hassbecker's Galerie & Buchhandlung, Heidelberg, August, '98. 

This volume reprints with the old dust-jacket my first edition of 1978. I am listing it separately from another 1991 third edition that has a newly styled dust jacket. I will keep this book with me, since it is one of the most helpful of books on classical fables. It presents a complete set of translations of ancient fables. Thus it has five different versions noted under "Der Fuchs u. die Trauben" in the AI, which is organized by characters. The book begins with a careful introduction on the history of fables. The texts themselves are on 11-451. They run from Hesiod to Ignatius Diakonos. For each author, the fables are numbered successively in parentheses after the texts; the texts for Ignatius run thus from #1 to #57 on 437-51. There are only ten pages of comments (455-465). The following bibliography includes a concordance of numbers comparing Irmscher, Hausrath, Perry, Halm, and Chambry. Irmscher's numbers are in fact identical with Hausrath's from #1 through #307, with the exception of a few marked with an additional "a" and #287. Then follows the very helpful AI. The few changes from first to third edition reflect the change in political organization. Thus the place of printing has shifted from "the German Democratic Republic" to "Germany."

1978/92 Jean de la Fontaine: Sämtliche Fabeln. Illustriert von Grandville. Übersetzungen von Ernst Dohm und Gustav Fabricius. Anmerkungen, Zeittafel und Nachwort von Hermann Lindner. Zweite Auflage. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Germany. Munich: Artemis & Winkler Verlag. Gift of Alex Bartsch, John Carroll University, March, '01.

What a beautiful little book! It is so helpful to have the two languages facing each other. The Grandville illustrations here are small but very well done. A real treasure! I would be curious to find out more about the cover illustration "Papagei habemus" von Michael Mathias Prechtl. It is not what I would have thought of for fables!

1978/93 La Souris de la Ville et la Souris de la Compagne; The City Mouse and the Country Mouse. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fables Bilingues. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. $12.95 by mail with an audio cassette from The Mind's Eye, Feb., '95.

See the parallel Spanish/English version Chiquita y Pepita (1978/89). This is a lively telling that takes liberties with the story. Simone holds a party in the country for Brigitte and serves bread and cheese. They take a bus to the city. The illustrations are animated. Near-identical books in French and English are bound together. See my comments on the accompanying audio cassette, which I have dated 1993?.

1978/97 Paramythia Tou Aisopou, Protos Tomos. Ntinos Anastasopoulos. Nikos Neiros. Hardbound. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $9.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is the first of six volumes in a series that I found in Greek Video's catalogue. Three stories: TH, GA, and AL. Simple colored illustrations often take a little more than half the page. The promythium to the first fable quotes Jesus: "He who exalts himself will be humbled." TH on cover, but by a different artist.

1978/97 Paramythia Tou Aisopou, Deuteros Tomos. Ntinos Anastasopoulos. Nikos Neiros. Hardbound. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $9.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is the second of six volumes in a series that I found in Greek Video's catalogue. Three stories: FC; "The Rooster, the Dog, and the Fox"; and LM. Simple colored illustrations often take a little more than half the page. The last scene of the first fable has the crow shedding tears in the (laughing?) company of other animals. The first picture in each story (after the title-picture and promythium) is not necessarily of the first scene; it sometimes pictures the highpoint or even the result of the story. FC on cover, but by a different artist. The back cover of all six volumes is the same.

1978/99 African Fables That teach about God (Book 1). Compiled by Eudene Keidel. Illustrated by Kathy Bartel. Paperback. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. $9 from Alibris, Feb., '01.

Originally published in 1978 by Herald Press of Scottdale, PA and Kitchener, Ontario, this book is now reprinted by Wipf and Stock. It contains twenty-one folk tales gathered by a missionary who has worked extensively in Zaire. The T of C is unusual in that it gives after each title the topic addressed in the story and the time it takes to read the story. I have read the first seven. Some may be expanded fables. They are strong on trickery and aetiology. The couple of paragraphs after each story are heavy on moralizing, buttressed with scripture references. These comments fail to help articulate the individual tale's meaning. The seventh tale may be the best: "The Frog's Strange Rules About Dinner" (33). The frog invites the monkey to a friendship meal but insists that he have white hands to eat it. The monkey goes away angry. Later he invites the frog to a meal and serves it in a tree, insisting that the frog sit up straight on the branch to eat it. The frog of course falls out of the tree.

1978? Aesop's Fables. Sergio Cavina (NA). Hardbound. Printed in Czechoslovakia. Leicester: Galley Press, W.H. Smith & Son Limited. $12 from Dan Lalande, Maple Ridge, BC, Canada, through Ebay, June, '00.

Here is a very curious book, marked by the cover of a lion reading a fable book in the presence of other animals and a title-page wordless fable of two mules and two piles of fodder. The first curiosity is that I had not found it before this time, at least in its US form published in 1977 by Falcon Books. The second curiosity has to do with other books that use some of its materials. One of them is Favole di Animali (1987) from Dami, but that book makes Cavina's lively colored illustrations black-and-white. Another is El Arca de las Fabulas (1983) from Sigmar, but it presents only half of the fables in this book. The third curiosity is the liberty that this edition takes with many traditional fables. Thus WC becomes "The Crane Who Knew Everything" (32) and the last remark comes from the crane: "It's as well that I always know the best thing to do." In "Trout for Tea" (44), the fisherman actually throws the fish back, and the fish promptly assures him that he will not let him catch him a second time! In "The Lioness and the Bear" (46), the lioness has a change of heart for two days, and then goes back to her old killing ways. "The Scarey Hare" (60) adds a phase when the fox sends the hare, now courageous but still foolish, tumbling into the pool after the frogs. In BC (62), the mice move next door! In "The Lion and the Donkey" (104) the proud donkey is promptly eaten by a leopard. In MSA (114) the miller first pushes the donkey in a cart! In AD (122) the ant gets on the twig on his own and the dove picks the twig out of the water. The old dog in "An Ungrateful Master" (124) gets even by letting some thieves break into his master's house. A final curiosity consists in a number of fables previously unknown to me that appear here. "The Donkey That Talked" (50) urges saying more positive things. "The Wolf and the Kid" (80) combines "The Fox and the Woodcutter" and WC. "The Giraffe's Neck" (82) shows that every advantage brings a vulnerability. "The Monkeys' Slide" (92) teaches giraffes and monkeys to help each other. "The Fox and the Dragon" (100) shows when a dragon burns a fox's tail that a dragon's flames can reach where the dragon cannot! "The Monkey and the Tramp" (108) shows that living in a cage is never worth it. "The Lion Who Remembered" shows a wounded wolf on 35: why? T of C at the beginning.

1978? My Book of Fairy Tales and Fables. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. Printed in Czechoslovakia. Leicester: Brown Watson, Ltd. $5 at Biermaier's, Minneapolis, July, '89. Extra copy for $3.50 from Chandler's, Evanston, Sept., '93.

Two fables among the twenty-three stories here. The hare and the tortoise (77) first talk of a "race to the end of the world," but settle on a nearby tree trunk as a goal. The hare sleeps before he even takes a step! This all happened back when competitions were held only among animals. Also GA (81). The illustrations are colorful if nothing else.

1978? My Book of Fairy Tales and Fables. Hardbound. Printed in Romania. Brown Watson. $3.37 from The Prince and the Pauper, San Diego, Jan., '01.

Identical with a softbound version with ID #606 that is printed in Czechoslovakia, while this edition is printed in Romania. Wonders never cease! See my comments there.

 

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1979 A Clutch of Fables. Teo Savory. Nine Drawings by Emil Antonucci. Paperback. Greensboro, NC: Unicorn Press. See 1977/79.

1979 Adventures for Readers: Book One. Heritage Edition. Adventures in Literature Program. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $.50 at Alverno, Sept., '87.

A junior high textbook. The last division ("Myths and Fables") includes a section on fables with subsections on Aesop, verse, and Thurber with good material in each. The watercolors by John Wallner on BC, TMCM, and BW are surprisingly good. There is good pedagogical material on allusions and proverbs. This book provides a good example of what is done with Aesop today.

1979 Aesop in England: The Transmission of Motifs in Seventeenth-Century Illustrations of Aesop's Fables. Edward Hodnett. Published for the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia. Charlottesville: the University Press of Virginia. $18 from the publisher. Extra copy for $8 from Midway, St. Paul, Nov., '92.

A lovely little book. The illustrations are excellent, and I may be able to take several for a lecture, though I am not sure how many are both lively and clear enough. Illustrations are sprinkled in the early text and then there are great plates for comparison from about six or eight stories at the back of the book. Careful historical work.

1979 Aesop in Fableland. Andrew Bailey. Illustrated by Valerie Littlewood. Paperbound. Printed in Great Britain. London: Target: W.H. Allen & Co., Ltd. £7.05 from Mrs. F. Lamb, Cambs, UK, through Ebay, Feb., '02.

This paperback book of 53 pages narrates the encounter of Aesop with an old man in Fableland, "a special kind of dream world" (12) in which, as it turns out, the animals, trees, and plants can all talk. Under the man's tutelage, young Aesop sees and undergoes experiences that he will someday write down as fables. Thus he experiences the wind and the sun trying to get a cape off of him. He and the man are approached by a tortoise and then a racing hare. When the old man prepares a delicious stew, hungry animals crowd around, but they have to tell why they are hungry before they can eat. Thus young Aesop hears first-hand the story of DS. A stag then tells how he boasted of his beautiful field, and so all his friends came and ate it up around him! Then we hear from a goat who drank too much in a well and could not get out again. Finally in this chapter we hear from the crow who lost his cheese to the fox. Further along we experience OR, BW, and MM (she trips over a stone). The old man is also something of a doctor and so he meets a star-gazing prophet who has walked into a tree, a crab trying to walk forward, and a girl with her hand stuck in a candy jar. With this girl, Melissa, Aesop encounters a drowning boy, whom he promptly lectures. He and the old man overhear two dogs, a plump watchdog and a thin stray. Then they meet a donkey who buried his piece of gold, and now it has been stolen. Perhaps the best of the black-and-white illustrations is MM on 36. The mysterious old man is pictured in black-and-white on the frontispiece and in color on the back cover.

1979 Aesop's Fables. A New Version Written by Munro Leaf with Illustrations by Robert Lawson. Collector's Edition. Bound in genuine leather. Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press. See 1941/79.

1979 Aesop's Fables. Told by Margaret Hughes. Illustrated by Sara Silcock. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. London: Albany Books. £6 from Rose's Books, Hay-on-Wye, June, '98.

This is a large-format (8½" x 11¼") book with colorful illustrations for each of seventy fables. The book unfortunately frequently exemplifies a lack of integration with the story or, especially, between the story and its illustration. Perhaps some of this difficulty arises from an attempt to put more than one phase or aspect of the story into a single image. Thus "The Stag and the Hedgehog" (14) combines several traditional fables; the image which has both hedgehogs near the stag will not fit the text. The larks are pictured in a tree, not (as they must be) in the field (21). In a humorous image, the live donkey ends up sitting on the horse's back, where a dead donkey's skin normally lies (23). The golden eggs are visible in groups and even basketfuls; this picture suggests that the goose has been producing more than one a day (31). In "The Two Cocks" (35), both cocks are pictured in one scene with the eagle; that co-presence cannot work in the story. The illustration for "The Mice and the Weasels" (46-7) misses the story's point that the hornless mice could escape and thus that only the horned were devoured by the weasels. SW (93) is told in the poorer version. Some stories are simply different. Thus here the cock finds a diamond ring (16). The stag who ate the vine (34) is only wounded. The "Androcles" character is a shepherd boy, and the lion talks to him (38). Here a frog, not a fox, encounters a mask (80). The goat answers well the apparently solicitous lion: "I think it's your dinner you're thinking about, not mine" (61). Among the best illustrations are those for "The Mouse and the Bull" (19) and OF (27): the latter may be the best bloated, pre-explosion frog I have seen for this fable! There is a T of C at the front.

1979 Aesop's Fables. Retold by Alexander Williams. Illustrated by Robin Moffett. Hardbound. First U.S. edition, apparently first printing. Printed in USA. NY: Dandelion Books: Dandelion Press, Inc. AUD7 ($10) from James Larsen, Exeter, Australia, Dec., '97.

I had had this book on my want list for years and ordered this without knowing that it was the book I had been seeking. For another irony, note that I had to send to Australia to get this "first U.S. edition"! It is a stiff-covered medium-sized children's book presenting thirteen numbered fables in rather ho-hum fashion, with black-and-gold illustrations. In #2, WSC, the shepherd still does not know that this is a wolf when he kills him. #4, FG, has a good new moral: "A fool often despises what he can't get." The woman with eye problems (#5) is rich and makes a point of having witnesses to the original deal that she would pay only for restored eyesight. The best illustrations are for #8: first a laughing heifer and then a laughing ox. It has the proverbial moral "He who laughs last laughs best." The surprising moral of #10, "The Lion in Love," is "Even the wise can be made foolish by love." GGE (#11) shows fourteen golden eggs in a bowl. MM (#12) has as its moral "Do not count your chickens before they are hatched."

1979 Aesop's Fables. Editor is "J.B.R." who uses LaFontaine, Croxall, and l'Estrange. Illustrator, not acknowledged, is Griset. Woodbury, NY: Bobley: Children's Classics Library. See 1899?/1979.

1979 Aesop's Fables. Edited by Sheila Schwartz. Art adapted from the works of Gustav Doré and Thomas Bewick. London: Octopus. $4 at Pageturner's, Omaha, Dec., '92. Extra copy for $3.98 from Dalton, Great Falls, June, '85.

Nice huge reproductions of Bewick with the center of the action highlighted in a second color. The coloring-in of Doré's work somehow softens it. The color graphics are distinctive but not entirely successful.

1979 Aesop's Fables for the Table: Aesop's Cookbook. Compiled by Paulette Wise, DeeDee Smith, Barbara Grace, Laraine Crouch, Sydney Williams, and Rose Thomas. Paperbound. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Broward Community College Association of Educational Secretaries and Office Personnel. $9.95 from The Fishburnes, Elizabeth City, NC, through eBay, Nov., '12.

Here is a curiosity! This is a regular cookbook, but it has sections, and the heavier paper-stock divider at the beginning of each section has a line drawing of an animal cooking and, on its verso, the text of an Aesopic fable. The cover features a lively cartoon development of Oudry's TMCM: the two line-drawn mice are sitting on the table and grabbing some of the food. The TMCM text is on the verso of the front cover. As the T of C facing 1 makes clear, there are eight sections. Fables on the verso of the divider pages include DS; "A Wife and a Drunken Husband"; "A Woman and a Fat Hen"; "A Cat and Mice"; FG; "A Wolf and a Sow"; TH; and "The Hares and the Frogs." Desserts have the largest section of this recipe book. Plastic comb binding. Broward College in Ft. Lauderdale has since dropped "Community" from its name. 

1979 Aesop's Fables 2: The Raven and the Fox For Four-Part Chorus of Mixed Voices and Piano Accompaniment. Gregg Smith. Paperbound. NY/London: G. Schirmer. $1 from Mike Cassella, New Haven, CT, through abe, May, '05. 

This is an unstapled pamphlet of 12 pages, all but 1-2 presenting a musical score. The libretto for this operette, one of ten that make up the "Aesop's Fables" series, is a combination of L'Estrange's text and Smith's own. One finds very little narration here and plenty of good dialogue. As in some of the best drama, the key acts have no words accompanying them; one deduces them here from the responses and reactions to them. So far I have been lucky enough to find four of the ten. The original price for each pamphlet was $.75. Inflation has not been too bad! I would love to hear these works performed.

1979 Aesop's Fables 4: The Ass, Lion and Cock For Four-Part Chorus of Mixed Voices and Piano Accompaniment. Gregg Smith. Paperbound. NY/London: G. Schirmer. $1 from Mike Cassella, New Haven, CT, through abe, May, '05. 

This is an unstapled pamphlet of 14 pages, all but 1-2 presenting a musical score. The libretto for this operette, one of ten that make up the "Aesop's Fables" series, is a combination of L'Estrange's text and Smith's own. The cover illustration used for all the pamphlets fits here, since it pictures a lion, ass, and cock. They are stacked on top of one another. The special feature of this libretto seems to be that the cock, the ass, and the narrator all sing at once. The fable has the ass pursue the lion. The latter had been scared away by the cock. Once the lion and ass are at some distance from the cock, the lion turns on the ass and devours him. So far I have been lucky enough to find four of the ten pamphlets. The original price for each pamphlet was $.75. Inflation has not been too bad! I would love to hear these works performed.

1979 Aesop's Fables 6: The Lady with Sore Eyes For Four-Part Chorus of Mixed Voices and Piano Accompaniment. Gregg Smith. Paperbound. NY/London: G. Schirmer. $1 from Mike Cassella, New Haven, CT, through abe, May, '05. 

This is an unstapled pamphlet of 13 pages, all but 1-2 presenting a musical score. The libretto for this operette, one of ten that make up the "Aesop's Fables" series, is a combination of L'Estrange's text and Smith's own. In this version the woman starts with sore eyes, and the doctor applies temporarily blinding ointment to them. Is there a typo near the top of 9? The text there seems to say "there became and less" followed by a full stop. The moral here includes "There are few good offices done for other people which the benefactor does not hope to be the better for himself." So far I have been lucky enough to find four of the ten pamphlets. The original price for each pamphlet was $.75. Inflation has not been too bad! I would love to hear these works performed.

1979 Aesop's Fables 8: The Lark in a Net For Four-Part Chorus of Mixed Voices and Piano Accompaniment. Gregg Smith. Paperbound. NY/London: G. Schirmer. $1 from Mike Cassella, New Haven, CT, through abe, May, '05. 

This is an unstapled pamphlet of 9 pages, all but 1-2 presenting a musical score. The libretto for this operette, one of ten that make up the "Aesop's Fables" series, is a combination of L'Estrange's text and Smith's own. This fable, as it is told here, is brief, harsh, and dramatic. A lark has been caught by a bird-catcher. The bird asks if she is to be punished for stealing one grain of wheat. The bird-catcher's answer is that he needs to meet his daily quota of birds caught. End of story! The moral is" 'Tis no purpose to stand reasoning where the adversary is both party and judge." So far I have been lucky enough to find four of the ten pamphlets. The original price for each pamphlet was $.75. Inflation has not been too bad! I would love to hear these works performed.

1979 Als die Tiere Noch Sprechen Konnten. Iwan Franko. Illustrationen von Sergiy Artjuschenko. Aus dem Ukrainischen von Evelyn Riswanowa und Iwan Soiko. Kiew: Verlag Wesselka. DM 15 at Syndikat, Leipzig, July, '96.

Close in its selection of stories to my When the Animals Could Talk: Fables (1984).  This edition adds "Murko und Burko" (the outwitting cat is outwitted by the victim dog, 67) and "Wie eine Meise das Meer in Brand Stecken Wollte" (the insect, who lost his nest on the shore to the ocean, finally gets to the creature who could supply avenging fire, but what it gets from this eagle is rather a lecture on where it ought to build its nest, 81).  Clever illustrations (not by Kryha from 1984) here nicely frame the text, complemented by frequent full-page illustrations of several colors.  The best of these may show the wolf getting into the sack a second time to show the fox how it happened (15) and the blue fox (77).  New stories do not start a new page.  Many stories have several phases; individual phases employ standard folk themes.  "Drei Säcke List" (64) is the story of a wonderful turn-around.  "Der Blaugestrickene Fuchs" (71) yelps with the foxes at his anniversary party.  I include in a separate listing a 1982 printing of the same book.  Both copies show a copyright of 1976 for the illustrations and of 1979 for the translation.

1979 Animal Fact/Animal Fable.  Seymour Simon.  Illustrated by Diane de Groat.  Paperbound.  NY: Crown Publishers.  Gift of Marie Gervais, St.-Urbain-Premier, Quebec, Canada, May, '15.

1979 Brer Rabbit Saves His Skin.  First American Edition.  Hardbound.  NY: Book Club Edition: Walt Disney Productions: Random House.  $6 from Black Swan Books, Oakland, Dec., '18. 

1979 Chansons de France pour les Petits Français. Paperback facsimile of original. Avec accompagnements de J.B. Weckerlin. Illustrations par M.B. de Monvel. Paris: Plon-Nourrit and Cie. Paris?: lutin poche de l'école des loisirs. See 1870?/1979.

1979 Der Esel als Amtmann. Gerhard Branstner. Zeichnungen von Hans Ticha. 3. Auflage. Hardbound. Berlin: Buchverlag der Morgen. €3.01 from Versandantiquariat, Dresden, through eBay, Dec., '05.

It has taken me three years to catalogue this book, but now I am delighted to have looked into it. Branstner is an "easier" fabulist than, say, Wolf Dietrich Schnurre. Is it a compliment if I write that I can catch many of Branstner's fables on the first bounce? Here I have many fewer problems than I do with understanding Schnurre. There are sixty-three fables here. Sometimes the shortest are the best. Consider #21: "The raven was the least musical of the singers in the animal chorus. Since they could not get rid of him any other way, they made him director." Good! The parakeet wrote a novel. But the parrot wrote a destructive critique. When the parakeet read the critique, he sought consolation from a hoopoe. Hoopoe: "Pay no attention. The parrot just repeats what everybody else is saying" (#57). Good! Fast mouse goes ahead. Slow mouse tarries behind -- and is caught by a cat. Fast mouse calls back "Hey, let go of the cat! We have other things to do!" (#63). Branster has two things going for him in this book. First, each fable is introduced with a rhyming two-line proverb. These are good, and they give the reader a good clue about the point of the fable. Secondly, the illustrations are fun. I am surprised that some are as risque as they are in a DDR publication. Try, for example, the illustration to #20: "Gegensätze siehen sich nicht an,/es sei denn, an dem einen ist vom anderen etwas dran." #29 puts it all together well, with a fine illustration. Its proverb is "Wird ein Wort aus Angst vermieden,/braucht's kein Gesetz, es zu verbieten." The fable runs this way: "The lion says 'In my kingdom there is no censorship. As far as I am concerned, everyone can say what I want." The title-story is #41. It occasions three good illustrations: on the cover, on the title-page, and with the fable itself.

1979 Der Löwe und die Maus und andere grosse und kleine Tiere in Fabeln, Geschichten und Bildern.  Ausgewählt von Anne M. Rothenberg.  Zweite Auflage.  Paperbound.  Frankfurt: Insel Taschenbuch:  Insel Verlag.  €1.82 from Schroeder Verlagsbuchhandlung, Wildflecken, Germany, April, '15.

1979 Der Spiegel.  Various Romanian fabulists; translated by Lotte Berg.  Illustrated by Vasile Olac   First editioin.  Hardbound.  Bucharest: Kriterion.  €10.30 from Gebrauchtbücherlogistik H.J. Lauterbach, Gummersbach, Germany, Oct., '18.

1979 Der verborgene Schatz: Fabeln und Parabeln.  Jacques Loew; Übertragung ins Deutsche von Bernhard Matheis.  Mit Zeichnungen von Jaques Faizant.  Hardbound.  Freiburg: Herder.  €1.75 from Antiauariat Bässler, Vohenstrauss, Germany through Buchfreund, April, '15.

1979 Die Grille und der Maulwurf: die Geschichte von der schoensten Zeit ihres Lebens. Gemalt und erdichtet von Janosch. Small pamphlet. Printed in Germany. Weinheim, Germany: Beltz Verlag. $1.50 in Washington, D.C., Dec., '98.

This is a redoing--and a delightful one--of GA. The grasshopper goes to two ugly characters, the Hirschkaefer and the Maus before the mole delights in taking her in to his warm little home. In fact, she does not even have to ask. He is eager for her to make music. They end up in bed together and enjoy this winter as the loveliest time of their lives. I doubted at first that there was a relation to fables here, but my doubts were wrong.

1979 Donald Saff: Fables: Hand Colored Etchings. Paperbound. New York: Getler/Pall Gallery. $37.50 from alibris, Jan., '03.

This little (4½" x 7¼") book is a curiosity. I bought it on the basis of its title and subtitle. Imagine my surprise when it arrived! It is a black-and-white catalogue of an exhibition of twenty-nine hand-colored prints by Donald Saff. The silver front cover features a colored print of "Our Lady of Sarcasm" (print #4). To judge from it, I believe that the engravings would gain a lot from being seen in color. Several of the engravings work off of traditional fables, like "The Wolf Who Cried 'Seagull'" and "The Man Who Cried 'Grapes.'" Many more have titles in the form of fable titles. Among these are"The Seal and the Seal"; "The Elephant and the Mirror" (which appears twice, marked by "I" and "II"); "The Toucan and the Archetype"; "The Kob and the Dental Mirror"; "The Zebra and the Wind"; and "The Gucci Boot and the Bug." "The Wolf Who Cried 'Seagull'" is among the most engaging of these works for me. The wolf and a human being share a single eye. Someone has written "Prints" on the print on the front cover. "The Seal and the Seal" plays on different meanings of "seal." Do not buy this book again!

1979 Drollige Thierbilder und Reime aus der Fabelwelt. Neudruck der 1850 erschienenen Ausgabe. Mit einem Nachwort von Heiner Vogel. No author or illustrator or original publisher acknowledged. Printed in the GDR. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag. See 1850/1979.

1979 Endangered Species and Other Fables with a Twist. Fritz Eichenberg. Large format. Hardbound (with dust jacket) and paperback. Owings Mills, Maryland: Stemmer House Publishers. Hardbound for $4.98 from under a covered table in Ketterson's, Oct., '87. Extra copy of the hardbound for $8 at Aberdeen, DC, Feb., '89. Paperback for $8 from Magers and Quinn, Nov., '97. Extra copy of the paperback for $5.95 from Powell's in Portland, '85.

This book easily vaults into the first rank, with Calder and Levine, for interest and wit. The tales are twisted (sometimes a la Bierce): the grasshopper has joined a rock group, and the ant gets angry. Among the best: BW, TMCM, DLS, LM, "The Donkey and the Lap Dog," and OF. Wonderful! The only difference in the hardbound is the imprinted cover.

1979 Ernest Griset: Fantasies of a Victorian Illustrator. Lionel Lambourne. 130 illustrations, 8 in colour. London: Thames and Hudson. $7.50 at Argosy, NY, Jan., '90.

Four good pages of Aesop within a fine presentation of Griset's art. A good history of Griset after a quick overview of anthropomorphic animal presentation. Griset's gift was combining grotesque imagination and sober observation (or, respectively, comicality and exactitude). He had a relative lack of interest in humans. Aesop was not a high point in his career. He outlived his death notices by thirty years! He lived under the influence of Grandville and the shadow of Doré.

1979 Ésope: Le Renard Qui Avait la Queue Coupée et Autres Fables. Adaptée et dessinées par Bennett. Traduit par Marie-Raymond Farré. Paris?: Enfantimages: Éditions Gallimard. See 1857/1979.

1979 Fabels van La Fontaine.  Vertaling: Ingrid Stork.  Geïllustreerd door R. de la Nézière. Paperbound.  Amsterdam: Omega Boek Produkties.  €2.50 from Antiquariaat Klikspaan, Leiden, through Abe, July, '16.

1979 Fabels van Aesopus. Bejeengebracht door Phaedrus in verzen verteld en ingeleid door Johan van Nieuwenhuizen. Engravings by J. van Vianen. Utrecht and Antwerp: Prisma: Het Spectrum. See 1964/79.

1979 Fables.  Pamphlet.  Understanding What We Read Level D: Nystrom: Carnation Company.  $1 from Romantic Childhood through Etsy, August, '23.

1979 Fables from Kenya. L. Farrant. Paperbound. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Controlled Readers for Africa, Stage 4: Macmillan Press. See 1971/79.

1979 Fables La Fontaine. Pierre Bornecque. Paperbound. Paris: Littérature: Profil d'une Oeuvre 67: Hatier. $5 from Europa Books, Evanston, Dec., '92.

This is one in the steady stream of small paperbacks published to help French school pupils learn their La Fontaine well. Usually there are several illustrations to accompany the text, but that is not the case here. There are five chapters after an introduction. The introduction presents La Fontaine's life. A first chapter deals with the renewal of fable by La Fontaine. The second offers a panorama of human society and its problems. The third is titled "Le passionnant message des fables," that is, "The Exciting Message of the Fables." I am glad that someone else thinks that reading fables is exciting! The fourth touches on the enchantment of poetic, lyrical fable. The fifth deals with the fabulist facing his century and the centuries that have followed. Even the choice of subjects for chapters tells a student something about what he or she should be receptive to particularly in La Fontaine's fables. 

1979 Fables of Aesop. The World Literature Bestseller: English-Korean Bilingualism. (Korean and English on facing pages.) S.A. Handford is apparently the (unacknowledged?) translator. Apparently no Korean translator acknowledged. No illustrations. Paperbound. Dust jacket. Seoul: Kaewon Publishing Co. Gift of Kevin Kersten from Korea, '85.

The versions have some nice language goofs and seem well done. A lovely gift. Compare the new book of the same title published by Choun in 1980/88.

1979 Fabulas: Selección de Autores Célebres.  Hardbound.  Barcelona: Ediciones Susaeta, S.A.  $15 from Christian Tottino, Buenos Aires, through eBay, June, '15.

1979 Favorite Fables: A Child's Sticker Book. Oversize pamphlet. Colorado Springs, CO: Current, Inc. $2 from John Schillner, Jamestown, NY, through Ebay, Nov., '00.

Here is an 9" x 12" sixteen-page pamphlet with several inserted pages of stickers to insert onto the pages. Each page has a two-color tan-and-brown design outline for a fable, with a title, text, and moral at the bottom of the page. It seems that a child can both stick the stickers onto each picture and color the rest the picture. TMCM merits a two-page spread on 4-5. Both a maid and a dog disturb the city meal. Many morals are well stated. Thus for CJ (3) we read "Judge things by their true value." The moral for "The Porcupine and the Snakes" (6) is "If you choose your friends thoughtlessly you may come to regret it." The moral for "The Sheep and the Crow" (11) is "If you never stand up for yourself, you may be taken advantage of." For FG (15) the moral is "We often invent reasons for not wanting the things we cannot have." I am surprised to see the ox lower his horns and frighten the dog away in DM (13). SW (16) is told in the poorer form.

1979 Favourite Animal Stories. Octopus Pop-up Picture Stories. Illustrations (c)1976 by J. Pavlin and G. Seda. (c)1976 Artia, Prague. Printed and made in Czechoslovakia. London: Octopus Books. See 1976/79.

1979 Freaky Fables by Handelsman, from the pages of Punch. J.B. Handelsman. Introduced by Alan Coren. Pamphlet. Printed in Great Britain. London: Sphere Books. £1.5 from David Shack, London, through Ebay, June, '00.

This is the book I had hoped for when I first found Handelsman's 1984 St. Martin's Press offering of the same title. It is full of delightful parodies of traditional Aesopic fables. In fact, only a few of the offerings fall outside the realm of fable. Among the best, I think, are "Truth in Exile" (where it seems that truth herself is caught in a lie); BW (dutiful wolves answer to the call, even though it is Sunday); "The Crow Who Had a Go" (getting a bunch of wool turns out to be great luck!); FG (which centers on the grapes, who are bitter about being sour); and MSA ("Moral: You can please everyone, but it's time-consuming"). The pamphlet, 64 pages in length, is landscape rather than portrait, 5¾" x 8¼".

1979 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: A Selection of his Fables in English and German.  With engravings by Hellmuth Weissenborn.  Signed; #81 of 100.  Boxed.  Hardbound.  London: The Acorn Press.  $139.93 from Time Booksellers, Somerville, Australia, through AbeBooks, July, '22.

1979 Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Fabeln: Drey Bücher, Nebst Abhandlungen mit dieser Dichtungsart verswandten Inhalts.  Mit einem Nachwort von Walther Killy.  Limited to 1300 copies.  Hardbound.  Hamburg: Maximilian-Gesellschaft.  €18 from Richard Kulbach, Heidelberg, July, '14.  

1979 H Alepou ki o Korakas. Pote Stratike. Illustrated by Nikos Neiros. Pamphlet. Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones #5. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. See 1975/79.

1979 H Alepou Me Ten Kommene Oura. Nestora G. Xounou. Mich(ales) Benetoulia. Pamphlet. Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones #9. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $3.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is a single story that is #9 in the series Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones and reappears in the collection Paramythia tou Aisopou, Tritos Tomos, listed under 1986/96. I have six of the eighteen pamphlets in the series. Others in this series are listed under 1975/79. Here the only indication of date is given on the back cover, which lists the titles in the series. Benetoulia gives characters human objects but little human clothing. Thus the owl wears a mortarboard, and the tailless fox carries a purse.

1979 H Gida Kai O Gaidaros. Anastasia Papademetriou-Birbily. Illustrated by Michales Benetoulia. Pamphlet. Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones #18. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $3.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is a single story that is #18 in the series Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones and reappears in the collection Paramythia tou Aisopou, Ektos Tomos, listed under 1992/96. I have six of the eighteen pamphlets in the series. Others in this series are listed under 1975/79 and 1979. Here the only indication of date is given on the back cover, which lists the titles in the series. Benetoulia gives characters human objects but little human clothing. The story is new to me. The goat apparently advises the ass to fall into a ditch to avoid work. The result is that the goat has to carry the ass's burdens.

1979 Heinrich Pestalozzi: Fabeln.  Ausgewählt, zusammengestelt und herausgegeben von Heinz Weder.  Hardbound.  Bern/Stuttgart/Wien: Verlag und Buchhandlung Hans Huber.  €12 from Richard Kulbach, Heidelberg, July, '14.

1979 I.A. Krilov: Basni. Pamphlet. Sverdlovsk: Shkolnaya Biblioteka. $0.50 from an unknown source, July, '02. Extra copy for the same price at the same time.

Here is a simple pamphlet without illustrations. It presents fifty-two fables on 48 pages, with a T of C at the back. This is about as basic a book as you can find!

1979 La Fontaine Bajky.  Illustrated by Jaroslav Serych.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  Prague:  Edice Maj: Svoboda.  $4.90 from Czechchildrensbooks on eBay, Jan., '16.

1979 La Fontaine'den Hikayeler. Paperbound. Istanbul: Secme Eserler 10; Unlu Cocuk Klasikleri Dizisi: 10: Unlu Kitabevi. $5 from Ugur Yurtuttan, Istanbul, Turkey, Dec., '03.

One of the simplest Turkish fable books I have found. Fables are on 9 through 80. No illustrations. No T of C or AI. No advertisements for other books in a series. The colored front cover features FS. This book shows some signs of wear. Both covers are heavily creased.

1979 La Fontaine: Fables choisies mises en vers.  Georges Couton.  Hardbound.  Paris: Bibliothèque Essentielle:  Garnier Frères.  See 1962/79.

1979 LaFontaine: Selected Fables. With the illustrations of J.J. Grandville. Translated by James Michie. Introduction by Geoffrey Grigson. NY: Viking. Identical copies hardbound with dust jacket for $15.95 and paperback for $6, '81. Extra hardbound for $7.50 and paperback for $3 from Heartwood, Charlottesville, March, '92.

Michie's poetry seems sprightly. Grandville's illustrations really are a treasure-house. Unfortunately, they are not very well rendered here and are rather small. The quality of printing of the illustrations seems to vary from one copy to another. Grandville does a good job of dressing animals up, and often suggests in the picture the social point.

1979 LaFontaine: Selected Fables: Uncorrected Proof. With the illustrations of J.J. Grandville. Translated by James Michie. Introduction by Geoffrey Grigson. London: Allen Lane: Penguin Books. $17.50 at Serendipity, Berkeley, Oct., '96.

This is a fascinating little paperbound volume. The double paperbound covers are identical with those in the adjacent listing for Viking's hardbound. The inside (paper) cover has the illustration (of the eagle, hare, and beetle) that appears on the title-page of both the Viking and the Allen Lane editions. The first page has an AL symbol, and the title-page lists Allen Lane as the publisher, as does its obverse. The T of C has "00" rather than "xxx" for the translator's note. The last paragraph of the translator's note on xxx is slightly different. The book as a package includes some anomalies, e.g. that the dust jacket says "Printed in U.S.A." while the back of the title-page says "printed by Western Printing Services Ltd, Bristol." My, what one finds! As to the contents, see my comments on the Viking edition.

1979 La liebre y la tortuga. Illustrated by Irana Shepherd. (c)Editorial Norma. Libros Animados. Cali, Colombia: Carvajal. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Nov., '92.

Good pop-ups, some of which even incorporate a bit of action, for example when the hare rises up tired or when the race-finishing judge waves the checkered flag. The hare has a great grumpy look on the last page. For great comparisons, consult my English version (1979?). The free hare-arm in the first illustration has been incorporated into the picture. In the second-to-last illustration, the turtle's feet have likewise moved from pasted on to incorporated in the original picture. My, how even little books generate their own history!

1979 Lateinische Fablen des Mittelalters: Lateinisch-Deutsch.  Herausgegeben und übersetzt von Harry C. Schnur.  Hardbound.  Munich: Tusculum Bucherei: Heimeran Verlag.  €16.20 from Anttiquariat Tautenhahn, Lübeck, Germany, August, '18.

1979 Le loup et l'agneau et onze autres fables.  Jean de La Fontaine.  Illustrated by M. Boutet de Monvel.  Paperbound.  Paris: lutin poche de l'ecole des loisirs.  €10 from Librairie Imago Libri, Marche Dauphine, St. Ouen, Jiuly, '17.

1979 Les Belles Histoires d'Oncle Rémus.  Walt Disney; adaptation de Christine de Coninck.  Walt Disney Productions. Hardbound.  Le Jardin des Rêves.  €8 from a bouquinist in Paris, June, '23.

1979 Mishle Amim: mi-mekor Yis'rael, hakhme Sin, Esopos, Lah-Fonten, u-Krilov. Y(ohanan) Ben-Zakai. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Jerusalem: Sifriyat Hedvah: Kiryat-Sepher. $20 from Henry Hollander Bookseller, San Francisco, through TomFolio, Sept., '06.

I have to believe that the 176 pages of this book contain fables from Aesop, La Fontaine, and Krylov. There are no illustrations except for the lovely necklace on the dust-jacket and the front cover. I wish I knew what that "Sin" meant in the title. And what does Israel have to do with those three fabulists? 

1979 Noch fünfzig Fabeln für Kinder. Nebst einem ernsthaften Anhange. Wilhelm Hey. In Bildern gezeichnet von Otto Speckter. Faksimile-Ausgabe. Wiesbaden: F. Englisch Verlag. See 1837/1979.

1979 O Kabouras Ki H Alepou. Nestora G. Xounou. Illustrated by Mich(ales) Benetoulia. Pamphlet. Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones #12. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $3.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is a single story that is #12 in the series Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones and reappears in the collection Paramythia tou Aisopou, Pemptos Tomos, listed under 1992/95. I have six of the eighteen pamphlets in the series. Others in this series are listed under 1975/79 and 1979. Here the only indication of date is given on the back cover, which lists the titles in the series. Benetoulia gives characters human objects but little human clothing. Thus the lobster wandering on land carries a hobo's stick with a sack tied onto it. I think the point here is that the lobster should have stayed in the water.

1979 Once in a Wood: Ten Tales from Aesop.  Adapted and illustrated by Eve Rice.  NY: Greenwillow Read‑alone Books: a Division of William Morrow and Co.  $10 through Cardijn, '85.

1979 Onkel Remus erzählt. . . Joel Chandler Harris; ins Deutsche übertragen von Eliška Glaserová. Illustrationen von Ota Janeček. Zweite Auflage.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Hanau am Main: Verlag Werner Dausien.  See 1965/79.

1979 Quick Wits and Nimble Fingers.  Bernice Wells Carlson.  Dolores Marie Rowland, illustrator and art advisor.  Dust jacket.  Nashville: Abingdon.  $4 at Schroeder's, Milwaukee, August, '96.

1979 Satiric Fable in English: A Critical Study of the Animal Tales of Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden and Orwell. By Rama Rani Lall. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. New Delhi: New Statesman Publishing Company. $4.50 from Skyline Books, NY, April, '97.

This is a comparative study of five works: Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale"; Spenser's "Mother Hubberds Tale"; Dryden's "The Hind and the Panther"; Gay's fables; and Orwell's "Animal Farm." In the preface, the author admits that Gay does not really belong in this study, but his fables are too important to omit him. What is satiric fable? "We may define the satiric fable as a humorous allegorical tale of varying length in prose or verse, having animal characters, whose actions serve as a basis for satirizing existing persons, policies or institutions. If in the tale the narrator slyly points the finger of scorn and ridicule at the world as it too often is, the world of self-interest, greed and cunning, the result is a satiric fable" (4). Satiric fables, like the stories about Brer Rabbit, are to be distinguished from moral fables, like the fables of Aesop. Some will have questions to raise here about the length of some of the "fables" that Lall considers. 

1979 Skylos, Kokoras kai Alepou. G. Tsoukala. Illustrated by Nikos Neiros. Pamphlet. Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones #6. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. See 1975/79.

1979 Tales from Tartary. Retold by James Riordan. Illustrated by Anthony Colbert. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. NY: Russian Tales II: The Viking Press. $9.60 from Second Story Books Warehouse, Dec., '10.

Originally published in Great Britain by Kestrel Books: Penguin, Harmondsworth, Middlesex. The content of this book is "Yerensay's Forty Fables," and I bought the book because they are labelled fables. At first glance, they seem more like the "Tales of 1001 Nights," replete with jealous boots, demons, giants, genies, and winds that pick people up and deliver them long distances away. I was surprised, then, to find some of the stories that have none of these magical elements and more of a fable's tenor. Among them are "The Nightingale's Song" (33), about a nightingale who finds a clever way to escape from his cage; "The Wolf and the Tailor" (59), exactly in form like fables in which a ready destroyer is deceived by asking him to allow some action first; "Two Lazy Brothers" (94), who give up lying under an apple tree waiting for apples to fall because they realize that they would have to expend the effort of chewing them; "Two Badgers" (115), which warns that badgers should not dream of hunting camels; "The Clever Brothers" (116) about the perception-skills of the brothers; "Who Is the Mightiest in the World?" (122), which is the traditional story of marrying a daughter to the greatest, here beginning unusually with ice; "The Poor Man and His Thousand Tanga" (125) about a clever ruse to get a thief to repay a loan; "The Leaning Silver Birch" (129) about duping an arrogant rich man into playing the fool; and "Upon Jewel Mountain" (131) about outwitting an abusive master. A favorite word here is "aul," a group of tents. There are lively cuts, about one to a story. A good example illustrates "Upon Jewel Mountain" (134). These cuts show up even better in color on the dust-jacket. There are a Tof C (7), maps (8-9), glossary (161-2), and commentary (163-171). This volume follows the first in the "Russian Tales" series, Riordan's Tales from Central Russia.

1979 Tales from the Panchatantra. Retold by Leonard Clark. Illustrations by Jeroo Roy. Dust jacket. London: Evans Brothers. $4 at Shakespeare, Aug., '94. Extra copy without dust jacket for $4.98 from Bell's Books, Palo Alto, Aug., '94.

I like this little book. Its eleven stories, many of which are in Kalila and Dimna, are enhanced with very sharp black-and-white and especially nice white-and-black illustrations. Many of the stories have a different twist here. "The Mice and the Elephants" (7) has the latter first removing themselves at the request of the former, then being caught in nets, and finally being freed by the mice. "The Deer's Story" (11) gets confused, I believe, on the question of who is possessed and beaten. Right-mind and Wrong-Mind (15, this edition does well with proper names) set up their deal differently: they will see whether the hidden money grows or shrinks. They make two withdrawals together. In the end, the onion-thief (21) goes through all three possible punishments; that is part of the story's irony, first clear to me here. The mouse himself tells his own story about the way Big-Rump, the guest, put an end to his stealing from Hairy-Ear the monk (27). "The Heron and the Crab" (37) is told less well than elsewhere. TT's illustration gets a record for the longest pole (44-45). "The Monkey and the Crocodile" (47) has some strange further episodes added at the end. The same happens in "The Loyal Mungoose" (59), where the woman puts the blame on the man.

1979 The Beautiful Rat. Written and Illustrated by Kaethe Zemach. Written and Illustrated by Kaethe Zemach. Hardbound. NY: Four Winds Press. $0.25 from Milwaukee Public Library Book Cellar, July, '04. 

Here is Kaethe Zemach's approach to the classic tale about parents finding the best mate for a beautiful daughter. The approach here may be unusual for choosing rats rather than mice. Their daughter Yoshiko is well known in the rat world for her beauty, her running, and her leaps. In this version, Yoshiko's father prefers a gentleman rat, but her mother thinks her too special for such a marriage. Yoshiko does not care; she spends her time playing with friends, including a musician named Toshio. After a good deal of arguing between husband and wife, they travel with Yoshiko to the sun. Mother proclaims to the sun that they are looking for a very great husband for Yoshiko. The sun says that he has no time to get married. If they want the greatest husband, they should consider the cloud, who is stronger than he. In this version, the cloud then happens to appear, as the wind does after him. The wind answers that he spends all his time rushing around and so would not be a good husband. He introduces them to the stone wall, at which they happen to have arrived with the wind's blowing. Yoshiko leaps and shouts that she will not marry the old stone wall. Despite hurt feelings, the wall understands and asks why she would marry a wall when she can have a rat for a husband. They nibble holes right through him. Everyone is happy with this resolution, and Yoshiko marries Toshio. The illustrations feature blue and orange in various shades. The book has a library binding, and is ex libris from the Milwaukee Public Library.

1979 The Children's Carpenter: An Easter Fable. Written by Katherine L. West. Designed by Lorraine A. Ward. Lake Oswego, OR: Amata Graphics. $2.50 at Holland's Books, Portland, March, '96.

A curious sideways book whose main claim to fame is probably the ribbon affixed to the cover saying "Easter Joy." An old carpenter teaches children to carve as he finishes renovating Pilotte's church in time for Easter. He has fashioned the new crucifix himself. But the crucified Jesus is smiling, and the people, finding this fact a sacrilege, ostracize him. Soon they find him dead at home with this motto carved in the mantel over his hearth: "Every day is Easter." Are the icons mixed up on the credits-page near the end? The non-religious seems to be wearing the habit!

1979 The City Witch & the Country Witch. By Jay Williams. Pictures by Ed Renfro. Hardbound. Printed in USA. NY: Macmillan Publishing Co. $5 from Bibelots & Books, Seattle, July, '00.

Here is a playful variation on TMCM. Belladonna in the city makes things go. She wants a holiday. Foxglove in the country makes things grow. She too wants a holiday. They discover each other's advertisements and switch places. At first they enjoy themselves, but soon find themselves failing at the tasks which people expect these good witches to perform for them. Each uses a little ingenuity to find a way to use her special gifts to help. And people learn to ask them to do what they can do. Both return and are happy to live at home, though they look forward to the same vacations next year.

1979 The Fables of Aesop: Selected, told anew and their history traced by Joseph Jacobs. Done into Pictures by Richard Heighway. Facsimile. Hardbound. London: Facsimile Classics Series: Godfrey Cave Associates. $19.94 from Powell's, Portland, OR, July, '11.

The original of this book was published in 1894 by Macmillan. It has been reprinted quite often, for example by Schocken. This is the best facsimile reprint I have seen. Heighway's brilliant black-and-white work comes alive again here! This copy is in very good condition. I love Heighway's work! There are 220 pages, followed by a two-page AI. Like the original, this book gets going with a left-page frontispiece of two scenes showing FS; a title page with ornate left and right borders; a right-page dedication to Prof. F.J. Child; a preface signed by Jacobs beginning on the right page (ix) and ending over a design on xii; a "Contents" page; "A Short History of the Aesopic Fable" (xv-xxii); "List of Fables" (xxiii-xxv) including eighty-two fables numbered here but not in the text; a left-page showing a hand holding a mirror's reflection of a demon and a right page with a framed scroll of a title ("The Fables of Aesop"); and finally "The Cock and the Pearl" (2-3). As in the original, the illustrations, titles, and closing designs are very distinct. Among the best are "The Hart & the Hunter" (64), "The Fox & the Cat" (90), "The Shepherd's Boy" (103), "The Four Oxen & The Lion" (123), and GGE (134). My, what searching around Powell's won't turn up!

1979 The Fables of Aesop. Selected, told Anew and their history traced by Joseph Jacobs. Done into Pictures by Richard Heighway. Paperbound. NY: Schocken Books. See 1894/1979.

1979 The Fables of Aesop. Selected, told Anew and their history traced by Joseph Jacobs. Done into Pictures by Richard Heighway. Facsimile printed in Hong Kong. NY: Mayflower Books. See 1894/1979.

1979 The Fabulous Fox. An anthology of fact and fiction. By Johanna Johnston. Illustrated with photographs and prints. Dust jacket. NY: Dodd, Mead and Company. $4.50 at Bluestem, Lincoln, NE, May, '91.

A book to join those on cats, bunnies, and frogs. Four fables: FWT has a Bouget engraving. FG gives two conflicting morals. FC has a French engraving. "The Fox, the Hound, and the Leopard" (68) is taken from Joseph Gaer, Fables of India (1955).

1979 The Fox and the Raven. By Ruth Hürlimann. Translated and adapted by Brian Alderson. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Printed in Italy. Middlesex: Kestrel Books. £ 20 from Stella Books, Tintern, Monmouthshire, Nov., '03.

Atlantis Verlag in Zurich apparently published the original of this book in German in 1972. Longman Young published it in English in the same year. This edition is identified as a reissue of that imprint, but it is not clear to me that the publisher is the same, even though the English copyright belongs to Kestrel in 1972. This is a landscape-formatted book that expands FC. Left-hand pages feature text and black-and-white designs, while right-hand pages each offer one colored illustration that fills the page. The fox's many attempts at finding food on the story's night bring him to a rooster who says that he sees the farmer's hounds coming. Ducks, hares, and mice similarly outsmart and elude him. As the night is ending, he comes upon a raven with a "knob" of cheese in his mouth, and the fox invites him to join in a chorus to the rising sun. The raven succumbs to the first temptation. The raven is soon able to feast on berries, and then he again squawks his chorus to the rising sun. Good condition.

1979 The Garden of Joys. An anthology of oriental anecdotes, fables and proverbs. Translated and related by Henry Cattan. Illustrated by Christian Buléon. Dust jacket. London: Namara Publications. $4.95, Oct., '91.

A delightful book in three sections. The last two sections tell Joha stories and give isolated proverbs: both seem good and lively. The first section mixes fables and anecdotes of good humor, frequently salty. There are several that I do not get. I find nine Aesopic fables in the group, four illustrated: "The Astrologer and the Well" (25), WC (44), "The Goat on the Roof and the Wolf" (49), and "The Cat as Judge" (53). Two fables are told in unusual form: "The Camel, the Salt, and the Wool" (31) and 2W (103; the man loses his beard!). Other fables include "The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox" (19), BC (48), and "The Lioness" (77). The illustrations are simple.

1979 The Grasshopper and the Ant: La Fontaine's Fables Vol. 1. (Ra Fuonte-Nu-Guwa.) One of a set of three boxed together; the other two are The Hen and a Golden Egg and The Two Pigeons. Translated by Yasuko Kawada. Published by Tetsuro Kohara. Dust jacket. Tokyo: Tamagawa University Press. ¥2000 for the set at Miwa, Kanda, July, '96.

A really beautiful set of three books. Pack and his wife picked this as their favorite when we reviewed a great day's findings from Kanda. In this first volume, a T of C at the Japanese front is followed by sixteen fables presented in Japanese script with delightful brown cartoons. Then on 57-61 we find the unadorned French texts going in the Western direction! The fables here include GA, SS (skipped in the French section), "The Swallow and Her Young," BC, "The Fox and the Rooster," "Juno and the Peacock" (skipped in the French), "The Merchant, the Gentleman, the Shepherd, and the Son of the King," FK, "The Fly and the Ant" (skipped in the French), "The Fisherman and the Small Fish," "The Dying Farmer and His Sons," TB (skipped in the French), SW, "The Animals Sick from the Plague," "The Cat, the Weasel, and the Young Rabbit," and FG. The best of the illustrations, I think, are those for "The Fly and the Ant" and "The Cat, the Weasel, and the Young Rabbit." The beautiful dust jacket and cover present a front stage whose top is formed by a frog, insects, suns, and grapes; on the stage are foxes, birds, camels, a bear sniffing a corpse, a weasel, two grasshoppers, and a smiling cat with a bell around its neck. The Japanese back cover features a grouping of sun, clouds, donkey, rooster, and peacock. Just about every character mentioned in the book gets into one of the two art works!

1979 The Hen and a Golden Egg: La Fontaine's Fables Vol. 2. (Ra Fuonte-Nu-Guwa.) One of a set of three boxed together; the other two are The Grasshopper and the Ant and The Two Pigeons. Translated by Yasuko Kawada. Published by Tetsuro Kohara. Dust jacket. Tokyo: Tamagawa University Press. ¥2000 for the set at Miwa, Kanda, July, '96.

A really beautiful set of three books. Pack and his wife picked this as their favorite when we reviewed a great day's findings from Kanda. In this second volume, a T of C at the Japanese front is followed by seventeen fables presented in Japanese script with delightful green cartoons. Then on 56-63 we find the unadorned French texts going in the Western direction! The fables here include GGE, FC, WL, 2B, "The Hornets and the Honeybees," "The Wishes," SS, "The Swan and the Cook," "The Wolf, the Mother, and the Child," "The Horoscope," 2P, "The Satyr and the Passerby," "The Cockerel, the Cat, and the Young Mouse," "The Sick Lion and the Fox," "The Monkey and the Leopard," "The Old Man and the Three Young Men," and "The Two Friends." The best of the illustrations, I think, are those for "The Hornets and the Honeybees" and "The Monkey and the Leopard." The beautiful dust jacket and cover present a front stage whose top is formed by a fox, birds, a lion, and a pig and whose bottom features insects. On the stage are geese, a crow, an elephant, and acrobatic monkeys. The Japanese back cover features a circle with a golden egg, a monkey, a fly, and a cat each getting a quadrant.

1979 The Illustrated Book of World Fables. Collected by Yong Yap Cotterell. Dust jacket. London: Book Club Associates. $12 from Yoffees, April, '92.

A curious book containing one hundred "fables." The introduction gives a key: following Robert Louis Stevenson--second only to Aesop in representation here--the collector finds that the key to fable is its suggestiveness of other dimensions. This position is taken in deliberate reaction to a Victorian sense of fable as morally uplifting. The selection of fables made according to this criterion is thus various and surprising, including specimens that the introduction itself recognizes as close to parables (e.g., Chinese fables), that develop the story for its own sake (e.g., medieval fabliaux), or that aim only at humor (e.g., Poggio's renaissance facetiae). The result "leaves the reader to resolve for himself what may be meant"; this is "not a comforting collection of moral tales." Artists run from Ulm to Thurber through Gheeraerts, Rackham, Condé, Hellé, lots of Eastern art, and E.R. Herman (new to me). The selection is impressive. New stories I find good include: "Forgetfulness" (35), "Two Sons" (65), "The Prescient Goldsmith" (65), "Worth" (82), "The Servant and the Master" (97), and "The Father and the Son" (139). AI at the back. Acknowledgements on 159: Aesop is from V.S. Vernon Jones (unacknowledged) and Handford, the latter fables marked by their catchy but obscure titles.

1979 The Illustrated Book of World Fables. Collected by Yong Yap Cotterell. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Leicester, UK: Windward. £6.5 from Stella, Hay-on-Wye, UK,

This book reproduces exactly the same book as published by Book Club Associates in the same year. Even the printer is the same. I presume that the Book Club Associates edition is the more original and expensive. This one refers to BCA's copyright. This copy adds an ISBN number. It cost £4.95 at the time of printing. See my comments under the other edition. This book was in someone's attic for a while: I can smell it from a distance!

1979 The Lion and the Mouse. An Aesop Fable. Pictures by Ed Young. London: Ernest Benn. $1.98 at New England Mobile Book Fair?

Delightful single-frame pictures. I would love to use one or two of them if I get a chance to present the story. This book presents a different moral from most for this fable: a change in circumstance makes the strong weak and vice versa.

1979 The Lion and the Rat (Japanese). Text from La Fontaine. Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith. Originally published as The Lion and the Rat, (c)1963. Eighth edition. Tokyo: Rakuda Publishing Design Co. See 1979?/79.

1979 The Old-Fashioned Children's Storybook. Edited and designed by Zena Flax. Illustrators: Caldecott, Willcox Smith, Crane, Greenaway, Rackham, and (for Aesop) M. Boutet de Monvel. Dust jacket. (c)Franklin Watts. NY: Grosset & Dunlap. $3.98 at New England Mobile Book Fair, March, '89.

A charming little book. For the first time, I have some illustrations by Boutet de Monvel. Unfortunately, they come out the poorest of the illustrations here! Aesop/LaFontaine are represented by MM, OF, and TH, each of which has a different-from-usual twist in its telling.

1979 The Old-Fashioned Children's Storybook. Edited and designed by Zena Flax. Illustrators: Caldecott, Willcox Smith, Crane, Greenaway, Rackham, and (for Aesop) M. Boutet de Monvel. (c)Franklin Watts. Wanderer Books. NY: Simon & Schuster. $7 at Antiquarium, June, '93.

Identical with an adjacent listing, except that the publisher and paper color have changed. Here the paper is cream-colored rather than white. See my comments there.

1979 The Souls of Lambs: A Fable. Text by Don Mitchell. Drawings by Georgann Schroeder. First edition. Dust jacket. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. $16 from Barbara and Bill Yoffee, March, '94.

A strange sideways-formatted book. From reading the first quarter or so, I have trouble finding a more specific literary category for it than "reflective narrative." Two predilections stand out. First, the main character has a morbid preoccupation with his wife's death in childbirth while he was haying. Second, there is heavy reflective dwelling on natural and biological processes, including and especially dying, eating, and reproducing. Rotting, killing, husbandry, and the soul receive a great deal of attention. Digestion, for example, is a matter of many bacteria inside us breaking down the food before we break it down further.

1979 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. An Aesop Fable illustrated by T.R. Garcia. Mahwah, NJ: Troll Associates. $2.50 through Cardijn, '85.

Cute but simple figures. Many of the drawings lack color and definition.

1979 The Two Pigeons: La Fontaine's Fables Vol. 3. (Ra Fuonte-Nu-Guwa.) One of a set of three boxed together; the other two are The Grasshopper and the Ant and The Hen and a Golden Egg. Translated by Yasuko Kawada. Published by Tetsuro Kohara. Dust jacket. Tokyo: Tamagawa University Press. ¥2000 for the set at Miwa, Kanda, July, '96.

A really beautiful set of three books. Pack and his wife picked this as their favorite when we reviewed a great day's findings from Kanda. In this third volume, a T of C at the Japanese front is followed by twelve fables and an epilogue presented in Japanese script with delightful blue cartoons. Then on 54-59 we find the unadorned French texts going in the Western direction! The fables here include "The Two Pigeons," OR, DW, MM, "The Lion Going to War," LM, AD, "The Old Man and His Children," "The Cobbler and the Banker," "The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox," "The Citizen of the Danube," and TMCM. The best of the illustrations, I think, are those for OR, "The Old Man and His Children," "The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox," and TMCM. The beautiful dust jacket and cover present a front stage of a monkey, elephants, a mouse, a lion, and a jackal, surrounded by birds, a ram, and rabbits; the Japanese back cover features a diamond of elephants, lions, antelope, and foxes moving around a wolf's head.

1979 The Vengeful Frog and the Smart Hare and Other Stories from the Treasury of Hebrew Parables (Hebrew).  Yehudit Dishon.  Illustrated by Giora Carmy.  Hardbound.  Tel Aviv: Am Oved Publishers.  $20 from Joshua Jakobovich, Shiloh, Israel, Oct., '21.

1979 To Katsiki Ki O Lykos Pou Epaize Phlogera. Nestora G. Xounou. Illustrated by Mich(ales) Benetoulia. Pamphlet. Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones #14. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $3.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is a single story that is #14 in the series Paramythia tou Aisopou Me Eikones and reappears in the collection Paramythia tou Aisopou, Tetartos Tomos, listed under 1986/96. I have six of the eighteen pamphlets in the series. Others in this series are listed under 1975/79 and 1979. Here the only indication of date is given on the back cover, which lists the titles in the series. Benetoulia gives characters human objects but little human clothing. This pamphlet may have the best art in the series. One can feel the wolf's pride in his music and the goat's ability to enjoy simple pleasures peacefully. One of the best illustrations has the wolf running away as an arrow pierces his cap above his head.

1979 Tortoise the Trickster and other folktales from Cameroon. Loreto Todd. Drawings by Geoffrey Whittam. Dust jacket. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. $2.95 at Strand, Jan., '90.

A delightful book of twenty-four stories. Four are Aesopic: TH (#4, identical with "The Hedgehog and the Hare"); "The Tortoise, the Goat, and the Lion" (#7, about learning how to divide); "Two Goats" (#20); and DS (#24). The last, with a good illustration, has the dog jump in. Also funny: #5 and 13 (which provokes the good frontispiece art). Typical African: #11, 17, and 19. Simple household dialogue spins the stories together. I want to look for the author's Some Day Been Dey.

1979 Uit de Middelnederlandse fabelbundel Esopet.  Renaat Bosschaert.  Introduction by Karel Van Isacker.  #26 of 140; signed by Bosschaert.  Portfolio.  Bruges: Renaat Bosschaert.  €135 from Peter Everaers, Hulst, Netherlands, Dec., '21.

1979 World Tales. The extraordinary coincidence of stories told in all times, in all places. Collected by Idries Shah. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. $15 from Renaissance, June, '96. Extra copy without dust jacket for $15 at Moe's, Aug., '93.

A wild array of sixty-five stories and illustrations by various contemporary artists. Ten items mention or bear upon Aesop. They include "Don't Count Your Chickens" (18), which claims that it is eggs which are smashed in Aesop; "The Hawk and the Nightingale" (20, from Hesiod); "The Grateful Animals and The Ungrateful Man" (68, from Kalila and Dimna); "The Blind Ones and The Matter of the Elephant" (84); "The Brahmin's Wife and the Mongoose" (106); "The Lamb with the Golden Fleece" (142, from the Jatakas); "The Ass in the Pantherskin" (162); "The Serpent" (170); "The Fox and the Hedgehog" (236); and "The Slowest May Win The Race" (252). Page 236 shows one of the more egregious errors I have seen in a while: the claim is made that Caxton published 850 years after Aesop (620 B.C.). Someone was not paying attention to his/her BC's and AD's. The extra copy unfortunately has some pencilling and other markings (2, 150, 152-3, and 244); in it 110 is torn.

1979 World Tales. The extraordinary coincidence of stories told in all times, in all places. Collected by Idries Shah. #487 of 550. Calf binding. NY: Johnson Reprint Corporation. $35 at Powell's (Chicago), Dec., '93.

See my comments on the original (?) listed under the same date. This edition makes liberal changes with the other, especially in format. It adds, for example, a strong frontispiece picture.

1979 17 Fabeln von La Fontaine.  Übertragen von Rolf Mayr.  Paint et ecrit par Marie Angel.  Boxed.  Paperbound.  Salzburg: Bilderbuchstudio Verlag Neugebauer Press.  $12.50 from Collins Books, Seattle, through ABE, Oct., '20.

1979/80 The Lion and the Mouse. An Aesop Fable. Pictures by Ed Young. Benn Book Collection. First edition in the USA. Second Printing, 1980. Printed in England. Garden City: Doubleday & Company. $4.80 at Powell's, Chicago, March, '93.

The same book as the edition of 1979 but with a slightly different spine and title page. The illustrations here may be a bit darker. See my comments on the original.

1979/80 The Lion and the Mouse. Ed Young. Hardbound. Garden City: Benn Book Collection: Doubleday. $5 from Bluestem, Lincoln, NE, Jan., '13.

Here is yet another copy of the 1980 reprinting of the 1979 original. Whereas, though, that 1980 copy has a flat-textured cover, gold coloring for "The Lion" in the title, and several lines of bibliographical information on the back cover, this copy has a white cloth cover with a perceptible weave in the cloth, brown lettering for "The Lion," and a back cover blank except for the picture of the mouse snuggling in the lion's tail. As I wrote there, I do not find much difference from the 1979 original publication. 

1979/80 Wie die Maus den Löwen rettete. Aesops Fabel. Illustriert von Ed Young. 1979 original The Lion and the Mouse: An Aesop Fable (Ernest Benn). Zürich und München: Artemis Verlag. Gift of Eva-Maria Kieser, '82.

Very well done, with beautiful detailed illustrations. A good example of contemporary work with a single fable (and in another language).

1979/81 Fables de la Fontaine. Marie Angel. Published together with an English translation by Sir Edward Marsh. Boxed with an insert. Dust jacket. (c)1979 Hermann Schroedel Verlag. (c)1981 Neugebauer Press. London: Neugebauer Press. $12.50 at Schroeder.

Beautiful, lavish, tasteful illustrations of the seventeen fables presented in this oversize book. Among the best: LM, AD, and the finis picture. I found this at Schroeder's on my second or third try there. We did some good haggling for a book marked $17.50. A different lavish approach from, e.g., Holder's, explained in detail on the inside cover of the insert.

1979/82 Als die Tiere Noch Sprechen Konnten. Iwan Franko. Aus dem Ukrainischen von Evelyn Riswanowa und Iwan Soiko. Illustrationen von Sergiy Artjuschenko. 1982 printing. Paperbound. Kiev: Verlag Wesselka. DM 8 from the Dresdener Antiquariat, Dresden, July, '01.

I have a copy of this book in its 1979 printing. Here is a copy of the 1982 printing. I will include comments made there. Close in its selection of stories to my When the Animals Could Talk: Fables (1984). This edition adds "Murko und Burko" (the outwitting cat is outwitted by the victim dog, 67) and "Wie eine Meise das Meer in Brand Stecken Wollte" (the insect, who lost his nest on the shore to the ocean, finally gets to the creature who could supply avenging fire, but what it gets from this eagle is rather a lecture on where it ought to build its nest, 81). Clever illustrations (not by Kryha from 1984) here nicely frame the text, complemented by frequent full-page illustrations of several colors. The best of these may show the wolf getting into the sack a second time to show the fox how it happened (15) and the blue fox (77). New stories do not start a new page. Many stories have several phases; individual phases employ standard folk themes. "Drei Säcke List" (64) is the story of a wonderful turn-around. "Der Blaugestrickene Fuchs" (71) yelps with the foxes at his anniversary party. This 1982 printing adds two lines on the last page. These may give an ordering number and a recommended price. Both copies show a copyright of 1976 for the illustrations and of 1979 for the translation.

1979/82 LaFontaine: Selected Fables. Translated by James Michie. Introduction by Geoffrey Grigson. Middlesex, NY: Penguin Books. $8.95 at Tattered Cover, March, '94. Extra copy for $2 in earlier, smaller format but with the same bibliographical information. Work copy for $4.95 at Rizzoli, Chicago, Nov., '86.

Surprising. This book is identical--down to the typeface, I think--with the Viking editions (1979), minus the illustrations. The surprise is that I see no acknowledgement here of the Viking edition, perhaps because Penguin is owned by Viking? Michie is a good translator.  The copy in smaller format reverses the cover illustration.

1979/86 Aesop's Fables for young readers. Laurel Hicks, Editor. Illustrated by Stan Shimmin. Printed in Pensacola, FL: A Beka Book: A Ministry of Pensacola Christian College. $10 from Alibris, April, '00.

This edition enhances the 1976 (original?) printing. See my comments there. The edition adds several things. First, it literally puts a sturdier cover around the former book. Thus what was the cover has become the title-page. I see only one change on that title-page: from "A Division of Pensacola Christian College," Beka Books has become "A Ministry of Pensacola Christian College." The cover, the design of which is new, sets up an infinite regress: the fox holds a book showing a fox holding a book…. The inside front cover has a guide to story themes under headings like "Ambition," "Aspirations," Beauty," and "Character." The outside title has added a phrase to the simpler "Aesop's Fables," still kept on the title-page. Again, there is significant pencilling in a book otherwise in good condition.

1979/87 Stories from Panchatantra. By Shivkumar. Illustrated by Anil Vyas. Hardbound. 1987 reprinting. Printed in New Delhi, India. New Delhi, India: Children's Book Trust. $7.95 from Carousel Books, Charlottesville, VA, April, '98.

This large-format children's book offers some twenty-eight well-told stories with a variety of multi-colored and two-colored illustrations. The story versions and the illustrations follow the patterns set in the series "Stories from Panchatantra" from Children's Book Trust. The stories even follow in exactly the same order as they do in the three (of five?) of these booklets that I have. The text of "The King's Choice" (174), is not the same verbatim as Shivkumar's text in his stand-alone booklet in 1971, but it follows the same story line. (Note that this 1971 "The King's Choice" by Parents' Magazine Press acknowledges Children's Book Trust's copyright on the text.) Thus this version, like the 1971 publication, brings a happy ending to the sad story of the camel's self-sacrifice. The king stops the crow, fox, and leopard from pouncing on the camel just after he has offered himself. Instead, King Lion announces that he will eat all four in the order in which they have offered themselves. When the other three flee, the lion offers the camel his lifelong friendship. Among the helpful illustrations in this book is that of the crocodile weeping underwater (15). The art has a slightly psychedelic cast and coloration. Because I am well acquainted with Kalilah and Dimna, my eye falls here on the stories that are not included there. Thus I enjoy particularly "The Musical Donkey" (38), "The Girl Who Married a Snake" (53), "The Lion-Makers" (78), "The Jackal Who Killed No Elephants" (82), "A Wise Old Bird" (143), and "The Thief's Sacrifice" (150). Here it is an iron beam that one friend leaves with another (59); it is all he has left after raising cash for his travels. And here the crow carries the mouse on his back in "The Four Friends" (121). In "The Brahmin and the Goat" (137), the three robbers claim that they see different animals on the Brahmin's shoulders: a dog, a dead calf, and a donkey.

1979/88/89 Oriental Stories for Young and Old. Leon Comber. Illustrated by Teo Kim Heng and Lo Koon-Chiu. Singapore: Graham Brash. $5.95 at Green Apple, Dec., '90.

A very pleasing little book, with a collection of fables, exemplary human tales, fairytales, and etiological stories from China, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and Northeast Asia. There are four Aesopic fables: "The Woodcutter and the Fox" (16); TT (52, both from China); "The Man, His Son, and Their Buffalo" (105, from Malaysia); and "The Lion and the Rat" (121, from Japan). "The Monkey and the Turtle" from Malaysia features the common fable motif "Oh, I left my heart at home."

1979/93 Stories from Panchatantra.  Shivkumar.  Illustrated by Anil Vyas.  1993 reprinting.  Hardbound.  New Delhi, India: Children's Book Trust.  $4.75 from Thrift World, Omaha, April, '19.

1979/95 Aesop's Fables. Vernon Thomas. Reboti Bhushan. Hardbound. Printed in India. New Delhi: Hemkunt Press. $7 from Nataraj Books, Inc., Springfield, VA, Nov., '00.

This book contains twenty-five fables, with a simple and lively colored illustration for each. There is a T of C on 3. The tellings are standard. The best of the illustrations may be "The Kid and the Wolf" (39), which appropriately also makes it onto the cover of the book. Some of the illustrations, like the frontispiece of Aesop teaching, end up being too dark. "The Hare and Her Friends" is included in prose (22). "The Hen and Her Chicks" (49) is new to me: a young chick disobeys his mother hen by going to close to a well, sees his reflection in the water, and decides to go in and to fight the chick he sees. He drowns. "The Hawk, the Rooks and the Cat" (51) is likewise new to me. A cat stays long enough to be trusted by a blind hawk baby-sitter, eats the baby rooks the hawk is supposed to be taking care of, and then makes sure that the blame is pinned on the hawk. Also new to me: "The Stag, the Crow and the Wolf" (61). There's a typo in the last line of 54. Though this book is new, I would not predict a long life for its spine.

1979/2000 Fabels van Aesopus. In verzen verteld en ingeleid door Johan van Nieuwenhuizen. Illustrations from J. van Vianen. Second Printing. Paperbound. Utrecht: Prisma: Het Spectrum. €5 from Hinderickx & Winderickx Antiquariaat, Utrecht, July, '09.

This book is a second printing of the 1979 edition, based in turn on the 1964 edition of van Hoeve. The circular 1701 engravings of van Vianen continue to come off very successfully, partially because of the good paper they are printed on here. There is a strong engraving on each left-hand page, and the corresponding single fable text on each right-hand page. T of C at the front. The title-page is beginning to separate from the binding.

1979? Aesop's Fables. Told by Margaret Hughes. Illustrated by Sara Silcock. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books Inc., A Division of Book Sales Inc. $18 from The Bookstack, Sudbury, Ontario, through Bibliocity, April, '99.

This book replicates exactly the edition copyrighted 1979 by Albany Books. See my extensive comments there.

1979? Aesop's Fables. [Thai]. Volume 1. Children's Edition. Bangkok: Sermwitbannaakaan: Polytechnic Education Ltd. ("The Wolf and the Lamb" pictured on cover.) $.80 at weekend market in Bangkok, June, '90.

A strange little booklet. The first nine stories are vintage Aesop, finishing with a boxed moral in English and illustrated by (xeroxed?) polychrome and monochrome work of Robert Ayton in his small Ladybird editions of 1974. At 49, the boxed morals drop, and the illustrations are taken from elsewhere. Might some of these stories not be Aesopic fables? At 86, Ayton starts again, but with pictures joined from his "The Boastful Traveller" and TB. The images on 25 and 26 were originally one picture in Ayton. Page 49's wolf (with the crane) is taken from BW on 10 of Volume 2. One lion design is used four times. My, what one finds when one looks!

1979? Aesop's Fables. [Thai]. Volume 2. Illustrated Edition. Bangkok: Sermwitbannaakaan: Polytechnic Education Ltd. ("The Wolf and the Crane" pictured on cover.) $.80 at weekend market in Bangkok, June, '90.

Fifteen fables. The title page here does not say "Aesop's Fables" in English. The story from the cover picture is not in this book! Here all the illustrations are taken from Ayton, and all the fables have English morals. The "hillside wolves" illustration is used twice, once poorly for BW. The boxes wander, sometimes around the English, sometimes around the Thai, or both. Advertisements near the end of each booklet relate the two volumes.

1979? Fables de la Fontaine.  Paint et ecrit par Marie Angel.  Boxed.  Paperbound.  Salzburg: BilderbuchStudio Verlag Neugebauer Press.  $12.50 from Collins Books, Seattle, through ABE, Oct., '20.

1979? Seven Original Fables.  Lini. R. Grol, with Lini R Grol scissorcuts.  Signed by Lini R. Grol.  Paperbound.  Fonthill, Ontario: Trillim.  $8 from The Book Scouts, Fort Gratiot, MI, June, '17.

1979? The Hare and the Tortoise. A PSS Mini Pop-up book. Illustrated by Irana Shepherd. Los Angeles: Price/Stern/Sloan. $2.50.

Good pop-ups, some of which even incorporate a bit of action, for example when the hare rises up tired or when the race-finishing judge waves the checkered flag. See my near-identical Spanish version under 1979.

1979? The Tortoise and the Hare: Peter Pan Book & Record. Illustrated by Chris Santora. Paperbound. Printed in USA. Newark: Peter Pan Book & Record: Peter Pan Industries. $1.99 from Phyllis Berman, Toledo, OH, through Ebay, August, '00.

I am confused about the time relationship this item bears to one listed with the same name and publisher under 1980. This item is apparently older but in better condition. It lists fewer recent book and record titles. These end here at Number 1983, whereas they end in the other item at 1999. It also lacks the bar code found on the back cover of the other item. Finally, it changes the lines just below "Book and Record" on the cover. Here is what I wrote of the other copy: "This is a pamphlet about 7" x 7½" containing a 45 rpm record. The illustration style is decidedly juvenile. A typical and revealing illustration has Toby the Tortoise dragging Hippy the Hare to the starting line. Toby decides to 'take a quick nap.' At the end Toby creeps 'off into the woods, alone and ashamed, but much wiser for having learned an important lesson.' There are sections of verse in the booklet, no doubt sung on the recording."

1979?/79 The Lion and the Rat (Japanese). Text from La Fontaine. Illustrations by Brian Wildsmith. Originally published as The Lion and the Rat, (c)1963. Eighth edition. Tokyo: Rakuda Publishing Design Co. 700 yen at Koshi, Tokyo, July, ’96.

See my hardbound (1963/64) and softbound (1963/86) copies. Like so many Japanese books, this one is very nicely done, from the color to the solid feel of the book.

 

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