Creighton University

• Fables Home
• Introduction & Orientation
• Books of Fables
  • Individual Books
  • Series Books
  • Publications about this collection
  • Search
• Aesop's Artifacts
• Exhibits of This Collection
• Fable Research Resources
• Links - more on Fables
• Fables - Video
• Contact Me

Aesop's Fables > Books of Fables > Individual Books > 1985 to 1989

• 1985
• 1986
• 1987
• 1988
• 1989

1985 A Book of Animals. Peter Watkins and Erica Hughes. Illustrated by William Geldart. Dust jacket. London: Julia MacRae, a division of Franklin Watts. $7 at Second Story Books, DC, Feb., '89.

A strange and delightful book on the "part animals have played in our cultural and religious life." The book bears strong testimony to Aesop's place in our culture, as his fables are mentioned apropos of the dog, the wolf, the donkey, the cat, the fox, the rabbit, and the lion. There are good black-and-white illustrations for FG; TH; and "The Lion, the Fox, and the Ass." Pages 115-6 are about fables. Written by a London vicar and a member of his parish.

1985 A Book of Dreamland Stories. Illustrated by Pamela Storey and Eric Kincaid. Printed in Hong Kong. Newmarket, England: Brimax. $5.99 at Dalton, Jan., '88.

The only Aesopic tale is "Taking a Donkey to Market" (66-71), in which there is no river or loss of the donkey. The illustrations generally are lively but predictable. At least for Aesop, there is no overlap here with the four other Kincaid books I have.

1985 A Storytime Treasury. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. Printed in Hungary. Manchester, England: Cliveden Press. $5.98 at Royal in Brookline, MA, April, '89.

Four fables in a broad-ranging collection of kids' stories in large format. The art is sentimental. CP has an unusual moral: Have the patience to keep going. LM, MSA, and SW are also here.

1985 Aesop in Japanese Clothing. By Peter Milward. Edited with notes by Shoichi Matsushima. Paperbound. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press. Gift of Peter Milward, July, '96.

Here are twenty-three fables presented in humane fashion. Milward imbeds each fable within a little essay of his own, often starting with a Japanese proverb. Thus "The Grasshopper and the Ants" is involved in a discussion of the strange Japanese propensity to work feverishly before and after college, but to treat college as a leisurely time for enjoyment (14-16). Again, Milward finds his students more like the hare than the tortoise while at college: feverishly energetic but without much sense of purpose. After graduation they turn into tortoises, working slowly and steadily--but still without much sense of purpose (26-28)! I am saddened to see WS told in the poorer form (32-34). I am surprised to learn that Aesop's BS is used in Kurosawa's Ran (41-43). In the preface, Milward makes clear that he is presenting his own favorite Aesopic fables and is presenting them in his own way. The fables themselves (5-69) are followed by a section of notes given to explaining particular English expressions or words that occur in the various chapters. This is a readable little book.

1985 Aesop's Fables. Selected and illustrated by Michael Hague. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Gift of Maureen Hester, Nov., '87. Two extra copies, one without dust jacket for $5 from Westport Bookstore, Kansas City, May, '93.

Hague did Wind in the Willows, and he follows the same style here. It is engaging, but unfortunately most of the illustrations come out quite dark. The style is distinctive, and the human costumes charming; still, I do not find here as much wit as I would have hoped for. FG and DLS may be the best for my use.

1985 Aesop's Fables. Selected and illustrated by Michael Hague. Dust jacket. Signed by Michael Hague. First edition, fifth printing. Hardbound. Printed in USA. NY: Henry Holt and Company. $9.99 from St. Johns' Revivals, Tacoma, WA, through eBay, Feb., '04.

I make a separate entry for this book because it is signed by Michael Hague. It is also, apparently, a later printing than the copies I have already included in the collection. It looks also as though the name of the publisher has changed by this time from "Holt, Rinehart and Winston" to "Henry Holt and Company." I am still not enamored of Hague's style, but I do enjoy the title-page's monkey-artist sitting on a book and creating a pen-and-ink sketch of a dandy fox. This monkey comes complete with beret and scarf! My earlier copies of this book come from early in my collecting, now almost twenty years ago.

1985 Aesop's Fables. Selected and illustrated by Michael Hague. Collector's edition, bound in genuine leather. Norwalk: The Easton Press. $18 at Powell's, Portland, July, '93.

This book seems identical, except for the publisher and the binding, with the 1985 Holt original. If anything, the illustrations here are even sharper than they are there. There is a ribbon to help you remember your place.

1985 Aesop's Fables. Retold by Lornie Leete-Hodge. Illustrated by Ronald Embleton. Hardbound. Printed in Great Britain. Southport, CT: Joshua Morris. $.75 from Denise Derusha, Syracuse, NY, July, '00.

Originally published in England by Deans International Publishing. This large-format book features lively, colorful, sentimental illustrations for its eighteen fables. A typical illustration is that of the wide-eyed lion suspended in a net on 18. Little characters added to the scene, like a mouse in the FS illustration (7), add to the fun. Many of the animals are exquisitely dressed, particularly in the illustrations for "The Monkey King" (12). In TH, the winner is to receive a feast from the loser, and hare is so confident that he has not prepared one (8). The illustration of FG (11) does not include a fox at all. We see only a crow enjoying a ripe grape. The image (24-25) of mice generals with horns attached to their heads is delightful! The versions here seem wordier than they need to be; thus it takes eleven lines before the fox meets the boar sharpening his tusks against a tree (20). In GGE (26), the golden egg has a normal shell.

1985 Aesop's Fables. No author acknowledged. No illustrations. A Watermill Classic. Mahwah, New Jersey: Watermill Press. Hardbound for $2 from Book Warehouse, Gretna, Nov., '95. Paperbound copy a gift of Linda Schlafer, Dec., '93. Extra paperbound for $1.95 at the Harvard Coop, May, '89.

The urge to put out cheap editions of Aesop continues! The versions here seem to be bent toward good story-telling. Are they taken from some earlier edition?

1985 Aesop's Fables [Korean]. Chun Ho Na and Chang Yau You. Hardbound. Seoul: Apparently fifth in a series of forty-three children's books: Yearimdang. $3 from Magus, Seattle, June, '03.

This book is an earlier duplicate of a book I have listed under 1990. The bibliographical information is, I believe, otherwise the same. This copy, rather than a front cover depicting only GA, has a melange of GA, LM, TMCM -- and a bat for good measure from "The Bat and the Birds and the Animals." As I mention there, I like this book, principally for its vivid color reproductions. Four stories: TMCM, GA (maybe the best art), "The Bat and the Birds and the Animals " (a Korean favorite), and LM (the poorest art). The back cover reverses 15.

1985 Aesop's Four Footed Fables. Drawings by Mark Stephen Neher. No editor acknowledged. 1000 softbound copies. Oakland: Star Rover House. $6.50 at New England Mobile Book Fair, April, '89.

A strange book combining typed text and crude two-colored illustrations. The best pictures are those of the dog and sow (5) and of the camel looking in the mirror (35). The text of "The Cat and the Rats" catches the point wonderfully: "...she had never seen a bag that looked like a Cat. `But once,' she said, `I saw a Cat that looked like a bag and almost lost my life.'"

1985 Aesop: The Fox and the Stork. Twenty fables re-told by Joan Tate. Illustrated by Svend Otto S. Printed in Portugal. First published in Denmark. London: Pelham. $9.95 at Schwartz, June, '87. Extra for $4.50 at Birdsong, Albuquerque, May, '93.

The illustrations are only average watercolors. The best illustrations are of the kid and wolf (7), the old man and death (9), and the fat fox (38). New to me is the story of the "Art of Reading" (40). There is a different approach here to MSA, since they bought the donkey and were trying to get him home. "No one knows how far they got."

1985 Animal Fables of India: Narayana's Hitopadesha or Friendly Counsel. Translated by Francis G. Hutchins. Illustrated by A. Ramachandran. Hardbound. First printing. Dust jacket. West Franklin, N.H.: The Amarta Press. $12 from Paul Rohe, Dec., '93.

A lovely sideways book. The introduction is excellent. It advises readers not to swallow any fable whole. Ask rather with each: Who is telling it? And does the story help or mislead? The introduction gives excellent examples of stories that fool people and/or reveal the vice of their tellers. Mistrust the proverbs! (And, boy, are the proverbs plentiful here!) The goals of this work are to help people (originally princes) to listen with care and to speak with finesse. The good notes (265) point to one other "vital theme of the Hitopadesha: that how something is said is as important as what is said." I am surprised by the single authorship of this work. I had thought it was a popular collection. Part of the goal is to provide a coherent and inspiriting ethic for rulers. Nice open pages here, with lots of illustrations. The work moves along faster, and with significantly less detail, than Wood's Kalila and Dimna (1982). The fables are listed on 269. Misprint on 94, line 8: forboding.

1985 Animal Fables of India: Narayana's Hitopadesha or Friendly Counsel. Translated by Francis G. Hutchins. Illustrated by A. Ramachandran. Paperbound. First printing. West Franklin, N.H.: The Amarta Press. $15 from Greg Williams, April, '94.

See my comments on the hardbound edition of the same year.

1985 Animal Fairy Stories: More Than 100 Enchanting Tales. Retold by Alena Benesová. Translated by Ruth Shepherd. Illustrations by Karel Franta. Hardbound. Printed in Czechoslovakia. London: Cathay Books Limited. See 1982/85.

1985 Basni. I.A. Krylov. Commentary by A.B. Desnitskiy, editor. Various artists. Shkolnaya Biblioteka Series. Moscow: Prosveshenie. $2.25 at International Bookstore, DC, Aug., '91. Extra copy for $20 from Viktor Romanchenko, Ukraine, through eBay, July, '04. 

Complete, with T of C at the back. Seven good silhouettes on the cover and end papers. The twenty-four black-and-white reproductions along the way give strong testimony to the art tradition accompanying Krylov's fables, although they are cheaply produced here. The best of them may be the FG silhouette on 135. What a bargain for the first copy! What a waste to get a second copy!

1985 Basni. Ivan Krylov. Illustrations by Ye. M. Rachyeva.  Paperbound.  Moscow: Detskaya Literatura.  See 1983/85.

1985 Cats' Tales. Feline Fairy Tales from Around the World. Illustrated by Eleonore Schmid. Editor not acknowledged. English text by Anthea Bell. Originally published 1984 in Switzerland under title Märchenkatzen - Katzenmärchen. Dust jacket. Printed in Germany. NY: North-South Books. $5.98 at Green Apple, San Francisco, Dec., '90.

This book joins Frogs (1980), Hares (1981), and The Fox Book (1971) in my collection. Two of the twenty-one tales (T of C is at the rear) are from Aesop: "Two Cats and a Loaf" (and a monkey judge, 11) and "The Fox and the Cat" (16). The former is attributed to Punjab, the latter to Germany. A pretty book.

1985 Cinq Fables Choisies de Jean de La Fontaine.  Mises en Monotype par Alec Cobbe.  11 of 20 copies; signed.  Hardbound.  London: The Stourton Press.  $288.10 from MW Books Ltd., Galway, Ireland, through ABE, May, ‘21.  

1985 Country Mouse and City Mouse. Patricia and Fredrick McKissack. Illustrated by Anne Sikorski. Prepared under the direction of Robert Hillerich. Start-Off Stories. Chicago: Childrens Press. $2.95, Dec., '86.

Another nice little kids' book, distinguished perhaps only by the use of the first person for the narration by the country mouse. The only hassle in the city that is specified comes with a garbage truck. We are quite a distance from Horace here! The mice are cute in their contemporary dress. Is the art done with acrylics?

1985 Der erste Ritt durchs Nadelöhr: Noch mehr Märchen, Fabeln & phantastische Geschichten.  Rafik Schami.  Illustrations by Erika Rapp.  Inscribed and signed by Schami.  Paperbound.  Kiel: Neuer Malik Verlag.  €25 from Antiquariat Wirthwein, Die Wortfreunde, July, '19.

1985 Der Fuchs und die Weintrauben: Schöne alte Fabeln neu erzählt. Von Alfred Könner. Illustriert von Christa Unzner-Fischer. Pamphlet. Stated first edition. Berlin: Bunte Kiste: Altberliner Verlag. DM 2 from an unknown source, July, '01.

There are eleven fables presented, each in a two-page spread, in this attractive pamphlet. The texts are presented in sense lines. The illustrations are playful and engaging, starting with the cover's reflective fox looking up at the grapes. The best of the illustrations include the title-page's fox looking knowingly at the reader as he holds up a title-banner; the frustrated fox with the stork; the free wolf running away from the chained dog; the milkmaid wrapped in thought; the crane and the wolf with bodies for a moment perfectly matched to each other; and the overstuffed hen eating candy. The grand prize goes to the gesture of the fox flattering the crow near the pamphlet's center. Well done, Christa!

1985 Der Hase und der Mond: Namibische Fabeln und Märchen erzählt von Alfred Wellm. Illustrationen von Eva Natus-Salamouon. Erste Auflage Hardbound. Berlin: Der Kinderbuchverlag. €2.50 from Revers, Berlin, August, '08.

I originally found the fourth printing of this book from 1988 at the Dresdener Antiquariat in August of 2001. Now here is a first printing. The book seems identical except for the setting of the last page and its colophon material and the ISBN numbers that appear not at all here but three times there: on the colophon page, the back cover, and the obverse of the title-page. As I wrote then, I have been surprised at how many fables -- and how many known traditional fables -- there are here. The title-story is a good "pourquoi" story on the source of death. The moon tried to announce to men through a millipede "As I die and in dying live, so should you also die and in dying live" (13). The millipede moved too slowly for the hare, who hurried to deliver the message to men but said only "As the moon dies and in dying wanes, so should you also die and in dying wane." The moon got angry with this poor messenger and tried to strike him. He hit only the upper lip and scratched his own moon-face. So now the hare has a hare-lip and the face of the moon is scratched. But men have to die and in dying wane. In "Der Pavian und die Schlange" (14-16), the baboon has freed a snake, who then wants to poison him. The jackal is the clever one who gets the situation back to its original state to save the baboon. "Der Leopard und der Widder" includes an old fable trick: the goat sees the leopard and jackal approach together and calls out "So, friend jackal, you've brought me good leopard meat!" (24-26). "Der Hase und der Löwe" is the familiar story of leading a lion to a well to face the "other" lion who threatens him (30-32). Here, as elsewhere, the lion jumps in and ends up drowning. "Vom kranken Löwen, der Hyäne und dem schlauen Schakal" is the story usually told of the fox who notices that all footprints enter the cave and none come out (34-36). Here the jackal takes up that role. "Wie der Schakal den Löwen überlistete" is new to me (37-38): the jackal has tricked the lion many times but is now cornered up against a rocky cliff. He cries for help from the lion. "What is up?" asks the lion. "The cliffs are ready to fall. Come and hold them up while I get a log to hold them up!" The lion does that, and the jackal gets away. "Der Affe und das Krokodil" is the traditional story of leaving one's heart at home (56-58). The art is exceedingly simple. The book closes with some proverbs and a T of C on 63.I originally found the fourth printing of this book from 1988 at the Dresdener Antiquariat in August of 2001. Now here is a first printing. The book seems identical except for the setting of the last page and its colophon material and the ISBN numbers that appear not at all here but three times there: on the colophon page, the back cover, and the obverse of the title-page. As I wrote then, I have been surprised at how many fables -- and how many known traditional fables -- there are here. The title-story is a good "pourquoi" story on the source of death. The moon tried to announce to men through a millipede "As I die and in dying live, so should you also die and in dying live" (13). The millipede moved too slowly for the hare, who hurried to deliver the message to men but said only "As the moon dies and in dying wanes, so should you also die and in dying wane." The moon got angry with this poor messenger and tried to strike him. He hit only the upper lip and scratched his own moon-face. So now the hare has a hare-lip and the face of the moon is scratched. But men have to die and in dying wane. In "Der Pavian und die Schlange" (14-16), the baboon has freed a snake, who then wants to poison him. The jackal is the clever one who gets the situation back to its original state to save the baboon. "Der Leopard und der Widder" includes an old fable trick: the goat sees the leopard and jackal approach together and calls out "So, friend jackal, you've brought me good leopard meat!" (24-26). "Der Hase und der Löwe" is the familiar story of leading a lion to a well to face the "other" lion who threatens him (30-32). Here, as elsewhere, the lion jumps in and ends up drowning. "Vom kranken Löwen, der Hyäne und dem schlauen Schakal" is the story usually told of the fox who notices that all footprints enter the cave and none come out (34-36). Here the jackal takes up that role. "Wie der Schakal den Löwen überlistete" is new to me (37-38): the jackal has tricked the lion many times but is now cornered up against a rocky cliff. He cries for help from the lion. "What is up?" asks the lion. "The cliffs are ready to fall. Come and hold them up while I get a log to hold them up!" The lion does that, and the jackal gets away. "Der Affe und das Krokodil" is the traditional story of leaving one's heart at home (56-58). The art is exceedingly simple. The book closes with some proverbs and a T of C on 63.

1985 Der Lateinische Äsop des Romulus und die Prosa-Fassungen des Phädrus: Kritischer Text mit Kommentar und einleitenden Untersuchungen. George Thiele. Paperbound. Heidelberg/Hildesheim: Carl Winter's Universitätsbuchhandlung/Georg Olms Verlag. €94 from George Olms Verlag, July, '07.

As I wrote of the original edition, this book has been one of my bibles twice during serious summer investigation of Steinhoewel's edition. This particular copy helped me in the summer of 2007 as I worked my way through the first three books or so of Steinhoewel's fables. It is indeed a critical text, with helpful variants and questions and suggestions about the lacunae that occur. The texts of the ninety-eight fables (plus "Aesop's Statue") themselves occur on 8-306 after 238 pages of introduction. The most helpful overview of the book is thus the T of C on CCXXIX-CCXXXVI. There are helpful vocabulary and other indices at the back. My earlier copy disintegrated from a combination of old age and use. I felt lucky to find that Georg Olms Verlag brought out this reproduction in 1985.

1985 Der Müller, sein Sohn und ihr Esel: Eine Fabel des Äsop, frei nach Johann Peter Hebel. Textbearbeitung Konrad Richter. Eugen Sopko. Zweite Auflage. Hardbound. Mönchaltdorf, Switzerland/Hamburg, Germany: Nord-Süd Verlag. See 1984/85.

1985 Der Streit der Glieder mit dem Magen.  Dietmar Peil.  Paperbound.  Frankfurt, Bern, NY: Mikrokosmos: Beitraege zur Literaturwissenschaft und Bedeutungsforschung 16: Peter Lang.  £36 from Plurabelle Books, Cambridge, UK, through Abebooks, Nov., '23.

1985 Die Fabeln Gerhards von Minden in mittelniederdeutscher Sprache. Zum ersten Mal herausgegeben von Albert Leitzmann. Hardbound. Halle a.S.: Max Niemeyer/Hildesheim, Zurich, NY: Georg Olms Verlag. See 1898/1985.

1985 Die Schöne von Hinten: Lieder und Fabeln von Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Ausgewählt von Ingrid Sommer. 12 Lithographien nach Kupferstichen von Daniel Chodowiecki. Hardbound. 4. Auflage, boxed. Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen. See 1973/85.

1985 Ein Ding mag noch so närrisch sein...Fabeln und Erzählungen. Christian Fürchtegott Gellert; Ausgewählt und mit einem Nachwort von Karl Wolfgang Becker. Mit zehn Reproductionen nach Radierungen von Günter Hofmann. Second edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Berlin: Verlag der Nation. See 1984/85.

1985 El Ratón de campo y el Ratón de ciudad. Pintacuentos. San Sebastián: Interediciones. $.75 in Spain, Summer, '86.

An unusual coloring-book: a page already colored in faces one you can color. It is nice to see a story without having to read text, and there is no text here!

1985 El Ratoncillo del Campo. No author or illustrator. Colección Animales Felices. Cuentos Fher. Bilbao: Publicaciones Fher. $.70 in Spain, Summer, '86.

Well executed colored paintings in a book of large format. Maybe the best illustration is on the back page, where the country mouse is napping with a lemonade.

1985 Enchanted Tales. Text (c)Joshua Morris, Inc. Illustrated by Magda. Hansel and Gretel and seven others, including TH; "The Blacksmith and the Dog"; and "The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox." NY: Modern Publishing. $2.49 at Odegard's, June, '87.

A small book with kitschy pictures, but they are executed in more detail than is often the case in such books. Apparently originally done in France and then in Belgium.

1985 English Children's Books 1600 to 1900.  Percy Muir.  Various artists.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  London: B.T. Batsford Ltd.  See 1954/85.

1985 Ésope: Fables. Texte établi et traduit par Émile Chambry. Collection des Universités de France publiée sous le patronage de l' Association Guillaume Budé. Hardbound. Fourth impression. Paris: Societé d' Édition "Les Belles Lettres." See 1927/85.

1985 Esop'tan Masallar. Sayit Sandas. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Istanbul: Citli Cocuk Klasikleri Dizisi 22: Serhat. $19.98 from Bayhan Ali and Canan Ertan, Ankara, Turkey, through eBay, Nov., '06.

Here are thirty-six fables on some 119 pages, followed by an AI and a list of the fifty-six books in the "Citli Cocuk Klasikleri Dizisi" series; La Fontaine is #2. Could that be the Serhat volume I have listed under 1984? The dust-jacket features a fox and crow on its front cover and nine other titles from the series on its back cover. There are no illustrations inside the book. The inside spine is starting to give way. 

1985 Esopus Hodie: Aesop Today: A Reader Workbook for Latin Students. Latin and English Texts by Dorothy MacLaren. Poetry by Constance Carrier. Illustrations from Caxton, Bewick, Heighway, Boutet de Monvel, and Rackham. Inscribed by Dorothy MacLaren. Miami University. Oxford, Ohio: American Classical League. $10 from Judith Mason, Cultural Images, Portland, OR, March, '04. Extra copies gifts of Peter J. Stanlis at the Caxton Club, 1994, and of Mary Finnegan, 1997.

My kind of Aesop! A lovely book, from its golden egg on the cover to the playful and witty fables. Illustrations nicely decorate the pattern of (1) witty English, (2) Latin with running vocabulary, (3) literal translation, and (4) vocabulary and questions. Different: the ox destroys no frog, and the donkey just runs off from the miller.

1985 Esox Fables (An Anthology of "Coarse" Fishing Tales). Chris Froggatt (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson?). Illustrated by Dave Press. Pamphlet. Blackpool: Apparently published by the author. £10.51 from Michael Japp, Blackpool, UK, through eBay, July, '05.

I had to bid on this booklet on several different occasions on eBay. Perhaps rich fishermen were bidding against me on the earlier occasions. The front cover shows a number of pike underwater and makes two claims: "Adults Only" and "All proceeds to kidney dialysis." The back cover presents a tongue-in-cheek biography of the author with a picture. "Esox" is the Latin word for pike. The pamphlet contains six potentially racist, sexist, ageist stories, most of them fish stories. Since they are pike fables, humans are substituted for the fish. The first story, "Never Trust a Woman," is a good surprise story centered around using an unlaundered pair of one's wife's panties to prepare good carp bait. The second, "A Traveller's Tale," is about the price a colonial might have to pay a randy native to get help in landing the world's biggest fish. After getting to know this pamphlet, I can confirm that it is for adults only. Its connection with fables does not go much beyond the clever title. Can it be that the family of Michael Japp, who sold it to me, appears in the fourth story in the person of Lady Araminta Japp and her husband Sir Jethro Japp?

1985 Existential Folktales. Margaret Switzer. Signed by the author. Berkeley: Cayuse Press. $3.50 in the Bay Area, Jan., '91.

Twenty updatings/explanations of folktales in a very contemporary and satirical mode, with a noting for each of the trendy contemporary subject that the tale "really" covers. "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse--Dietary Purity" is the only Aesopic contribution (86). I made it through three or four of these stories, enough to know that my taste runs more to the original tales. Of those I read, "The Shoemaker and the Elves" was the best.

1985 Fabeln. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Nachwort von Hans-Günther Thalheim. Röderberg-Taschenbuch Band 142. Erste Auflage. Printed in the German Democratic Republic. Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg-Verlag. DM 2.50 at Hermes, Berlin, July, '95.

This booklet has occasioned the most systematic study I have done of Lessing's fables, which I enjoy. It may be the only book I have of Lessing that even tries to be complete. It contains fifteen fables in verse ("Reimfabeln"), which are often little more than good jokes, e.g., "Das Muster der Ehen" (10), "Faustin" (12), "Die eheliche Liebe" (12), "Die Brille" (24), and "Nix Bodenstrom" (26). The first verse fable, "Der Sperling und die Feldmaus" (7), may be the best. "Der Eremit" (16) is eight pages long! Among the strongest prose fables in Book I are III, IV, VI, VIII, IX, XI, XII, XV, XX, XXI, XXVI, XXVIII, and XXX. In the second book, XIII, XV, and XVI seem to be the strongest fables, and in the third III, IV, XVI-XXII, and XXIII. I would love to study the correlation between Lessing's fables and his fable theory!

1985 Fabeln der Antike: Griechisch - Lateinisch - Deutsch. Herausgegeben und übersetzt von Harry C. Schnur; überarbeitet von Erich Keller. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Munich and Zurich: Artemis Verlag. €16 from Antiquariat Brinkman, Amsterdam, by mail, Dec., '07.

Two weeks ago I catalogued a book from Albatros published in 2004 and thought it was a redoing of a book I already had. I could not find the earlier version. Here it is. This is the Artemis corrected and expanded second edition done in 1985. The first edition was put out by Heimeran-Verlag in Munich, apparently in 1978. This edition identifies the red-figured drinking bowl pictured on the title-page. This is a nicely built Tusculum edition, packed with texts. The great virtue of this book is that it has for each text both the Greek or Latin original and Schnur's German translation. The T of C shows the book's helpful division: Old Testament, Hesiod, Archilochus, Aesop, Syntipas, Phaedrus' five books, Appendix Perottina, Zander, Babrius, and Avianus. (Both Aulius Gellius and Ennius appear between Archilochus and Aesop.) Besides a list of comparative times of the authors, there is an extensive bibliography at the book's end. The book includes a surprising number of texts.

1985 Fable Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. Pack Carnes. Hardbound. NY and London: Garland Folklore Bibliographies #8: Garland Publishing, Inc. $15.94 from Powell's, Portland, August, '94.

Here is one of Pack's many good projects dealing with fables. He was constantly working on the revised version, which would have been several times the size of this 382-page book with its 1457 entries. It is hard to imagine the sustained work that went into compiling this book! Pack's introduction is careful. "The base line, as it were, is Aesopic as found in the monumental 'Aesopica' by Ben Edwin Perry" (xiii). "All works dealing with materials for which the claim of 'Aesopic' has been made have been included" (xiii). Pack uses La Fontaine as a case in point. General studies of La Fontaine will not be found here. "Only those works that were specifically directed toward La Fontaine's fables or fable theory or La Fontaine's position in the history of fable writing were included" (xiv). Three indices follow the main body of the book: a name and subject index; an index of fables using Perry's numbers; and a tale-type index following Aarne and Thompson's "The Types of the Folktale" and Thompson's "Motif-Index of Folk-Literature." 

1985 Fables of La Fontaine. Translated by Lisa Commager. Illustrated by Jiri Trnka. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Czechoslovakia. NY: Exeter. $5.95 at Powell's, Portland, Aug., '87.

Like the French edition which it translates, this edition treats eighty-three fables and adds numerous black-and-white illustrations to the earlier editions offering only forty-four fables. Those earlier editions are English (1962), Spanish (1965), and Czech (1974). The French original for this work is Fables choisies de La Fontaine (1974) published by Grund in Paris. See also the later 1996 edition of the same work by Grund. What this later generation adds visually includes especially smaller black-and-white illustrations on text pages. The initials in this edition also add red coloring. The earlier and later editions share ten full-page colored illustrations and nine black-and-white full-page illustrations. The best among them are of the lap-donkey, FM, the crow with plumes, and MSA.

1985 Fables de La Fontaine.  Illustrations by Benvenuti.  Preface by Raymond Dumay.  Hardbound.  Paris: Contes-Histoires: Série Classiques: Deux Coqs d'Or.  See 1982/85.

1985 Fables sous rêve (1960-1970).  Claude Ollier.  Hardbound.  Paris: Textes/Flammarion:  Flammarion.  $10 from Thriftbooks, Feb., '16.

1985 Fábulas. Edición: Mercedes Vich Adell. Diseño e ilustraciones: Rita Gutiérrez Varela. (c)1973 Francisco M. Mota. Primera reimpresión. Ciudad de La Habana: Editorial Gente Nueva. See 1973/85.

1985 Fábulas Clásicas: Selección de Fábulas de Esopo. Ilustradas por Eric Kincaid. Adaptadas por Lucy Kincaid. First done in 1981 by Brimax in England as Classic Fables. Léon: Editorial Everest. See 1981/85.

1985 Fiabe Italiane. A cura di Carla Poesio. Illustrazioni di Marilyn Day. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Florence: Gli Zecchini: Edizioni Primavera. $10 from Rocco Pellegrino, Rochester, NY, through eBay, Sept., '11.

I include this book in the collection only to keep myself and others from looking into it as a book of fables. This is a confirmation of a learning experience. "Fiaba" in Italian can mean "fable," but it just as easily means "fairy tale." "Favola" may be used more frequently for "fable." So this is a book of ten traditional fairy tales, each attributed to a region of Italy. The book has witches, dragons, growing noses, and animals that turn into people. The book spent too long in someone's damp basement. 

1985 Foolish Rabbit's Big Mistake. By Rafe Martin. Illustrated by Ed Young. Paperbound. Sandcastle Books. Printed in Hong Kong. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons. Gift of Kathryn Thomas, May, '93.

An excellent presentation of a good Jatakas tale about the rabbit's fear that the earth is breaking up. Both the storytelling and the illustration are first rate. Young's two-page spread of a single lion's paw near the middle of the book is excellent, as is the lion's face spread over the next pair of pages. After that middle point, watch the great presentation of rabbits, e.g., embracing in fright over the lion's roar. The original tree is identified by the rabbit as an apple tree only after the lion has halted the stampede with his roar. A great example of how the best of a tradition can be well presented with the best of contemporary technology.

1985 Frederick's Fables. A Leo Lionni Treasury of Favorite Stories, with an introduction by Bruno Bettelheim. First edition. NY: Pantheon Books: Random House. $4 for a first printing without dust jacket from Spokane Book Center, Spokane, March, '96. Extra copy (in the collection) for $10, a second printing with repaired dust jacket from Combs & Combs, July, '91. Extra copies (outside the collection) with dust jackets of the third printing for $9.72 from Read All About It, Southroads, Dec., '93, and for $11.95 from Blake, Nov., '95.

Thirteen delightful fairy tales, usually starring a named individual with unusual gifts like poetry in a world where magic should happen and does. Apparently some illustrations that appeared in earlier individual publications of the stories are left out here, though the texts are intact. The simple, charming block art ornaments the excellent stories well. Some of the best stories include "Frederick," "Fish Is Fish," "Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse," and "Tico and the Golden Wings." This book had been very hard for me to find; the first copy was for kids to read in an adult bookstore! The extra copies show a few surprising differences on the dust jacket: the price has gone up from $19.95 to $20. The quotation on the fly leaf has changed, and a bar code and a paste-on sticker have been added.

1985    Frederick's Fables.  Leo Lionni.  Leo Lionni.  First edition, second printing.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  NY: Pantheon Books:  Random House.  $10 from Combs & Combs, July, '91.

1985    Frederick's Fables.  A Leo Lionni Treasury of Favorite Stories, with an introduction by Bruno Bettelheim.  First edition, third printing.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  NY: Pantheon Books:  Random House.  $9.72 from Read All About It, Omaha, Dec., '93.

1985 Granny Hamro's Fairy-Tales. Gennadi Blinov. Illustrated by Vladimir Levinson. Translated by Anatole Belenko. Moscow: Raduga Publishers. $2, Fall, '92.

This delightful Russian folktale makes use of the Aesopic motif of getting the attacker to stop and read a message on the horse's hoof. In this case, the lion is the attacker, and there have been several typical folkloric events beforehand. The ram convinces the lion, for example, that meat like his must be cooked on a spit first. The drawings of the later pages of the book are more successful than the sculptures of the early pages, I believe. There are lots of clever points in this book, like varied typefaces, shifting placement of page-numbers, and dramatic use of symbols leading up to the horse's great revelation. A very nice find!

1985 Harelip. Bilingual: Korean and English. Adapted by John Holstein. Illustrated by Kim Chun-jong. Korean Folk Tales 4. Printed in Korean. Seoul: Si-sa-yong-o-sa. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Summer, '88.

A charming and imaginative book. The tortoise and the hare are traditional Korean folklore antagonists. In this fable, tortoise brings hare to the dragon king, who needs to eat a hare liver to recover. Hare, lured beneath the waters to be Special Court Physician, realizes that he is about to be eaten and says that he left his precious liver at home. Back on land, he escapes tortoise but gives him magic pills to cure the king.

1985 I.A. Krilov: The Monkey and the Spectacles: Fables (Russian). Edited by I.G. Naan. Illustrated by M. Mayofis. Pamphlet. My First Booklets. Printed in Leningrad. Leningrad: Children's Literature. $1.60 from Szwede Slavic Books, Palo Alto, CA, March, '96. Extra copy for $1.60 at the same time from the same source.

This is a fine little pamphlet containing three fables in its 16 pages. The illustrations are excellent and imaginative! The monkey frustrated with spectacles shows up in a full-page frame before the text of the first fable, on the back cover looking out a window with glasses in his hand, and on the last page above the publishing data, with glasses hooked from the frame around and above him. The swan, pike, and crab pull left, right, and up respectively on 8 and then look or walk off into those directions on 10. The monkey looks into the mirror on 11 and offers an opinion about what she sees to the bear on 12. On 14 she is pointing the finger at the characters of the other fables as they stand on the right-hand page above the T of C. She is also on the cover pointing down from her window at various human beings below her.

1985 I.A. Krilov: Strekosa i Murabel: Basni. Paperbound. Moscow: Detsckar Literatura. $8 from Victor Romanchenko, Ukraine, through eBay, Nov., '05. 

I am convinced that I have this book already! It is an excellent short compendium in large format (8½" x 11") of some of the best of Krylov's fables, along with excellent representations. Besides GA, its sixteen pages contain "The Lobster, the Pike, and the Swan"; FC; "The Elephant and the Pug"; "The Monkey and the Spectacles"; FG; and Quartet. These full-page illustrations are good! A number of fables get a second, smaller illustration. Among the best are the inside front-cover's illustration of "The Monkey and the Spectacles" and the inside back-cover's presentation of "The Elephant and the Pug." On the cover with its heavy green background is a meeting between the airy grasshopper fluttering above and the poor worker ant dragging some sticks at the picture's bottom. The green undergrowth also predominates on the back cover of the pamphlet.

1985 Ivan Andrejevic Krylov: Pod Maskou Lenosti aneb Gajky I Nebajky.  Translation by Hana Vrbova.  Illustrations by Josef Novak.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  Prague:  Albatros.  $4.90 from Ivan Taras, Telc, Czech Republic, through eBay, Jan., '16.

1985 Iwan Andrejewitsch Krylow: Fabeln. Übertragung von Ferdinand Löwe. Paperbound. 1. Auflage. Frankfurt am Main: Röderberg-Taschenbuch Band 143: Röderberg-Verlag G.m.b.H.. DM 3 from Buchhandlung Hermes, Berlin, August, '97.

Here is a no-frills German Taschenbuch with sketches of what seem to be a fox and a crow on the cover in purple and red. There are one hundred fables on 96 pages. A 1963 Nachwort by Helmut Grasshoff follows. The book's second-to-last item is a chronological index detailing fables from 1807 through 1834. The last three pages offer a T of C. A fascinating feature of this book is that it was produced in exactly the same form in the same year by Philipp Reclam jun. in Leipzig.

1985 Iwan Andrejewitsch Krylow: Fabeln. Übertragung von Ferdinand Löwe. Paperbound. 7. Auflage. Leipzig: Reclams Universal-Bibliothek Band 143: Philipp Reclam jun. DM 2 from Dresdener Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '01.

Here is a no-frills German Taschenbuch with sketches of what seem to be a fox and a crow on the cover in purple and red. There are one hundred fables on 96 pages. A 1963 Nachwort by Helmut Grasshoff follows. The book's second-to-last item is a chronological index detailing fables from 1807 through 1834. The last three pages offer a T of C. A fascinating feature of this book is that it was produced in exactly the same form in the same year by Röderberg-Verlag G.m.b.H. in Frankfurt am Main.

1985 Kalilah and Dimnah: Fables from the Ancient East. Translated from the Persian and adapted by Hassan Tehranchian. Illustrations by Anatole Ur. First edition. Dust jacket. Manufactured in Hong Kong. NY: Harmony Books. $4.80 at ABC, Toronto, Jan., '94. Extra copy for $6.48 from Half-Price, Berkeley, Aug., '94.

What a nice find on New Year's Day! Lively tempera paintings are often nicely suggestive (note the bones on 27) but sometimes miss important details (the lions are not holding the hares on 31). Among the best is that illustrating the proverb "He who makes his bed of fire and uses a snake as a cushion will not enjoy a tranquil sleep" (36). Another triumph is the two-page spread about burning the "talking tree" (60-61). This version has the regular stories in the tradition but often adds significant differences. Thus the monkey's tail, not his penis, is pinned in the carpenter's log not by wedges but by nails (13). The raven uses a ring, not a necklace, to get revenge on the snake (29). The second fish's escape is unexplained (35). The camel's offering of himself is not introduced to the king as voluntary (48). The judge is not taken in by the talking tree (63), and the thief does not pay with his life. Kalilah agrees that the lion has been too generous to Shanzibah (24). The lion at first wants Shanzibah simply to move away (38). There is no reference to a feast for the lion's mother (42). Dimnah has second thoughts and even regrets after the killing (74). He is finally convicted and starved to death after Kalilah has died depressed (79). This edition has a predilection for lists, e.g., of the things that wise men try to do or of the things that hurt the state. I do not find the stories told as well as Ramsay Wood tells them, but the art is very helpful to someone learning these stories.

1985 Kettu ja Haikara: Aisopoksen satuia. Kertonut Søren Christensen. Kuvittanut Svend Otto S. Hardbound. Porvoo, Helsinki, Juva: Werner Söderström Osakeyhtiö. $10 in trade from Clare Leeper, July, '96.

This book replicates in Finnish the English book Aesop: The Fox and the Stork (1985) from Pelham in London. See my comments there. As in the English, there are twenty fables. Each gets a two-page spread with a full-page colored illustration on the right. Some also have a black-and-white illustration on the left. The figure of death on 9 as he speaks with the wood-gatherer is well done. A skeleton's foot emerges from beneath his robes, as the terrified old man looks up into his face. I enjoy the illustration for FM (33): we see of the bird only its two talons, one of which is firmly around the mouse, to whom the deceitful frog is tied. There is a great fat fox on 38. Otherwise I still do not find the illustrations particularly well done.

1985 La Fontaine: Fables, Tome I, Livres I à VI. Texte Présenté et Commenté par Marc Fumaroli. Illustrations de Marie Hugo. Numbered (Tome II) #1999 of 5120. Hardbound. Paris: Lettres Françaises: Imprimerie Nationale. €35 from Mr. Robin, San Nicolao, France, Oct., '05. 

Bodemann #576.1. Marie Hugo's illustrations seem very familiar, but I cannot find them elsewhere in this collection. The comments in Bodemann are, as often, illuminating. There are fourteen full-page colored illustrations, namely a frontispiece for each volume and an illustration for each of the twelve books in the two volumes. As Bodemann comments, these colored illustrations are naïve in the style of Rousseau, their animals' forms disproportionate, and the movements sometimes grotesque. One of my favorites is "Le Paon se Plaignant à Junon" (199). Besides, there are some 53 endpieces that are "scherenschnittartig." A good example occurs for TMCM on 147. Like many others, this is a nicely suggestive "fable-sketch." It shows the two rats, a chandelier, drapes, and a rug. Another excellent piece in this group shows a side view of the fox using the goat to get out of the well (218). Another excellent work shows the mother goat talking to her young goat still inside the house (269). The volumes are beautifully bound in full leather with a plasticene dust-jacket. Each has two ribbons for marking one's place! Text and commentary! At the back, one finds first notes (353-96), then an anthology of judgements (397-417), and an iconography (419-26) offering some portraits and a photocopy of the 1668 title-page. Finally, there is a T of C for this volume on 429-33. The colophon-page at the end notes that only the second volume is numbered. Despite my best efforts, these two volumes smell like an old bookstore! They are still a treasure!

1985 La Fontaine: Fables, Tome II, Livres VII à XII. Texte Présenté et Commenté par Marc Fumaroli. Illustrations de Marie Hugo. Numbered #1999 of 5120. Hardbound. Paris: Lettres Françaises: Imprimerie Nationale. €35 from Mr. Robin, San Nicolao, France, Oct., '05. 

Bodemann #576.1. Marie Hugo's illustrations seem very familiar, but I cannot find them elsewhere in this collection. The comments in Bodemann are, as often, illuminating. There are fourteen full-page colored illustrations, namely a frontispiece for each volume and an illustration for each of the twelve books in the two volumes. As Bodemann comments, these colored illustrations are naïve in the style of Rousseau, their animals' forms disproportionate, and the movements sometimes grotesque. One of my favorites shows the bear about to crash the rock down on the fly on his sleeping friend's cheek (77). Besides, there are some 53 endpieces that are "scherenschnittartig." One of the most evocative of these shows the "winning" cock looking anything but a winner as a vulture carries him aloft (43). Another good silhouette shows the cat up a tree while the fox rushes madly by (145). The volumes are beautifully bound in full leather with a plasticene dust-jacket. Each has two ribbons for marking one's place! Text and commentary! At the back, one finds first notes (327-438) and an iconography (439-52) offering especially illustrations of the fables by prominent artists in the tradition (Chauveau, Oudry, Grandville, Doré, and Chagall). Finally, there is a T of C for this volume on 455-58. Despite my best efforts, these two volumes smell like an old bookstore! They are still a treasure!

1985 La Fontaine: Fables. Édition établie, présentée et annotée par Marc Fumaroli de l'Académie française. Avec les Gravures de J.-B. Oudry (1783). Paperbound. Printed in Italy. Paris: Classique Modernes: La Pochothèque: Le Livre de Poche. $36.95 from Schoenhof's, Cambridge, MA, Nov., '97.

Eighteen months after I picked up this book, I discover that it has the Oudry illustrations! From all I can tell, they are all there. How lovely! There are also over two hundred pages of notes in the back. I am afraid that this book may get used heavily!

1985 La Fontaine's Fables in Modern Clothes. Victor Bagley. First edition. Dust jacket. Great Neck: Todd & Honeywell. $16 from Barbara and Bill Yoffee, March, '94.

This book fills the need for simple English prose versions of LaFontaine for children. About one-half of LaFontaine's fables are represented, with simple illustrations about every ten pages. The beginning "Brief Outline" has a very nice quotation from Silvestre de Sacy on the differing delights at different ages of reading LaFontaine. I believe from my reading of the book's first twenty fables that its adaptation will raise some questions. The animal coming upon the two companions is here a wolf, not a bear (4). GA (5) misses the point by having the singer proclaim that he was entertaining his friends. The liar by the end of the next day is reputed to have produced one hundred eggs the size of a watermelon (8)! A good change happens in FS, where the stork's container is transparent (12). The salt-bearing donkey jumps from a bridge (19), and the sponge-bearing one drowns.

1985 Mi Pequeño Libro de Fábulas: Tomo 6. Autor: Samaniego. Dibujos: Vernet. Barcelona: Artes Gráficas Cobas. $1.88 in Spain, Summer, '86.

"El Asno Vestido de Leon," "El Raton de Campo y el Raton de Corte," and "El Asno y el Caballo" are the three fables contained in this little book. The approach to the stories is cute. Thus the cover picture's ass (repeated on 4) looks cuddly. The set includes eight volumes.

1985 Mythoi tou Aisopou. Elles Alexiou. Illustrated by Stathes Stauropoulos. Athens: Ekdoseis Kastaniote. Gift of Elizabeth Willems, Nov., '93.

A very nice contemporary Greek paperbound version. The cover features Aesop sailing along with some animal friends. There are 137 fables, many of them surprisingly long. The illustrations include cartoons, some smaller designs that are repeated along the way, and some full-page depictions. Among the best of the ten full-page illustrations are those of the snake inside the man (107) and of "The Bull and the Lion" (159). T of C at the end. For ages eight and up! How nice to get something that came from a bookshop named after Nestor!

1985 One-Minute Favorite Fairy Tales. Shari Lewis. Illustrated by Benton Mahan. Garden City: Doubleday & Company. $5.95 at Chandler's in Evanston, Sept., '91.

The book includes two fables. GGE (12) is told in clever verse that identifies the farmer as from Kalamazoo; it is identified as a German tale. "The Nightingale and the Hawk" (40), identified as Aesopic, is new to me. The hawk spares the nightingale so that the latter can let him know when squirrels' houses are filled with walnuts. If you hear a nightingale, look out for a hawk. The illustrations throughout are in a romantic contemporary style.

1985 One-Minute Favorite Fairy Tales. Shari Lewis. Illustrated by Benton Mahan. Fourth printing. Paperbound. NY: A Dell Yearling Book: Bantam, Doubleday & Dell Company. $2.50 from Bluestem Books, Lincoln, NE, Jan., '13.

Here is a paperback copy of a book I had found in a hardbound version twelve years ago. I believe that some changes in the publishing firm took place between the printing of that hardbound and this fourth printing of the paperback. Specifically, I believe Doubleday became Bantam, Doubleday and Dell. As I wrote there, the book includes two fables. GGE (12) is told in clever verse that identifies the farmer as from Kalamazoo; it is identified as a German tale. "The Nightingale and the Hawk" (40), identified as Aesopic, is new to me. The hawk spares the nightingale so that the latter can let him know when squirrels' houses are filled with walnuts. If you hear a nightingale, look out for a hawk. The illustrations throughout are in a romantic contemporary style.

1985 Stories for the Third Ear. Lee Wallas. Dust jacket. Hardbound. NY: A Norton Professional Book: W.W. Norton & Company. $5.50 from Good Better Best, Alameda, CA, through eBay, March, '03. 

Here are nineteen stories offered by an experienced hypnotherapist. Each is labelled for its specific use, e.g., "A Story for the Treatment of Phobia." The therapist in Wallas' approach needs first to establish rapport with and trust from the client. The story works then because it is metaphor, and rapport makes the metaphor available to the client. The metaphor defuses resistance, since the story is once removed and offers not commands but suggestions. These stories are spontaneous spoken stories born within the therapy situation. So Wallas will regularly write at the end of the introduction to these stories "the following story told itself." The stories in this book are finally meant not to be reproduced by other therapists, but rather to encourage others to tell their own stories in their own way. These stories, perhaps four or five pages in length or shorter, are simple, but not as simple as Aesopic fables. I find the stories engaging, though beyond fable length and complexity. Thus Porky the Porcupine learns through a friendly turtle that people are afraid of him just as he is of them. A child afraid of the Green Dragon in his play room learns that the dragon is zippered, and that there is a little boy inside that has been playing frightening tricks on him. The overwound alarm clock thrown into the trash is rescued by a little girl who finds it beautiful and takes it to the clockmaker for repair.

1985 Stories to Solve.  George Shannon.  Illustrated by Peter Sis.  Third printing.  Paperbound.  NY: Trumpet: Scholastic.  $5.85 from Thrift Books, August, '23.

1985 Tales & Fables.  William Hjortsberg.  Illustrated by Vance Gerry.  Signed by Hjortsberg, #16 of 330; boxed.  Hardbound.  Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanos.  $75 from sd0505, San Diego, through Ebay, March, '20.

1985 Tales of the Old Country. Written to Be Read Aloud. As told to James Gregory. Illustrations Adam Christianson and Greg Goggin. Paperbound. Berkeley: Creative Arts Book Company. $3 at Forest Books, San Francisco, Aug., '94.

Eighteen stories, of which DS (4) is the third, told in a lively version. "The Ant and the Waterbuffalo" (5) is a delight. Aesop's "The Weasel in the Granary" is here developed into "The Other Side of the Story" (40). Though it is not a fable, do not miss "The Bear at Its Best" (17), a great story!

1985 Talking Animals. By Wilfrid Dyson Hambly. Illustrated by James A. Porter. Paperbound. Washington, DC: The Associated Publishers, Inc.. See 1949/85

1985 The Ass in the Pond. Told and illustrated by Val Biro. Third impression. Pamphlet. Printed in Great Britain. Aylesbury Bucks, England: Ginn and Company. See 1984/85.

1985 The Baby's Story Book. Kay Chorao. Fifth impression. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. NY: E.P. Dutton. $13.95 at The Book Store, Des Moines, Oct., '94.

There are four fables among the fifteen stories in this collection, notable for the cuddly and "stringy" figures in its illustrations. The versions are good, simple, and careful. DS, for example, closes with this good lapidary remark: "That day the dog had nothing to eat" (13). Other fables here are TH (35), SW (46), and LM (62). My prize for the book's best illustration goes to "The History of an Apple Pie" (24).

1985 The Bayeux Tapestry. The Complete Tapestry in Color with Introduction, Description and Commentary by David M. Wilson. NY: Alfred A. Knopf. $29.95 at New England Mobile Book Fair, Dec., '89.

A magnificent book for many cold evenings in Januaries! Aesop's fables are found principally on 4-13 (colored pages) of the tapestry, with commentary according to the corresponding black-and-white plates on 174-91. Good footnotes indicate the controversies around identification of the fables.

1985 The Best of Aesop and Other Classic Fables. Look, Listen and Read Bedtime Stories. Edited by Richard Widdows and Nigel Flynn. Illustrated by Malcolm Livingstone et al. Design: Andrew Sutterby, Janette Place and Paul Morgan. For use with an accompanying tape with the same title. Printed in Hong Kong. Marshall Cavendish. $7.95, Fall, '87.

The illustrations are delightful, witty, colorful, and alive. The best may be for SW, "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing," and "The Lion and the Peacock." The book and the tape work together well verbatim.

1985 The Canterbury Tales.  Geraldine McCaughream.  Illustrated by Victor G Ambrus.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Chicago: Rand McNally.  $6.95 from Downtown Books, Milwaukee, June, '14.  

1985 The City Mouse and the Country Mouse. A Pudgy Pal Board Book. No author. Illustrated by Jody Wheeler. Printed in Japan. NY: Grosset & Dunlap. $3.95

A cute and very sturdy little book. I find nothing that stands out for use in a lecture.

1985 The Eagle and the Man. Told and illustrated by Val Biro. Third impression. Paperbound. Aylesbury Bucks, England: Fables from Aesop #8: Ginn and Company. See 1984/85.

1985 The Fable as Literature. H.J. Blackham. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. London and Dover, NH: The Athlone Press. $20 from an unknown source, July, '86.

This has been a favorite book of mine, but one I have had to labor with. Blackham treats the fable genre seriously and has an excellent sense of what fable is. Thus Blackham insists correctly that a summary statement never gets all the meaning of a fable: "There is no definitive 'moral'. The metaphor is open; the comparison invites exploratory reflection" (xiii). He presents a wealth of valuable material for the student of fable to ponder. His descriptions of fable are wonderfully suggestive. For Blackham, fable "gets past the garrison of resident assumptions"; it is a "tactical manoevre to prompt new thinking" (xi). "A fable embodies the general in an invented particular which, when it is recognized, informs the general notion with more perceptive recognitions" (9). Fable says more than it seems to say (xi); it never says "Think this" but always says "Think about this" (223); it does not state anything but only shows (252). "The message is not delivered--certainly not in the `morals' tagged to the Aesopic fables: it is embodied" (xviii-xix). These suggestive expressions give a strong sense of fable. But for me Blackham's work fails to go beyond description of Aesopic fable to achieve satisfying definition. Blackham's project is to extrapolate from Aesopic fable to all sorts of other literary works: "One can see in the primitive Aesopic fable a potentiality for development as a mental artefact, which detains the thought that conceived it in the further reflection it prompts. Stripped and focused as it must always be, fable is then, like any work of art, dense enough to abide repeated examination, and to abound in stimulus. It is this development, with the achievements that have marked it, which the present study sets out to describe" (xiii). My fear is that in the project, the very sense of fable itself can be lost, including the sense of Aesopic fable, "stripped and focused as it must always be." His definition of fable is "a narrative device to provoke and aid concrete thinking, focused on some general matter of concern" (xvii). My problem lies not with his descriptions of Aesopic fables, which are helpful, but with his attempts to apply "fable" to all sorts of works quite distinct from Aesopic fable. Thus for Blackham, "Animal Farm," "1984," "Erewhon," "Brave New World," and "Gulliver's Travels" are fables, but "Watership Down" is not. I know what it means to talk of Aesopic texts as fables; I am not sure I know what it means to call these works fables. For all that, this is a stimulating and insightful book! 

1985 The Fables of Aesop. Illustrated by Edward J. Detmold. Classic Collector's Series. No translator mentioned. Manufactured in Spain. Original 1909 by Hodder and Stoughton, England. NY: Weathervane Books/Crown Publishers. See 1909/85.

1985 The Fables of Aesop.  Edward J. Detmold.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  Sydney: View Productions, Pty Ltd.  €20 from Stella and Rose's books, Hay-on-Wye, Hereford, UK, May, '15.

1985 The Fables of Odo of Cheriton. Translated and Edited, with an Introduction, by John C. Jacobs. Drawings by Villard de Honnecourt. Dust jacket. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Hardbound for $6 at Strand, Jan., '90. Paperback for $7.75 at Booknook, Evanston, May, '89.

Odo died in 1247. This work is a curious and engaging congeries of scripture, Aesop, Reynard and other typical sources of medieval literature. The focus seems more on allegory than on fable or even on story. Are these fables aimed particularly against the clergy? The illustrations, contemporary with Odo, were originally done without reference to fables. There is a long introduction and an excellent bibliography.

1985 The Fox and the Farmer. A Modern and More or Less (moral-less) Fable. Thos. P. Pinkert. With woodcuts reproduced from a Spanish edition of Isop's Fables dated 1780. With additional illumination or "Gorp" by Rez' Lingen. #108 of 145 deluxe copies on handmade paper. Madison, WI: Salient Seedling Press. $150 from Truepenny Books, Tucson, at DC Bookmakers' Fair, Nov., '91.

Wonderful and well executed marriage of lovely woodcuts with a crazy modern story revolving around interplanetary agents, a farmer, a fox, and some grapes. The fun starts with a stream of gorp engraved on the cover. The gorp is printer's doodles commenting on the story; a food chain becomes a literal chain with food and knives hanging from it. Here is one way to have fun with beautiful old fable art. At the end there is a kind of map of gorp including all sorts of objects arranged without contemporary perspective. This may turn out to be an outstanding treasure in the collection. For now it is fun.

1985 The Golden Axe/Two Grateful Magpies. Bilingual: Korean and English. Adapted by Mark C.K. Setton. Illustrated by Kim Bog-tae. Korean Folk Tales 16. Seoul: Si-sa-yong-o-sa, Inc. $3.50 at Kyobo in Seoul, June, '90.

A very pleasing book. "The Golden Axe" is Aesopic (though never acknowledged here as such) and nicely elaborated and illustrated for this culture. Dokbo lives in a village tucked away in the mountains. The artist misses, I believe, that Dokbo lost the head of his axe. Yunbo does not hear the whole story and so proceeds falsely with the old man water spirit. Yunbo falls in trying to grasp the spirit--and gets nothing but a cold.

1985 The Hare and the Tortoise. Retold by Caroline Castle. Illustrated by Peter Weevers. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Dial Books for Young Readers: E.P. Dutton. $10.95. And, as of July, '90, a paperbound version printed in '87 in Hong Kong, a gift of Maureen Hester. Extra copy of the hardbound first edition for $3.50 from Wahrenbrock's Book House, San Diego, Aug., '93.

An enchanting book, with lovely colored plates matched on opposite pages by sketches. The story adds a badger and a mole. Maybe the best picture for a slide lecture has the hare dreaming of a kind of Chariots of Fire victory. If I had to choose one of my books for some bedside reading with kids looking on, this book would be a candidate.

1985 The Hare and the Tortoise: An Aesop's Fable. Retold by Shirley-Anne Carver. Illustrations by Caterpillar Capers. Paperbound. Wellington, New Zealand: The Story Starters: Price Milburn. $1.50 from conrad19735, Brooklyn, through eBay, Sept., '08.

This eight-page pamphlet combines rhyming quatrains with illustrations that look as though they include stained glass. They are quite attractive! "Story Starters" seems to be a series that helps children with their first steps in reading. The back cover offers a number of good hints to parents about how to read with their children. Parents are cautioned, for example, to leave the child time after a mistake for self-correction. One should also not force ideas or expectations on a beginning reader. "Sharing books should always be a happy and totally enjoyable experience."

1985 The Hare and the Tortoise. Based on the fable by La Fontaine. Brian Wildsmith. Printed in Hong Kong. Hardbound first published 1966. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See 1982/85.

1985 The Miller, His Son and Their Donkey. Pictures by Eugen Sopko. Printed in Germany. NY: North-South Books. Paperbound. See 1984/85.

1985 The Three Kingdoms: Russian Folk Tales from Alexander Afanasiev's Collection.  Alexander Afanasiev; Kathleen Cook and Irina Zheleznova, translators.  Illustrated by Alexander Kurkin.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Moscow: Raduga Publishers.  $5 from Owl and Company Bookshop, Oakland, CA, August, '13.  

1985 Town Mouse and Country Mouse. "Now You Can Read" series. Story adapted by Lucy Kincaid. Illustrated by Eric Kincaid. Reproduced in Eric Kincaid's Book of Fairy Tales (1987). Newmarket, England: Brimax Books. $1.99 at Dalton.

This book uses short words written large for beginning readers. The illustrations are well done and well printed. I will try to use a couple of them. They contrast the two mice nicely. There is even a set of pictures at the back with the right words beneath them. No intruders are pictured; the mice have to scamper twice. The country mouse does not like having his eating of dates interrupted. The two have met at a wedding.

1985 Treasures from the New York Public Library. Published for an exhibition of the same title, 15 February through 24 May, 1985. Text apparently by Gloria-Gilda Deak. Section 13 (98-103) is "Aesop and the Illustrated Book." NY: The New York Public Library. $12.95 by mail from the NYPL.

A wonderfully documented work including about ten fine but small black-and-white illustrations. Section 13 touches some high points in the tradition of Aesop illustration.

1985 Treasury of Children's Classics in Spanish and English. Formerly titled Bedtime Stories in Spanish. William T. Tardy. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Co. $7.95 at Kroch's & Brentano's.

"La Lechera" and "El Espiritu de las aguas y el Lenador" are Aesop's two contributions to this nice bi-lingual book, which puts Spanish stories--and two colored illustrations--at the front and translations and questions at the back. Notice that Hermes has become a water-sprite.

1985 Twenty Jataka Tales. Retold by Noor Inayat Khan. Illustrated by H. Willebeek LeMair. (c)1985 East-West Publications Fonds bv, The Hague. First U.S. edition. NY: Inner Traditions International, Ltd. $6 from Black Oak Books, Berkeley, Feb., '97.

See my extensive comments under 1991 for the same title. A number of things are different in this copy: much of the copyright information, the location of the press, and the pagination of the stories. How can this be the "first U.S. edition" and that be the "first edition"?

1985 Two Frogs of Olde Japan. By Silab Sinlow. Illustrated by Basil W. Wilson. Paperbound. North Bend, Oregon: Wegferd Publications. $25 from Warwick Books, South Pasadena, CA, May, '08.

This is a good retelling of the old Japanese story of two frogs that meet on a mountain midway between their cities, get turned around, see their own cities, and proclaim that the (mistaken) destination city is not worth the trip. The rhyming couplets are only adequate to the story, I would say. The chief virtue of this little book is the six colored illustrations, including the title-page and the "finis" page. Also helpful is the moral: "And like their frog, Kyotans say/Theirs is the city of today;/Osakans, equally, will claim/Their city has as great a name:/But all are right, you see, for pride/Maintains their beauties, side by side./There's little harm in being proud,/Provided that it dos not cloud/Your better judgment of the worth/Of other merits on this earth." I take this moral to be a reinforcement of the good thinking that the proud person's challenge is whether he or she can receive the next good offered. The author offered the first version of this versification in a teen-age poetry competition in a South African newspaper sixty years earlier. He resurrected and polished it in 1985 "at the urging of his family and friends, to rescue it perhaps from pending oblivion." The psychology involved in the putting down of the (mistaken) other city raises fascinating questions. Consider Osaka frog's put-down, supposedly of Kyoto: "I do not like this town;/Its temples are too drab and brown;/Its tea-resorts are not so fine/As town Osaka's are divine!" Here the dynamic seems to be the need to put down the (supposed) other and to exalt the (remembered) familiar. Are we meant to think of those whose conversation says something like "I know what you are saying. Here is what I experienced.." Kyoto frog says much the same: "This town is nothing more than dust,/And if my town is not the best,/I never shall again digest/An insect.."

1985 Un fablier. Jean Queval. Collages de Gilles Chapacou. Paperbound. Bassac, Charente, France: Plein Chant. £ 2 from Any Amount of Books, Charing Cross Road, London, August, '01.

Here is a worthy subtitle: "où sont rapportées les histoires fabueuses de quelques animaux dont certains sont imaginaires; dans lequel La Fontaine est transcrit non sans toupet dans un tout autre register par un auteur contemporain; suivi de quelques explications sur l'entreprise du vil imitateur." My French would need to be much better to appreciate this book worthily. It contains fifty verse fables on some 86 pages, followed by a distancing epilogue and a postface. From what I can tell, the fables do a very clever job of taking La Fontaine's relationships, struggles, and characters and transposing them reflectively and humorously into the different world of today. The five collages seem highly surrealist. They put together some strange components, as in the picture of the old photographer in a moonscape (29) or the two gentlemen flying with a court-worthy woman above peasants in a replay of TT (83). This book must be a trip!

1985 When Small Is Tall and Other Read-Together Tales. Prepared by the Bank Street College of Education. Written by Seymour V. Reit, William H. Hooks, and Betty D. Boegehold. Illustrated by Lynn Munsinger. NY: A Random House Pictureback. Two hardbound copies from the Creighton University Bookstore for $3.98 each and one paperbound copy for $1.95, Dec., '86.

A rebus book based on Aesop and delightfully illustrated. The pictures are sharp, well reproduced, and have a bit of wit. LM, TH, and AD. Made for reading to kids with your finger under the words/pictures.

1985 Words, Riddles, and Stories. Adapted from the Walt Disney Fun-to-Learn Library. A Bantam Begin-to-Learn Book. Toronto: Bantam Books. Hardbound for $5 from Books, Campbell, CA, Aug., '89. Paperback (Special Book Club Edition) for $1, Jan., '88.

The third Section, "Tell Me a Story," contains "Cinderella" and then five Aesop's fables with Disney characters: Donald spills the milk, Pluto loses the bone, and three pigs dig up the farm. Though not named, the hare beaten by the tortoise sure looks like Bugs Bunny!

1985 22 sprookjes, verhalen en fabels. Jan Wolkers. First edition? Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij. Utrecht: Druk Van Boekhoven-Bosch bv. Gift in trade from Gert-Jan van Dijk, Feb., '95.

It is really a pity that I cannot read this book, since it is in Dutch. The illustrations are racy! The first of them seems to feature a sexy lobster with well-developed breasts out of her shell (8-9). Later there is something about a frog queen, and again (76) the illustration seems to be sexually quite explicit. With "Walkman" in one of the titles and "Made in Hong Kong" on a birdnest in one illustration, these stories will prove to be fun when I can understand them.

1985 [Korean]. ("Aesop's Fables"). "Fox and Stork" on cover. Edited by Kyung Hee Yun. Illustrator not acknowledged. Seoul: Kana. See 1980/85.

1985/87 Der Karpfen wollte ein Hai sein: Tiergeschichten in vier Zeilen. Henryk Keisch. Mit Bildern von Jean Effel. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Berlin: Eulenspiegel Verlag. DM 8 from Dresdener Antiquariat, July, '95.

This book is fun! The back cover of the dust-jacket explains the book in terms of the genre of fable. Henryk Keisch and Jean Effel both use their contemporary arts for an "Umformung der Tierfabel." The result is delightful. Mostly, the humor here works the way a fable works. Several times the connection with fables surfaces even more clearly. A cartoon on 6 shows La Fontaine walking through the woods. The crow declares to other animals: "There is again this writer, who sounds us out for his stories and then alone pockets the fee." On 34, the wolf says "Let's be human" as he rips the throat of a lamb. He feels himself to be human since he heard the latest reports of human inventions for mass murder. Again on 46, the wolf proclaims "Freedom everywhere!" He breaks in among the lambs by night and in the dawn rubs his belly: free wolf among free sheep. The fly who wants to commit suicide on 49 has to hope that the sugar cube to which he has tied himself will keep him from returning to life when he jumps into the cup of coffee. On 76 an epigram declares that the fact that mountains labor and bear only a mouse is explainable: "I have seen many a mountain labor and the result was not the humblest, littlest mouse." Now I need to find Effel's 1978 "Au temps où les bêtes parlaient." His art continues to enchant me!

1985/87 Fábulas: La Fontaine. "Juvenil." Paperback. Segonda edición 1985. Primera reimpresión 1987. Col. Sifón: Editores Mexicanos Unidos. 10 pesos in an open-air market in Juarez, August, '96. Extra copies of the 1990 tercera reimpresion for $7.95 by mail from Allá, Santa Fe, June, '93 and as a gift of Linda Schlafer, Jan., '95.

Straightforward presentation of the complete fables in a remarkably compact book, complete with some simple "dot" illustrations like those in the Aesop editions by the same publisher (1982 and 1985/92). The individual fables are not marked, but book beginnings are, and the books are listed in the T of C at the end. There is also a short prologue.

1985/88 Der Hase und der Mond: Namibische Fabeln und Märchen. Erzählt von Alfred Wellm. Illustrationen von Eva Natus-Salamouon. 4. Auflage. Hardbound. Berlin: Der Kinderbuchverlag. DM 7 from Dresdener Antiquariat, August, '01.

I have been surprised at how many fables -- and how many known traditional fables -- there are here. The title-story is a good "pourquoi" story on the source of death. The moon tried to announce to men through a millipede "As I die and in dying live, so should you also die and in dying live" (13). The millipede moved too slowly for the hare, who hurried to deliver the message to men but said only "As the moon dies and in dying wanes, so should you also die and in dying wane." The moon got angry with this poor messenger and tried to strike him. He hit only the upper lip and scratched his own moon-face. So now the hare has a hare-lip and the face of the moon is scratched. But men have to die and in dying wane. In "Der Pavian und die Schlange" (14-16), the baboon has freed a snake, who then wants to poison him. The jackal is the clever one who gets the situation back to its original state to save the baboon. "Der Leopard und der Widder" includes an old fable trick: the goat sees the leopard and jackal approach together and calls out "So, friend jackal, you've brought me good leopard meat!" (24-26). "Der Hase und der Löwe" is the familiar story of leading a lion to a well to face the "other" lion who threatens him (30-32). Here, as elsewhere, the lion jumps in and ends up drowning. "Vom kranken Löwen, der Hyäne und dem schlauen Schakal" is the story usually told of the fox who notices that all footprints enter the cave and none come out (34-36). Here the jackal takes up that role. "Wie der Schakal den Löwen überlistete" is new to me (37-38): the jackal has tricked the lion many times but is now cornered up against a rocky cliff. He cries for help from the lion. "What is up?" asks the lion. "The cliffs are ready to fall. Come and hold them up while I get a log to hold them up!" The lion does that, and the jackal gets away. "Der Affe und das Krokodil" is the traditional story of leaving one's heart at home (56-58). The art is exceedingly simple. The book closes with some proverbs and a T of C on 63.

1985/89 100 Ancient Chinese Fables. Chinese-English. K.L. Kiu. Published and printed in Hong Kong. H.K. $40 at Swindon, Hong Kong, May, '90.

A fine little bilingual paperback collection of one hundred fables. The preface sets up good criteria for selection. Fables are selected here that are comprehensible in translation and do not hinge on customs strange to us. When two fables have more or less the same lesson, this anthology includes only one. Fables with currently used morals are preferred. Fables were once a weapon in wars of political ideology. Many of these originally formed a part of a larger text. My favorites here include #8, 12, 14, 17, 23, 29, 32, 43, 44, 51, 52, 57, 58, 61, 67, 68, 70, 72, 74, 76, 80, 86, and 96.

1985/91 Stories to Solve. Folktales from Around the World. Told by George Shannon. Illustrated by Peter Sis. NY: Beech Tree Books. $3.95 at Kettersons', April, '91.

An ingenious and well-written book which tells the puzzle-tales just right, from "How can you get the wolf, goat, and cabbage across the river unharmed?" to good detective stories. Aesop's CP fits right in. Another surprising place where Aesop is right at home!

1985/1991 Town Mouse and Country Mouse. Lucy Kincaid. Illustrated by Eric Kincaid. Hardbound. Printed in Hong Kong. Newmarket, England: "Now You Can Read" series: Brimax. $3.91 from an unknown source, Nov., '03.

This book is identical with a version printed by the same publisher in 1985, with the following changes. It has a new cover showing the detail of the faces of the two mice against a white background. The front cover no longer proclaims "Large Type for First Readers." The back cover removes the picture, shifts from a green to a white background, and changes the list of titles in the "Now You Can Read" series. Inside, one reads "This edition published by Brimax Books Ltd, Newmarket, England 1990. Third printing 1991. Printed in Hong Kong." The new cover design is attributed to Oxprint Limited. See the original for my further comments.

1985/92 Fábulas: Esopo. "Juvenil." Paperback. Cuarta edición 1985. Cuarta reimpresión 1992. Santa Clara: Editores Mexicanos Unidos. $6.95 by mail from Allá, Santa Fe, June, '93. Extra copy a gift from Wesley Harris, S.J., from Guatemala, Aug., '94.

Straightforward presentation of 159 of Aesop's fables with primitive but engaging "dot" drawings. The collection is preceded by a prologue and followed by a T of C. The book is almost a replica of the same publisher's Fábulas Completas: Esopo of 1982. A length of 200 pages there has been reduced to 128 here, largely by putting more than one fable on a page and by using the reverse of illustration pages for more print. This edition does not claim to be complete and styles itself "juvenil," whereas that was among the "Clasicos" in the Colección Literaria Universal. My two copies of this edition were both in the run of two thousand printed in February of 1992, but they have distinct kinds of paper!

1985/92 Fábulas: Iriarte. "Juvenil." Paperback. Tercera edición 1985. Tercera reimpresión 1992. Santa Clara: Editores Mexicanos Unidos. $6.95 by mail from Allá, Santa Fe, June, '93. Extra copy for 32.10 Pesos at Temporame, Juarez, August, '96.

A straightforward presentation of seventy-five of Iriarte's fables, preceded by a prologue and followed by a T of C.

1985/92 Fábulas: Samaniego. "Juvenil." Paperback. Tercera edición 1985. Cuarta reimpresión 1992. Santa Clara: Editores Mexicanos Unidos. $6.95 by mail from Allá, Santa Fe, June, '93. Extra copy a gift of Linda Schlafer, Jan., '95.

A straightforward presentation of 152 of Samaniego's fables, preceded by a prologue and followed by a T of C.

1985/92 Treasury of Children's Classics in Spanish and English.  William T. Tardy.  Paperbound.  Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Co.  $8.95 from Powell's, Burnside, Portland, August., '13. 

1985/97 Aesop's Fables [Japanese]. Shogo Hirata. Apparently third in a series of ten books: $5 from Jeremy Weiss, Sleepy Hollow, NY, through eBay, June, '11.

Here is the Japanese version of a book I have liked in its 1990 Korean incarnation. Part of the fun is that the books are mirror opposites: one opens to the left and the other to the right. GA is pictured on the cover. Where that Korean book was #5 in its series, this Japanese version is #3 in its series. As I mention there, I like this book, principally for its vivid color reproductions. Four stories: TMCM, GA (maybe the best art), "The Bat and the Birds and the Animals," and LM (the poorest art). It is still true that the back cover presents 15, but now it is not reversed. Originally purchased in BookTown2008 for 150 Yen. Like its original, the book begins with Page 2, which is the inside front cover.

1985? Aesop's Fables in Verse. Verse by Gordon Kibler. Illustrations by Dell Hall. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Southampton: Paul Cave Publications Ltd.. $3.99 from Linda Sumner, Cumberland, BC, Canada, Nov., '10.

Here are twenty-four lively verse retellings of familiar Aesopic fables, each on an unnumbered left-hand page. On the right pages are corresponding full-page colored illustrations. The paper used here is about as slick and heavy as I have seen. There is a nice black-and-white artist's design after each text. Among my favorites are the illustrations for "The Boys and the Frogs" and TB. The dog in DS leans over a hand-railing. This good choice allows the artist to overcome some usual awkwardness in the dog's posture as he contemplates himself. FWT displays not only the fox without the tail but the tail without the fox! In BW, the design showing townspeople running out to help at the end of the text is a good foil to the colored picture of the people not responding to the boy's urgent pleas. The trees' faces and bodies are well executed in "The Trees and the Axe." The blue-green endpapers seem a bit strange. The dust-jacket reproduces the GGE illustration. 

1985? Fábulas de La Fontaine.  Translation and adaptation by Gloria Sarró.  Illustrations by Domingo Rubies.  Hardbound.  Uruguay: Biblioteca Juvenil:  Editorial Quinto Centenario: Auriga; Danfel, S.A.  $19 from Christian Tottino, Buenos Aires, through eBay, July, '16.

1985? Festival Fairy Tales: Collection Two. No editor acknowledged. Several illustrations (but none in the two fables) are apparently signed "Magda." Printed in Russia. London?: Peter Haddock. $2 at Second Hand Rose etc..., Evanston, Dec., '95.

This curious, large-format, stiff-covered book contains two eight-paged fables, with one illustration and a few lines of text for each page. The illustrated figures are regularly childlike and even childish. GGE (61) varies the story more than I have ever seen before. A girl Joanna was poor but generous. A magician gave her a beautiful white hen, which delivered golden eggs. Joanna became rich and disagreeable. Soon the hen began giving not gold but big fried eggs. She began to beat the hen with a broom. Then the magician appeared to tell her that it was Joanna's fault, not the hen's. She had a conversion and distributed to poor children the now continuous supply of golden eggs. In TH (133) A proud hare suggested the race to a female tortoise, who seems to wear a basket of flowers on her head. This tortoise sweats. Collection One, mentioned on 199, includes MM. The figures here seem to remind me of work I have seen before, particularly the sweating tortoise and the blue bunnies on the end-papers; but I cannot locate them elsewhere.

1985? Festival Fairy Tales: Collection Two.  Magda?  Hardbound. Peter Haddock.  $2 from an unknown source, Dec., '99.

1985? Isoppu Monogatari (Aesop’s Stories, Japanese). #8 in a series. Tokyo: Hikari no Kuni. 100 yen at Miwa, Kanda, Tokyo, July, ’96.

The cover is Page 1 of this large-format stiff-paged book of five fables. The five are: OF, WS, DS, LM, and GA. Each receives two double-pages. The frog shows great positions and poses on the way to bursting. An apron helps to show how she is expanding. The grasshopper in GA has a great face; he plays an accordion. Page 2 is marked slightly.

1985? La Fontaine: The Crow and the Fox and The Little Fish and the Fisherman. Illustrations by Maya Filip. Paperbound. Brighton: Fountain Series: Litor Publishers Ltd.. $1.75 from Carla McBride, Columbia, Canada, through eBay, June, '10.

This little children's book of 7" x 7½" has very simple illustrations with an emphasis on lots of strong facial expressions. The versions of the two fables here are faithful to La Fontaine; FC is as faithful as I have ever seen a version in English! "The Little Fish and the Fisherman" shows the same faithfulness to La Fontaine. Excellent condition. On the back cover one finds "Children's Books Ltd - Stafford." The collector in me notices that there are eighteen booklets in this series. Now I have four of them.

1985? La Fontaine: The Donkey and the Little Dog, and The Cat and the Fox. Illustrations by Ileana Ceausu Pandele. Pamphlet. Printed in Italy. Brighton: Fountain Series: Litor Publishers Ltd. $3 from Pierre Cantin, Chelsea, Quebec City, Canada, Nov., '00.

This little children's book of 7" x 7½" has very simple illustrations with an emphasis on lots of bright colors. The poetry starts with a rhyme but does not have a clear scheme that I can see. The versions of the two fables here are faithful to La Fontaine. They are "The Donkey and the Little Dog" and "The Cat and the Fox." Excellent condition. On the back cover one finds "Children's Books Ltd - Stafford." The collector in me notices that there are eighteen booklets in this series.

1985? La Fontaine: The Hen who laid the Golden Eggs and the Sponge-carrier and the Salt-carrier. Illustrations by Carlos Busquets. Pamphlet. Fountain Series. Printed in Italy. Brighton: Litor Publishers Ltd. $3 from Pierre Cantin, Chelsea, Quebec City, Canada, Feb., '02.

This little children's book of 7" x 7½" is colorful and attractive. The texts are arranged in sense lines. The versions of the two fables here are faithful to La Fontaine. Notice the looks on the two donkeys' faces throughout the second fable. Excellent condition. On the back cover one finds "Children's Books Ltd - Stafford." The collector in me notices again that there are eighteen booklets in this series, as I did when I received the another booklet in the series, also from Pierre. It features "The Donkey and the Little Dog" and "The Cat and the Fox," and I have also guessed at 1985 as its date of issue. Two down and sixteen to go!

1985? La Fontaine: The Wolf, the Goat and the Kid and the Fox and the Squirrel. Illustrations by Violayne Hulne. Paperbound. Brighton: Fountain Series: Litor Publishers Ltd.. $1.75 from Carla McBride, Columbia, Canada, through eBay, June, '10.

This little children's book of 7" x 7½" has simple illustrations. My prize goes to the kid's view of the wolf's eye through the peephole. The second fable has a lovely turn when it says that Aesop has stories that show that you should not make fun of sad people. Then comes the surprise: "I'm not going to tell you about those; I've got a better example." In the end, this story comes out like "The Fox and the Cat," but the squirrel does not exult in the fox's undoing, since he has learned from his own experience. Excellent condition. On the back cover one finds "Children's Books Ltd - Stafford." The collector in me notices that there are eighteen booklets in this series. Now I have four of them.

1985? The Tall Book of Nursery Tales. Pictures by Feodor Rojankovsky. Harper & Row: New York & Evanston. See 1944/85?.

1985? Treasured Tales of Childhood: Fables & Nursery Rhymes. Put together by Barbara Simons and Ruth Rooney. Hardbound. Printed in USA. Nashville: Treasured Tales of Childhood: The Southwestern Company. See 1974/85?

To top

1986 A Child's Book of Stories. With pictures by Jessie Willcox Smith. NY: Children's Classics. $8.98 at Half Price Books, Berkeley, Dec., '87.

The ultimate in cheapo knockoffs for the price. About twelve fables are mixed in. The eighty-six stories seem to have no special order. AI at the beginning. The original publication date was 1911. The illustrations (none on Aesop) seem to stop at 115.

1986 a Moral AlphaBet of Vice & Folly. Embellished with Nudes & other Exemplary Materials by Stan Washburn. Dust jacket. NY: Arbor House. $4.50 at McIntyre & Moore, Cambridge, March, '89.

A delightful, crazy alphabet with fables and morals, described by the dust jacket as a "kind of intellectual hit and run." Try A, H, T, and Y for starters. I enjoy this book.

1986 A tücsök meg a hangyák.  J.Z. Novák.  Hardbound.  Bratislava, Slovakia: Mladé letá.  900 Forints.  Budapest, August, ‘17.  

1986 Adventure on the Water. Written by Barbara Hayes. Illustrated by Phillip Mendoza. A Town Mouse and Country Mouse Story. Printed in Belgium. NY: Honey Bear Books: Modern Publishing: Unisystems. $1.75 at Cheever Books, San Antonio, August, ’96. Extra copy for the same price at the same time.

Here is one of the four books in the series on the TMCM. Like Up, Up and Away, this one has little to do with the originating fable. It describes a river-crossing trip by Annabel and Jeremy to visit Flora and Fred. The best illustrations are the two scenes at the shore: Annabel in her much-admired motor car (19) and being photographed at the beach (21). Again, I find the illustrations delightful.

1986  Aeslet og hunden: 20 fabler af Aesop.  Fortalt af Soren Christensen.  Med tegninger af Svend Otto S.  Hardbound.  Copenhagen: Gyldendal.  85 Kroner from Vangsgaards Antikvariat, Copenhagen, July, '14.  

1986 Aesop Writes Again. By Gary Greene. Art work by Michelle Sudbury, Charles Smith, Michael Stefano, Hilary Joan, and Isolde Bauer. First original edition. Paperback. Printed in USA. Lawrenceville, VA: Brunswick Publishing Company. $36.80 from Mountainview Books, Hopeland, PA, Jan., '01.

Inscribed to Dennis by Gary G. This book has been a major surprise. I have had it on my want list for some time. It turns out to have almost nothing to do with Aesop. The back cover says that the book "is a book of short stories and poems so designed to deliver the Aesop punch." I read the first ten or fifteen poems and did not find the Aesop punch. I did find some bothersome typos and mistakes. The poetry is not my kind of poetry. The poetry is heavy on rhyme and the prose on sets of four dots. Sorry!

1986 Aesop's Fables. Retold by Robert Mathias. Color illustrations by David Frankland. Line illustrations by Meg Rutherford. Dust jacket. Printed in Spain. Morristown, NJ: Silver Burdett Co. $11.95.

The line drawings impress me as more successful than the colored illustrations, which seem a nostalgic attempt. The best of the line drawings is of "The Stag and the Pool." Some of the texts run long; FC, for example, takes two pages. First published in 1983 by Hamlyn in England. Silver Burdett adapted and published it in the USA in 1986.

1986 Aesop's Fables: A Play.  Peter Terson.  Music by Jeff Parton.  Paperbound.  London:  Samuel French.  $5 from Pegasaurus Books Limited, Arundel, Great Britain, August, '17.

1986 Aesop's Fables Coloring Album. George Fyler Townsend. Brad Foster. Paperbound. Los Angeles: Troubador Press: Price/Stern/Sloan. $3.95, Sept., '86.

This is a later reprinting of Troubador's 1982 coloring album, with about fifteen splendiferous psychedelic pictures to color in. As I mention there, generally the art has lost sight of the story. Troubador found a new owner in the meantime: Price/Stern/Sloan. The changes in the booklet occur on the front cover, title-page, verso of the title-page, last page, and back cover. The cover has taken on a new border. The title-page has changed the date from 1982 to 1986 and mentions that Troubador is a subsidiary of Price/Stern/Sloan. The verso of the title-page shifts the publisher and place (from San Francisco to Los Angeles). The last page presents the ads for Troubador books differently. The back cover changes the ISBN number and again adds the new publisher and place. This later edition squares the binding, which under Troubador in the original edition had been two staples.

1986 Aesop's Forest. Robert Coover. Michael McCurdy, Illustrator. Paperbound. Printed in USA. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Back-To-Back: Capra Press. $15.52 from Jeffrey Cooper, Philadelphia, through Ebay, October, '00. Extra copy for $18 from Books Inc., Jan., '98.

This book is Volume VIII of the Capra Back-To-Back series, together with "The Plot of the Mice" by Brian Swann. These are thirty-three of the most biting pages I know about fables. The book makes a good antidote for the presumption that fables are saccharinely cute and for children. The old lion is dying, with the fox nearby. Aesop the fabler is also facing his final hour as he goes deep into the forest to the lion's cave and then eventually runs from it, presumably into the arms of the outraged citizens of Delphi. The eye-illustration on 18 may be the best of a stimulating and appropriately weird lot. See 20 for a sample of the action: Aesop makes his way to the old lion's cave past the fox eating the heart of the stupid deer. The animals have turned on Aesop--perhaps for taunting fools?--as they will soon turn on the dying lion. Aesop continues to examine their excrement. In the midst of ruminations and fears and preparations, a turtle trying to master flying plummets through the sky (25-6). Mentioned earlier on 20, he finally hits the ground next to the lion on 36. The lion tells Aesop (29) pointedly "Wit will not get the better of strength. Ever." Finally the animals move in together against the lion to devour him (33), just as the Delphians attack Aesop. Aesop becomes another Socrates as victim of the state and unleasher of revenge (34). The final scene is the death of the lion, who fights back and loves it! Coover must touch on a hundred fables in this work of novella-length. My hat is off to him for a great work. I discovered it first in the L of C and was delighted later to find a copy on the Internet.

1986 An Aesop's Fable: The Old Man and Death. Retold by Peter, cuts by Donna Thomas. Undersized. Handset, printed on Peter's paper and bound in an edition of 200 copies. This is copy 175. No place of publication named. The Good Book Press. $22.80 from Cooper Hay, Glasglow, July, '92.

A beautifully made little book that tells this Aesopic story very well. The size seems to me to work against the two cuts. There is an exquisite design of hatchet and wood on the cover. For other work by Peter and Donna Thomas, see Aesop's Frog Fables (1990), done in Santa Cruz.

1986 Androcles and the Lion. Retold by Catherine Storr. Illustrated by Philip Hood. Great Tales from Long Ago. Printed in Hong Kong. London: Methuen Children's Books. $4.95 at Powell's, Hyde Park, Oct., '94.

A note at the beginning mentions Aesop, Aulus Gellius, and George Bernard Shaw. The appealing version offered here includes elements sometimes not found: Androcles has a wife, Numia, and a little son; they live in North Africa; when he is finally freed and reunited, he lives with the lion in Rome. The visual art is not to my taste.

1986 Annabel Visits the Country. Written by Barbara Hayes. Illustrated by Phillip Mendoza. NY: Honey Bear Books: Modern Publishing: Unisystems. $1.95 at New England Mobile Book Fair, July, '88. Extra copy for $1.75 from Cheever Books, San Antonio, August, '96.

Here is something new: a development in one book of a part of an Aesopic fable, in this case the trip of a city mouse to the country. The illustration and elaboration are delightful; the characterization of the sophisticated city mouse is good. The funniest moments include "changing" after dinner, "going out" the next morning, and Jeremy's repairing of the city car.

1986 Cajun Fables. Justin Wilson with Jay Hadley. Illustrated by Errol Troxclair. Second printing. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing Company. See 1982/86.

1986 C'era una Volta. Esopo-Perrault. Le belle e le bestie a cura di Francesco Saba Sardi. Printed in Spain. (c)1983 Kodansha-Mondadori. (c)1986 Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. Milan: Mondadori. Gift of Mary Pat Ryan from Genoa, May, '94.

A big book in every way! There are six thematic groups of between seven and fourteen stories each, every group starting with one Perrault story and finishing with the rest from Aesop. The introduction speaks of offering cotolette of Perrault along with many contorni of Aesop! The art is big and bold in several styles. Sample good illustrations are DS (85), BF (88), and "The Horse and the Ass" (178-9). Should the lion's skin (79) have eyes of its own? T of C on 238.

1986 Collected Tales from Aesop's Fables. No editor named. Illustrated by Val Biro. Printed in Hong Kong. Companion of Aesop's Fables cassette tape, sold in the same set. NY: Gallery Books: Smith Publishers. Gift of Helen McGuire, Nov., '87.

One of the best renditions I have seen lately. The pictures are excellent, well produced, and witty. Some stories besides SW miss, as when the dolphin does not use a proper name with the monkey. Some are softened: the cow only hurts the frogs, and the eagle only steals the young fox. The best line is "I have seen lots of bags, but this is the only one I have ever seen with a cat's head!"

1986 Collected Tales from Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Val Biro. Hardbound. Southport, CT: Wishing Well Books: Joshua Morris Publishing. $1.99 from Hope Gilmore, Jackson, NJ, through eBay, August, '05. 

This book seems an exact reproduction of one done in the same year by Gallery Books of Smith Publishers of NY. That book was printed in Hong Kong. This book is in the series "Wishing Well Books" by Joshua Morris Publishing of Southport CT. It was printed in Singapore. I continue to think very highly of Biro's illustrations of Aesop. I will add my comments from that volume. One of the best renditions I have seen lately. The pictures are excellent, well produced, and witty. Some stories besides SW miss, as when the dolphin does not use a proper name with the monkey. Some are softened: the cow only hurts the frogs, and the eagle only steals the young fox. The best line is "I have seen lots of bags, but this is the only one I have ever seen with a cat's head!" This edition was produced in conjunction with an audio cassette. The packaging includes a reference also to House of Lloyd, Inc. Might that firm be perhaps a distributor?

1986 Der Affenbaum: Indische Fabeln. Erzählt von Anne Geelhaar. Illustriert von Karl-Heinz Appelmann. Hardbound. Berlin: Der Kinderbuchverlag Berlin. €3 from Dresdener Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '07.

Here is a squarish book 7¼" x 7" with a monkey looking at us on the cover. It has 40 pages. It belonged formerly to the Ministerium für Volksbildung, Zentralstelle für Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Some of these stories are familiar from the usual Indian sources. Others seem new. The first story is clever. A hat seller stops for a moment's rest in the heat under a palm tree. He falls asleep, and when he wakes up, his basket formerly full of turbans is empty. He looks up to see a tree full of turbaned monkeys. He tries all sorts of ploys to get his turbans back. He tells all sorts of stories. Finally exasperated, he throws his own turban to the ground and says something like "If you won't give me my turbans back, then take this one too!" The imitative monkeys all throw their turbans to the ground, and he collects them. The story concludes "And here are some of the stories he told them." Good stories. The ass sings to the full moon and gets beaten and confined (6). There is the sad story of the camel (9), familiar from "Kalila and Dimna," but here with a different form. The same "bad guys" here -- leopard, jackal, and crow -- get the camel to call the king evil, and the king lion himself responds by eating the camel. A good illustration shows the camel at king lion's court (11). In what seems a borrowing from the Aesopic tradition, a jackal serves as judge between two monkeys who found a big cheese (16). Here it is the monkeys who keep saying "His part is too big." Of course the jackal gets it all, bit by bit. There is the traditional story of the jackal who urges his cave to speak. The lion in the cave gives himself away (18). This illustration (19) may be the most suggestive in the group. Flamingo and crow do a variation on cat and fox, only this time about how to fly (23). The bear and the gardener become here the monkey and the king, and the monkey kills a bee with his sword (30). Alas, he kills the king too! "Die drei Fische" is also here (34).

1986 Deutsche Volksbücher, Erster Band. Nacherzählt und herausgegeben von Gertrud Bradatsch und Joachim Schmidt. Illustrations from Ulm et al. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Leipzig: Insel-Verlag. €9 from Dresdener Antiquariat, July, '07.

This is one of the nicest books I have seen coming out of the German Democratic Republic. It is not snazzy, but it is well made. The special contribution of this book to someone interested in fables lies in the extensive material from Heinrich Steinhöwel's "Life of Aesop" (221-269) and his "The Fables of Aesop" (270-393). If nothing else here is a comprehensive and legible copy of that early and important Aesop. There are thirty-seven woodcuts in the book, several of them from Steinhöwel's life and several from his fables of Aesop. 

1986 Die Fabel von Kätzchen, vom Mäuschen und vom roten Hühnchen.  Marketa Prachaticka.  Hardbound.  Prague and Berlin: Albatros, Prague: Kultur- und Informationszentrum der CSSR, Berlin.  €3.25 from Deichkieker Bücherkiste, Lemwerder,Feb., '/24. 

1986 Donald Cries "Wolf!". Walt Disney Fun-To-Read Library, Volume 14. First printing. NY: Bantam. $.25 at the Sebastopol flea market, Sept., ’96. Extra copy of the third printing for $1 from the Antiquarian Book Mart, San Antonio, August, ’

Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck go camping, and Donald is definitely not easy with the experience. He cannot sleep because he is afraid, and he ends up crying "Wolf" (note: not out of the usual Aesopic desire to fool people but out of fear). After checking things out twice, Mickey declares that he simply will not get up and leave the tent again no matter what Donald cries. Then of course a wolf does come! This adaptation of Aesop is better than the usual for Disney, I would say.

1986 Donald Cries "Wolf!".  Walt Disney Fun-To-Read Library, Volume 14.  Third printing.  Hardbound.  NY: Walt Disney Fun-To-Read Library, Volume 14: Bantam.  $2.50 from Second Story Warehouse, Rockville, MD, Nov., '19.

1986 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. See 1976/86.

1986 Ein junger Kater wünscht sich mäuse: Gedichte, Fabeln und Geschichten von Katze und Maus. Zusammengestellt von Gottfried Herold. Illustriert von Eva Natus-Salamoun. Hardbound. Berlin: Der Kinderbuchverlag. See 1983/86.

1986 El Maravilloso Mundo de las Fábulas (Tomo 1).  Hardbound.  Valencia: Editorial Alfredo Ortells.  $4.67 from Penny Lavy, Warrenton, MO, through eBay, Feb., '15.  

1986 El Maravilloso Mundo de las Fábulas (Tomo 2).  Hardbound.  Madrid: Editorial Alfredo Ortells.  $4.67 from Penny Lavy, Warrenton, MO, through eBay, Feb., '15. 

1986 El Maravilloso Mundo de las Fábulas (Tomo 3).  Hardbound.  Valencia: Editorial Alfredo Ortells.  $4.67 from Penny Lavy, Warrenton, MO, through eBay, Feb., '15.

1986 El Ratoncito del Campo y el Ratoncito de la Ciudad. Por Patricia y Fredrick McKissack. Illustrado por Anne Sikorski. Traductora: Lada Josefa Kratky. Preparado bajo la direccion de Robert Hillerich. Cuentos para empezar. Chicago: Childrens Press. $3.95, Willow Creek, Denver, March, '94.

Apparently an exact duplicate of Country Mouse and City Mouse (1985). This book's approach to the common story is distinguished perhaps only by the use of the first person for the narration by the country mouse. The only hassle in the city that is specified comes with a garbage truck! We are quite a distance from Horace here! The mice are cute in their contemporary dress. Is the art done with acrylics?

1986 English and American Fables/Englische und amerikanische Fabeln.  Herausgegeben und übersetzt von Harald Raykowski.  Mit Illustrationen von Frieda Wiegand.  Paperbound.  München: dtv zweisprachig: Edition Langewiesche-Brandt: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.  €2.99 from Versandantiquariat Felix Mücke, Hammelbach, Germany, Sept., '19.

1986 Fabeln. Juergen Grzimek. Hardbound. Dreieich, Germany: Hesse & Becker im Weiss Verlag. DM 14.80 in Germany, August, '99.

This little volume has twenty-four modern fables on some fifty-nine pages. Grzimek's "Vorwort" separates his work from that of Schnurre, Arnzten and Anders. His fables are written against the flood of images of today's media. They should awaken understanding for social problems and should lead to critical reading. And they should create fun. The first fable is a reflective consideration of aging in the person of the proud and selfish king lion whose power dwindles. Everyone will die as he has lived. "Die Drei Raben" (14) tells of three ravens who get into a skyscraper through the window but cannot get out again. They see a white dove fly by. The first wishes he were a falcon to pursue her, the second a man to shoot her. The third wishes he were the dove. "Hundeleben" (26) is a touching piece by the pet dog of a man who did not share his wife's ambition and was divorced by her. He wanted to pet something and was rejected for petting female and male colleagues. He bought the dog, and they lead a happy life together. "Falke und Taube" (34) is a scarry look into the past and present experience of a killer. He used to attack flocks of doves. Now he finds them alone, careful, and in a hurry. "When I see them, I drive them to the ground and they die trembling before I grasp them." In "Der Abgrund" (43), a fox with a cane who has walked a long way hops onto a willing ass, urges him to gallop like a horse, and then beats him with the cane. The ass runs wildly forward without attention to the path and finally goes over the edge of a cliff. The fox, who has jumped off, asks why the ass was in such a hurry to break his neck. "Drei Kätzchen" (47) tells of a tawdry sexual encounter between a fox and three loose women. Twelve sketches accompany the fables. 

1986 Fabeln und Kleingeschichten. Karel Capek; Deutsch von Eckhard Thiele. Mit Illustrationen von Günther Lück. 1. Auflage. Hardbound. Weimar und Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag. €2 from Maik Fischer, Kronach, Germany, through eBay, July, '09.

This book is a translation of the Czech original "Badjky a podpovidky." The first hundred pages or so contain fables. The earliest seem to be in dated groups. The longer the fables, the harder they are for me to understand. But after perhaps twenty such, Capek turns to something closer to aphorisms, and these are much easier to enjoy. Try the scientific inchworm, who says "Haha, out of me should a butterfly develop? Outdated dreams of old women, my good man! Nothing other than illusion. A fairy tale for kids. It is scientifically proven that we inchworms are nothing but digestive systems without wings. Life ends, and that is it!" (23). Or the sparrow who says "So what's special about a nightingale? We sparrows are much more populous" (25). "The Important Fly" goes this way: "You do not know? That is the fly that sat down on the king's forehead!" (27). The aphorisms take a sharper turn in the 1930's. The ruler speaks: "I command you to pay me, and you pay me to command you" (29). The cactus says "Just be well armed. Look how men fear me. They actually serve me" (29). The fly says, apparently to a fellow fly "Tough times, but in the war, girl, there were lots of nice corpses!" (30). The mouse says "Bird? Such a relique. I don't understand how someone can be a bird" (33). The mirror: "I get it! The world exists only in my perception. Outside of me is nothing" (45). Attila: "I also want peace, but a Hun peace." The leader of armies: "Aim your weapons at those who defend themselves and naturally also at those who do not defend themselves" (65). And the book: "I answer only those questions that are in me" (77). Two late sets of fables are "from the future world" and "from the civil war." In one of the former a child asks his father what peace is. "I don't know. Don't ask me such stupid stuff!" (85). From the latter: "You soldiers, you have done all that you could for the greatness of our people. Only half of them are left" (87). Next follows "Diese Zeiten." It includes "Two Tigers and the Jungle": "We have met in the interest of peace. We have agreed to hunt together" (93). The artist's colored designs along the way are fresh, modern, question-raising. 

1986 Fabeln und Lieder; Cover: Fabeln und Erzählungen. Christian Furchtegott Gellert; Herausgegeben von Gottfried Honnefelder. Mit den vierundzwanzig Radierungen zu Gellerts Fabeln von Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki. First edition. Paperbound. Frankfurt: Insel Verlag. DM 12 from Hassbecker's Galerie & Buchhandlung, Heidelberg, August, '01. 

This paperback volume is like the hardbound volume published by Borowsky, which I have listed under "1970?" It seems to contain all the fables. They are organized in three books. It also contains the twenty-four Chodowiecki illustrations. As I mention there, I have so far not met a Gellert illustrator who could pass up "Der Tanzbär" (12)! There is both an AI and a T of C at the back of this book. There is a strange printer's error here. The cover rightly announces Fabeln und Erzählungen. The title-page for some reason announces Fabeln und Lieder! Oops!

1986 Fablennou Ezop ha Fedr Troet en Brezoneg.  Guillaume Ricou.  Illustrations by Kristian Foisnon.  Paperbound.  Brest: Brud Nevez Emgleo Breiz.  €21.98 from Abraxas-Libris, Oct.,' 21.

1986 Fables. Edited by Anne Stevenson Hobbs. First edition? Dust jacket. London: Victoria and Albert Museum. $14.95 new at Odegard's, March, '88. Second (work) copy for $12.71 at Brookline Booksmith, Feb., '89. Extra copies in excellent condition for $14.35 from Book Forum, Colorado Springs, and for $8.50 from Abbey Road, Boulder, both in March, '94

An absolute find! A selective and tasteful overview of the tradition, with fifty versions and black-and-white illustrations presented in chronological order, and another six colored illustrations in the introduction. As far as I can tell, the main representatives are all here. There is an "Analysis by Theme" on 135, preceded by a wise introduction to the thematic analysis of fables. This book repays many hours of study.

1986 Fables. Toinette Harrison. Paperbound. Printed in USA. NY: A Signet Book: New American Library. $4.00 from Gutenberg Holdings, New Hampton, NY, through Bibliocity, April, '99.

I am putting this book into the collection so that I do not get fooled again, as I have been twice now. This is a racy paperback novel with, on its back cover, these words under pictures of an ocean cruiser and a semi-clad woman with a less clad man: "Their fairy tale ended--and their dazzling drama began. They were the three fabled Ellerman sisters…." Later on the page we read that this is an "opulent novel of love and seduction that captures a time and a place that will never exist again…." I guess that that element helps to lead to the choice of "Fables" as title. I will leave it to others to read the rest of the book. A previous friendly bookseller had warned me off, but I had forgotten.

1986 Fables and Folktales Adapted from Tolstoy. Text by Maristella Maggi. Illustrated by Baraldi. Translated by Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick. First impression (all three copies). Originally published in Italian by Larus in Bergamo in 1985 as Tolstoi Racconta. Printed in Japan. Woodbury, NY: Barron's. $3.95 from The Christmas Attic, Alexandria, VA, Dec., '91. Extra copy for $3.50 from Chameleon, Seattle, July, '93, and one further extra copy.

Almost all the tales here are Aesopic. The good art work seems to follow a recent trend toward the detailed and witty. "The Lion, the Bear, and the Fox" and "The Cranes and the Stork" have the best illustrations.

1986 Fables fraîches pour lire à jeun.  Pierre Bettencourt.  #18 of 33 "original edition" copies.  Paperbound.  Paris: Collection Entre 4 yeux:  Éditions Lettres Vives.  €96 from Librairie Gil-Artgil Sarl, Rodez, France, through ZVAB, May, '19.

1986 Fairy Tale Charted Designs. by Jeanne M. Warth. Printed in USA. NY: Dover Publications Inc. $12.50 from Dorothy Harris, Eldersburg, MD, through Ebay, March, '00.

This is the second needlework pattern book I have found in the past year, and it is also the second chance I have had at it. I was outbid earlier on Ebay. Among the designs presented here are those for TH (20, 21) and TMCM (24, 25). They both look like fun.

1986 Favole di animali.  Beniamino Bodini NA.  Second edition, fourth printing.  Paperbound.  Milan: AMZ.  See 1974/86.

1986 Flora Goes to Town. Written by Barbara Hayes. Illustrated by Phillip Mendoza. A Town Mouse and Country Mouse Story. Printed in Belgium. NY: Honey Bear Books: Modern Publishing: Unisystems. $1.75 at Cheever Books, San Antonio, August, ’96. Extra copy for the same price at the same time.

Here is one of the four books in the series on the TMCM. More than Adventure on the Water and Up, Up and Away, this story develops clearly from the originating fable. Flora and Fred’s visit shows how out of step they are with city life. When they arrive, Annabel gasps "You’re so early!" At an auction, Flora is offered a painting of a naked mouse on a seashell, signed of course by Mendoza. At a fancy milliner’s shop, she picks out a hat under a pile—that turns out to be the one she brought! At a fancy party in her honor at Annabel’s, she enters wearing an apron over her new evening gown. At the end, both Annabel and Flora say to others that they are sure that the other would prefer to be in the opposite location. Watch for the little mice in the delightful illustrations; for example in the book’s best illustration (12), a little fellow is just taking a hammer to an old pot at the auctioneer’s!

1986 Folk Tales from Korea. Third Edition, fourth printing. Collected and translated by Zong In-Sob. No illustrations. Elizabeth, NJ, and Seoul: Hollym International Corp. See 1952/70/82/86.

1986 Foxy Fables. Tony Ross. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Dial Books for Young Readers. $11.95 at Mr. Mopp's in Berkeley, Dec., '86. Two extra copies for $3.98 each at Chandler's, Evanston, Dec., '92. Extra copy of the first edition a gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Nov., '94. Another extra copy for $3.98 at Chandler's, Evanston, Dec., '92. One more extra for $3.98 from the Half-Price Store, Des Moines, April, '93.

A new favorite of mine. Six fables, with very nice black ink and watercolor paintings and lots of esprit. FC, "The Fox and the Goat," and FS. "The Cat and the Fox" has become a love story. "The Stag and the Mirrors" features getting caught on trolley wires. TH shows a showering turtle after the event. Ross exhibits delightful imagination.

1986 Further Freaky Fables. J.B. Handelsman. Paperbound. London: A Methuen Paperback: Methuen. £3.02 from C-Books.co.uk, Suffolk, UK, through abe, March, '11.

J.B. Handelsman is at it again with more cartoon strips that originally appeared in Punch. This full-size paperback of 64 pages again covers a wide range of literature and history, like the two previous collections of his cartoons, listed here under "1979" and "1984." Two fables make up Page 49. "The Hedgehog" moralizes "Married hedgehogs are unscrupulous." "The Nightingale" reverses "Juno and the Peacock." The nightingale asks Juno to give her "garish plumage and a sort of hail-fellow-well-met verbal facility." No deal. When she sings her beautiful music, the peacock asks her to cut the racket. Moral: "You can probably make a sow's ear out of a silk purse. But please don't." "The Trojans" (8) is a must-read the next time I teach the Aeneid. "Antonio and Wolfgang" moralizes "Not everybody can be a genius, but everybody can assassinate one" (33). "Jason and Medea" (52) is another treat. Good fun! 

1986 G.K. Chesterton: Daylight and Nightmare: Uncollected Stories and Fables. Selected and Arranged by Marie Smith. First edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. NY: Dodd, Mead & Company. $18 from P.C. Schmidt, East Lansing MI, through Bibliocity, June, '99. 

I have struggled in reading this book to find what Chesterton might have to offer the fable researcher. Perhaps Ms. Smith and even Chesterton himself are not too clear on what a fable is. Consider these two sentences from Smith's Foreword: "The shorter fables from this last period are, however, interspersed throughout. All the stories are fantasies of one sort of another" (5). Can a fable be a fantasy? I can report that I find many excellent and thought-provoking stories here, particularly "The Two Taverns" (32); "The Three Dogs" (48); "The Curious Englishman" (50); "The Tree of Pride" (58); "Chivalry Begins at Home" (76); "The Second Miracle" (99); "Concerning Grocers as Gods" (108); "On Secular Education" (122); and "A Fish Story" (124). In the end, they are fantasies, and I do not think that they are fables in anything like the traditional sense associated with Aesop. But anything from Chesterton's imagination is lively!

1986 Goofy’s Big Race. Walt Disney Fun-To-Read Library, Volume 4. First printing. NY: Bantam. $.25 at the Sebastopol flea market, Sept., ’96. Extra copy of the second printing for $1 from the Antiquarian Book Mart, San Antonio, August, ’96.

This is a Disneyesque rendition of TH. Donald is impetuous,and gives himself over to many distractions before his Aesopic nap: washing the car at a wash (and drying it, since the top on his convertible did not go down), skateboarding, participating in a baseball game, stopping for a drink, and stopping for lunch. He raced so fast at one point that he was given a speeding ticket. Goofy has a repeated saying that Sonja and I both like: "Slow and steady, steady and slow…."

1986 Isop Fables.  Hanako Muraoka.  Illustrated by Fuyuko Yamanaka.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Tokyo: Color Version of World's Childhood Literature #1: Minari.  $15 from pendictive through Ebay, May, '22.

1986 Iwan Krylow: Der Affe und die Brillen: Fabeln. Aus dem Russischen übersetzt von Ferdinand Löwe. Ausgewählt und bearbeitet von Helmut Grasshoff. Illustrationen von Eva Johanna Rubin. Mit einem Nachwort von Annelies Grasshoff. 2. Auflage. Hardbound. Berlin: Die Goldene Reihe: Der Kinderbuchverlag. See 1980/86.

1986 Into Books: Literature Pack No. 1: Brian Wildsmith's Fables: Teacher's Manual and Student Activities. Andrew Perry and Ron Thomas. Paperbound. Melbourne: Oxford. AU $3 from Babyboomerbooks, Mount Gambier, Australia, through eBay, Feb., '09.

Here is the key pamphlet in a boxed literature unit apparently meant to take up five sessions. I will describe the contents of the whole box elsewhere. This pamphlet offers background to the pack. It is meant to involve young readers. It offers a number of informal activities that help engage them in the reading. The pamphlet goes on to make suggestions on how to use the pack's five books and other materials. Reading, discussion, and activities for each session are then offered, complete with black-and-white cartoons. Here is a list of the kinds of pages that follow (several show up more than once): crossword puzzles; cloze activities; fill-in-the-bubble cartoons; sequence activities to arrange in the proper order; role-playing cards; find the sentence; find the words; and tell what is wrong here. I would love to teach this set of sessions!

1986 Jean de La Fontaine: Fables. Tome I (with a crow in the cover picture). Images de Gabriel Lefebvre. Two volumes boxed one over the other. Paris: Casterman. 100 F at Gibert Jeune, Paris, Aug., '88.

You will find one, two, or three wonderful watercolors per fable in these delightful little books. Sometimes the pictures may be more interesting in themselves than as illustrations of a fable. The best illustrations in this volume are of the lion and the mosquito, the rabbit and the frogs, and FG. Lefebvre likes to give each beast two eyes, even when the animal is seen from the side.

1986 Jean de La Fontaine: Fables. Tome II (with a fox in the cover picture). Images de Gabriel Lefebvre. Two volumes boxed one over the other. Paris: Casterman. 100 F at Gibert Jeune, Paris, Aug., '88.

You will find one, two, or three wonderful watercolors per fable in these delightful little books. Sometimes the pictures may be more interesting in themselves than as illustrations of a fable. The best illustrations in this volume are of the frog and the rat, the cat and the fox, TT, FWT, the plague, and WC. Lefebvre likes to give each beast two eyes, even when the animal is seen from the side.

1986 Jean de La Fontaine's The Cat and the Old Rat. With a translation by Patrizia Miller; Edited in French and English by S. Diane Barbee. Hardbound. Canoga Park, CA: Orirana Press. $20 from Mystery & Imagination Books, Glendale, CA, June, '06.

This delightful little book has six parts: the French version of La Fontaine's fable, a literal English translation, Patrizia Miller's translation, "Linda's Essay," a glossary, and various "paw-notes, cattenda & ratta" in the form of small papers to insert into the book. The book is almost 5¾" square. It is perhaps typical of the book that it includes that "almost." There is little that is symmetrical or predictable about this creative effort. One inserted slip advertises "The Orirana Press Series of excellent, even very good, but fairly obscure writers." LaFontaine uses both of the ploys often used in this fable: the cat first hangs himself from a peg and then disguises himself in flour. A wise rat sees through the disguise and says that he "neither flour nor sack will view as libation" and will never go hear him. Caution has something to do with security. The essay by Linda Fairbanks is on the French and the penchant to read. The colophon page at the back is typically clever, as it proclaims that the book is a keepsake presented to members of the Rounce & Coffin Club by D. Nicholas in 1986. Above the same rat-figure that is imprinted in red on the blue cover is "Ratified." The four inserts that came with my copy had these texts: "A clowder of Cats;/a shudder of Rats./MZ." "Rratum. In the Ratatouille recipe on Page 19A, please note that hamster meat can be substituted if rats are unavailable. CGJ." "P.46, footnote. Cattendum. When fitting your cat for roller skates, make sure the boot fits snugly around the area above the paws & that there is ample room in the toe for extension of claws. CGJ." "Fourth Supplement & Last One. Patrick Reagh is a classy printer & had nothing to do with any rrata or cattenda; an amachure did them. Anon E. Mouse."

1986 Jump! The Adventures of Brer Rabbit.  Joel Chandler Harris; Adapted by Van Dyke Parks and Malcolm Jones.  Illustrated by Barry Moser.  First edition.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  $9.99 from Daniel Doty, Magnolia, TX, through eBay, July, '14.  

1986 Kalila and Dimna: Selected Fables of Bidpai. Retold by Ramsay Wood. Illustrated by Margaret Kilrenny. Introduction by Doris Lessing. (c)Ramsay Wood 1980. (c)Ramsay Wood 1986. First USA edition. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, Ltd. $4.98 at Booksellers Row on Michigan Avenue, June, '94.   Extra copy from Blinking Books, Copper Center, AK, Dec., '98.

This is basically a reprint of the 1982 Paladin edition from Granada; see my comments there. The paper here is improved. I hope that this edition also has a better binding, since I have watched the Granada paperbacks fall apart in class for the last three years! The book has a bigger format but the same pagination. Curiously, the individual page's column is the same width, but it is now longer. Did the printer elongate but maintain the same width? The covers are new. The inner blurb on the first page has been dropped, and Ursula LeGuin's quotation on the back cover has been changed.

1986 Kalila und Dimna: Vom sinnreichen Umgang mit Freunden: Ausgewählte Fabeln des Bidpai. Nacherzählt von Ramsay Wood; aus dem Amerikanischen übersetzt von Edgar Otten. Illustrationen von Margaret Kilrenny. Einführung von Doris Lessing. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Freiburg/Basel/Wien: Herder. €10 from Antiquariat Wirthwein, Mannheim, August, '09.

I realized as I approached the end of this long visit in Germany that I had missed the Wirthwein bookshop, which had been a good source for me two years earlier. Stopping by on my last day yielded this lovely translation of a favorite book into German. I am delighted that Herder picked up Wood's presentation, since I think it is a great text, well laid out and well conceived. The layout here is not quite as generous with spaces as the American original, but it seems to have all the side comments and drawings. New here is a final comment by the translator, Edgar Otten. I find it very good. He confronts the question why he would translate a liberal American transposition of an old text and not the "pure" old original text itself. His answer catches what the great translators, including Pforr in German, have always done with "Kalila and Dimna." For them, the challenge has been "Über Setzen," to bring the old original in lively fashion into their new circumstances. He aptly quotes Dr. Bidpai against commentators and analysts. Well done! The colorful dust-jacket has Kalila and Dimna facing each other. See my comments on the earlier editions, including the 1982 Paladin edition from Granada.

1986 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. See 1978/86/90 and 1978/86.

1986 Les Fables de La Fontaine: Quatre Siècles d'illustration. Alain-Marie Bassy. Boxed. Dust jacket. Paris: Éditions Promodis. $90.75 new from Dawson Book Service, Kent, Feb., '91.

A slightly disappointing book for the price. 168 black-and-white illustrations and nine pages of color. I have not yet waded through the prose. The sampling of illustrations is impressive, from those well known to me (Oudry, Vivier, Grandville, Doré, Boutet de Monvel, and Rabier) to those who are new: Chauveau, Lurçat, Chagall, and Chadel. Where are Calder and Hellé? The subject matter goes back to Ysopet and emblem books, moves through artistic analysis with overlaid red lines, and moves on to decor and movement by and within La Fontaine's books. Particularly helpful is the chronology of principal editions (261-76).

1986 Listy i Korni. Ivan Andreevich Krylov. Illustrated by I.A. Popov. Paperbound. Moscow: Covetskar Rosser. $3.50 from Valentina Kudinova, Kharkiv, Ukraine, through eBay, Dec., '11.

This pamphlet contains seven two-page spreads featuring a soft colored full-page illustration on the left and a single fable on the right. Its title comes from Krylov's IV, 2: "Leaves and Roots." The cover pictures a human being sitting under a tree in a framed oval. This illustration turns out to be a section of the illustration for the title-fable, offered as the fourth of seven fables presented here. The back cover features leaves on a twig. The inside front and back covers present an identical image of birds in a tree and animals under it; as I did not notice at first, this duochrome illustration emphasizes the roots around these animals. In fact, it took me a while to put together my knowledge of Krylov and a Cyrillic alphabet to decipher the subject of this central fable. The other six are FC; GA; FG; "Crane, Lobster, and Pike"; "Crow and Pig"; and "Cock and Cuckoo." Though the illustrations seem not to be reproduced sharply, they are nicely done. 

1986 Los hombres que dispersó la danza.  Andrés Henestrosa.  Paperbound.  Mexico City, Mexico: Lecturas Mexicanas Segunda Serie: Secretaria de Educacion Publica.  Gift of José Miguel Lemus, March, '22.

1986 Mouse's Marriage. Illustrated by Junko Morimoto. First published in Australia by Lothian Publishing Company, 1985. First printing? Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. NY: Viking Penguin Kestrel. $4.50 at Ansari & Jung Booksellers, Inc., Georgetown, Jan., '96.

Beautiful full-page illustrations, with very small "counterpoint" illustrations on the facing text-pages, take us through this story. The style is oriental, and I find the spirit playful. In each case, the stronger party acts on the questioned party just as the latter is about to answer their marriage-invitation. Among the best full-page illustrations are those of the mice family scaling the wall as they begin their search for the "best and mightiest husband in the world," of the three mice pleading with the smiling cloud, of mice inhabiting a wall, and of a marriage-procession with beautiful pumpkin-colored lanterns. A lovely book.

1986 My Storytime Book. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. Printed in Hungary. NY: Exeter Books. $6.98 at Odegard, July, '89.

A very pleasing large-format book, with some better illustrations than I have come to expect from Exeter. Nine fables. The best illustrations include FS (54) and BC (128). Most fables are one page long; TMCM runs to sixteen pages. Note the moral of FG: "...it is easy to pretend that what we can't get isn't worth having!"

1986 Obnoveny Ezop aneb Nove Ezopovy Bajky.  Vaclav Rodomil Kramerius.  Dust jacket.  Hardbound.  Prague: Odeon.  145 Czech Crowns from Valenska Jan Schick, Prague, June, '18.

1986 One-Minute Animal Stories. Shari Lewis. Illustrated by Kelly Oechsli. First edition. Printed in Italy. Garden City: Doubleday. $6.95 at Bandana Square, Spring, '87.

A very enjoyable book. Good fables here include: "The Fox and the Ant" (10), TMCM (12), DW (22), and "The Bat" (44). Other fables are FC (30) and "The Donkey's Shadow" (42).

1986 One-Minute Animal Stories. Shari Lewis. Illustrated by Kelly Oechsli. First edition. Printed in Italy. A Children's Choice Book Club Edition from MacMillan Book Clubs, Inc. Garden City: Doubleday. $2.25 at Books & Things, Monterey, Feb., '97.

This is a case of the incredible shrinking book. This is exactly the same book as the previous listing, but it is an inch shorter and a half-inch thinner. All the illustrations are reduced proportionally. See my notes under the larger edition's listing.

1986 Pañcatantra: Die fünf Bücher indischer Lebensweisheit. Herausgegeben von Aloys Greither. Mit 107 Zeichnungen von Josef Scharl. Erste Auflage. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Leipzig und Weimar: Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag. €13 from Loschwitzer Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '09.

There is much that is familiar here in the first two books, since so much of them comes into Kalila and Dimna. The third book is "Der Krieg der Krähen und der Eulen," the fourth "Der Verlust von schon Besessenem," and the fifth "Handeln ohne sorgfältige Prüfung." The illustrations are done in a style recalling Indian art. Several in the first two books would be helpful in a course handling Kalila and Dimna. My favorite is the attack on the camel by the threee evil counselors on 58. The geese actually tie the tortoise to the stick for TT on 61. The illustration makes me want to read "Der Zimmermann und sein treuloses Weib" (160). The age-old story of a worthy groom for the bride mouse appears here in the third book (163). "Der Esel als Sänger" (213) is another fine piece of illustration work. Material at the end of the book includes several pieces from Greither: on previous illustrated editions of the Panchatantra; on Scharl; on Theodor Benfey (upon whose 1859 translation Greither bases his own); and on secondary literature. This is a very well made book from the DDR, and I have not seen many of those!

1986 Renard the Fox. By Rachel Anderson and David Bradby. Illustrated by Bob Dewar. Apparently first edition. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. $5.98 at Tattered Cover, March, '94.

A very nice oversized book with lively colored and black-and-white illustrations. I do not know this tradition well. Much here is new to me. After the fall, God pitied Adam and Eve and gave them a stick. When Adam struck the sea with the stick, gentle beasts came forth from the water; when Eve struck, wild beasts like the wolf and the fox came out. The book's first incident involves a church harvest festival; the wolf gets drunk and caught and beaten in a server's cassock and surplice. He feels betrayed by the fox. The crow's cheese drops from his claws through inattention caused by trying to sing well. The wolf ties the bucket to his tail so that fish can swim into it. He loses his tail when the lord of the manor hacks at him with his sword and hits near his tail. There is little focus here on Reynard's wife or children. The "fish swipe" story involves a string of eels which Reynard makes into a necklace, not fish tossed one by one onto the road. Pertelotte becomes Pauline in "Renard and the Rooster" (50). The wolf sees a rival wolf in the well in which Reynard is stuck (61). Reynard tells the wolf "I am dead now. The only way into paradise is by bucket. Come down!"

1986 Road to Reading. A Parent’s Guide to Reading. Walt Disney Fun-To-Read Library, Volume 19. Second printing. NY: Bantam. $.25 at the Sebastopol flea market, Sept., ’96

This volume gives an overview of the eighteen volumes in the series, with lots of hints and tips for those involved in helping a child to learn to read. I am surprised that the comment on Goofy’s Big Race (Volume 4) does not even mention the fable (TH) that underlies the story. The comment on Donald Cries "Wolf!" (Volume 14) does better in that regard. This book is tangential to the collection, helpful only in elucidating those two other books.

1986 Russian Fable. Edited by I. L. Stepanov. Illustrated by N.E. Bocharova. Hardbound. Moscow: Pravda. $18 from Szwede Slavic Books, Palo Alto, March, '96.

This 543-page anthology is a treasure-house of fables. I count some thirty-two Russian fabulists who are represented here, with notes on each of them at the back. There are even nine fables of Aesop. There is a full T of C, also at the back of the book. Various simple designs and one-page illustrations occur throughout. A book like this makes it clear that the Russians are proud of their heritage in fable-writing.

1986 Seven Fables. Ambrose Bierce. Illustrations by Louise LaFond. #50 of 100. Colorado: The Press at Colorado College. $120 at Laurie, Nov., '94.

A beautiful large-format book. After Bierce's "The Fabulist and the Animals" as an introductory fable, the book follows a pattern for each of the seven fables of a title page, a page of Bierce's text, and a full-page relief printed from the original plates. The fables are well chosen. The best of the illustrations, I believe, are for "The Two Poets" and "The Man and the Goose." I treasure this book!

1986 Seven Fables from Aesop. Retold and illustrated by R.W. Alley. Dust jacket. NY: Dodd, Mead, and Co. $12.95 at Rizzoli, Chicago, Nov., '86.

A good little book. The best of the fables is BW. Some wit comes into the other illustrations, too, e.g., in the ballooning spectator and the press reporter at the TH race. Aesop ends up looking more like an ayatollah than a Greek, I think.

1986 Springs of Animal Wisdom. Chaucer, La Fontaine, Lawrence, Tennyson, Whitman. Texts chosen by E. Hettinger. Translated by John Cumming. Designer J. Tannheimer. Printed in Switzerland. Oakland: Marcel Schurman Co. $2.50 at Oakland Museum, June, '89.

A small, spiral-bound book of proverbs, including two from LaFontaine: OF and DS. The art work is pleasant and imaginative. Aesop reaches into a lot of places!

1986 Stone Soup.  Ann McGovern.  Pictures by Winslow Pinney Pels.  16th printing.  Paperbound.  NY: An Easy-To-Read Folktale:  Scholastic.  $2.37 from Amazon, Nov., '16.

1986 Stories to Treasure. Economy Supplementary Reading Series. Louise Matteoni and Floyd Sucher. No illustrators acknowledged. Oklahoma City: The Economy Company. $4.20 at Aamstar in Colorado Springs, March, '94.

This standard kids' reader contains "Fable Frolic" by Faye Head on 293-308. It originally appeared in Plays, The Drama Magazine for Young People. This little drama contains two elaborated fables dramatically presented. In the fable about the broken axe handle, the other trees give the ash without listening to its objections. The fable culminates in a moral about sacrificing the poor and humble. The other fable is "The Farmer and His Children." The fables have fitting decorations of pine cones and grapes, respectively. There are at the beginning and end illustrations of the seven children acting the plays.

1986 Stundenblätter Fabeln: Grund- und Aufbauprogramme fuer die Klassen 5-10. Rosemarie Lutz und Udo Müller. 1. Auflage. Paperbound. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag. Gift of Franz Kuhn, July, '98.

It has taken me ten years to look carefully into this teacher's manual. It seems to be a protracted course on fables, spread over some years in the Gymnasium. It contains a wealth of material, particularly fascinating, well chosen texts and challenging interpretative models and schemes. I hope to examine it more carefully as I teach fables to graduate students this fall. For now, I read the section on "Episierende und dramatisierende Fabel" (28). It contrasts the approaches of, e.g., La Fontaine and Lessing. It draws out the implications for story, narrator, context, and reader in these two different approaches to fable-writing. Accompanying this teacher's handbook is a set of thirty-six two-sided pages that plan out individual assignments and presentations. I notice that pages 40-43 structure a contrast of these two sorts of fables. This book is meant to work with a particular textbook for students, which I unfortunately do not have. I would say that these writers have gone as crazy as I have over fable investigation!

1986 The Animal Tale Treasury. Selected by Caroline Royds. Illustrated by Annabel Spenceley. Dust jacket. Printed in Italy. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons. $12.95 at Kroch's & Brentano's, Chicago, Jan., '87.

Very nice illustrations, with real character and definition. Three Aesop fables, each retold by Robin Lister. TH turns out to be a huge surprise. The girl feels bad for the hare; Aesop comes in a dream and reveals that the hare was asked to instigate and throw the race in order to improve the tortoise's self-concept! LM. "The Raven and the Fox" has different elements, especially stolen strawberry cheesecake and comments from the raven with it in his mouth before he sings and loses it. The best picture is on 12.

1986 The Boy and the Lion. Told and illustrated by Val Biro. Fifth impression. Paperbound. Aylesbury Bucks, England: Fables from Aesop #6: Ginn and Company. See 1983/86.

1986 The Children's Treasure House of Stories. Over 50 Great Tales by Famous Authors. No editor or artists acknowledged. Printed in Hungary. Sold with a companion volume: The Children's Wonderland of Stories. London: Bracken Books, a division of Bestseller Publications. See 1937/86.

1986 The Deer and The Spring. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Sixth in a series of eight. Printed in Spain. London: Grandreams. $.35 at Leventis in Benin City, Fall, '88.

A harmless little booklet found in Leventis Department Store. Here the deer gets away from the dogs: I have never seen that turn of events before in this fable.

1986 The Faber Storybook. Edited by Kathleen Lines. Illustrated by Alan Howard. Paper. London and Boston: Faber and Faber. See 1961/72/86.

1986 The Fables of Aesop and others, translated into human nature designed and drawn on the wood by Charles H. Bennett with additional fables designed and drawn by Randolph Caldecott. London: Bracken Books. See 1857/1986.

1986 The Fables of La Fontaine: A Critical Edition of the Eighteenth-Century Vocal Settings. John Metz. Juilliard Performance Guides Number 2. NY: Pendragon Press. $6.95 by mail from The Scholar's Bookshelf, Oct., '90.

My, how fables get around! This book presents a transcription of the music and a translation of the fables as they appeared in 1732. This edition grouped the fables selected from LaFontaine in six volumes. For the fables researcher, the English summaries (157-75) and the French alphabetical listing of fables (181-4) will be especially helpful. The version used in the songs is adapted from LaFontaine's (usually longer) versions.

1986 The Fairy Tale Treasury. Selected by Virginia Haviland. Illustrated by Raymond Briggs. NY: Yearling Books: Dell. $8.95 at Rizzoli, Chicago, Nov., '86. Extra copy for $3.50 in Evanston, Sept., '91.

I would not have bought this book except for the excellent illustrations for its two Aesop stories: SW (magnificent black lines radiating from a white spot) and MSA. The illustrations for this fable alternate between great colored group-faces and silhouettes of the trio, and then there is a final plunge in color. The original copyrights belong to Hamish Hamilton and Raymond Briggs in 1972.

1986 The Fox and The Billy Goat. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. First in a series of eight. Printed in Spain. London: Grandreams. $.35 at Leventis in Benin City, Fall, '88.

A harmless little booklet found in Leventis Department Store. The fox lands in the well trying to seize the goat! This is a dumb goat indeed!

1986 The Fox and the Cat: Kevin Crossley-Holland's Animal Tales from Grimm. Illustrated by Susan Varley. First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Andersen Press. First U.S. edition. Apparently first printing. Dust jacket. NY: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books. $6.50 from Biermaier's B H Books, Minneapolis, Dec., '95.

Among the eleven stories here are two traditional fables. In "The Fox and the Cat" (7), the fox is caught by the dogs before he can start to use his sack of tricks. In "The Hare and the Hedgehog" (39), the hare dies on the seventy-fourth lap! Nice contemporary illustrations.

1986 The Fox & The Crow. Miniature. One illustration, from Bewick. Printed by Jim Yarnell as a keepsake for members of the Miniature Book Society meeting in DC. $5 at Bromer in Boston, Dec., '89.

A nicely produced little sliver that shows how Aesop keeps getting remembered wherever book-people gather.

1986 The Fox and the Crow. Told and illustrated by Val Biro. Fifth impression. Paperbound. Aylesbury, Bucks, England: Fables from Aesop #1: Ginn and Company. See 1983/86.

1986 The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg. Retold from Aesop and illustrated by Geoffrey Patterson. London: André Deutsch. $8.75 at New England Mobile Book Fair, Jan., '89.

A book that is both "beautiful" and lovely. I like it. The gold-overlay in the pictures is very well done, and the simple pictures are humane. In fact, a very humane spirit moves through this book. Henry and Hilda learn to be happy with the things they are happy with. I would give the book as a gift to a child.

1986 The Hare and the Tortoise. Retold by Caroline Castle. Illustrated by Peter Weevers. Piccolo Picture Classics. (First published in 1984 by Hutchinson Children's Books Ltd.) London: Pan Books. See 1984/86.

1986 The Hare & the Tortoise and Other Stories. Selected by Caroline Royds. Pictures by Annabel Spenceley. Dust jacket. Hardbound. London: Kingfisher Books. $9.99 from Pamela Newport at Heritage Poultry, Maitland, SA, Australia, through eBay, June, '04. 

This book is apparently Kingfisher's version of The Animal Tale Treasury (1986), likewise printed in Italy. (It also has significant overlap with A Treasury of Animal Stories in 1992). The illustrations here alternate between color and black-and-white. The three Aesop fables (out of a total of ten stories) are retold by Robin Lister: TH turns out to be a huge surprise. The girl feels bad for the hare; Aesop comes in a dream and reveals that the hare was asked to instigate and throw the race to improve the tortoise's self-concept! LM is the second fable. FC has different elements: stolen strawberry cheesecake and comments from the raven with it in his mouth before he sings and loses it. Other stories are taken from Edward Lear, Rudyard Kipling, Ruskin Bond, Ted Hughes, and Philippa Pearce. I knew I had seen this book before! My favorite picture is still that of the dejected Aesop on 12.

1986 The Lion and the Mouse. An Aesop Tale Retold. By Mary Lewis Wang. Illustrated by Tom Dunnington. Start-Off Stories. Chicago: Childrens Press. Gift of Kathryn Thomas, Christmas, '87.

The text is delightfully appropriate for young readers. The illustrations are well done. This lion does not laugh.

1986 The Lion and the Rat: A Fable by La Fontaine. Illustrated by Brian Wildsmith. First published in paperback in 1986. Printed in Hong Kong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See 1963/86.

1986 The Macmillan Book of 366 Bedtime Stories. Retold by Gianni Padoan. Translated by Colin Clark. Illustrated by Sandra Smith. Originally published in Milan. Printed in Italy. NY: Aladdin Books: Macmillan Publishing Company. $5.98 at Dalton in Omaha, May, '90. Extra copy for $7 from Venice Antiques, Venice, NE, March, '95.

This is a wonderful book! Six or seven of each month's offerings are fables, carefully attributed--even to Phaedrus!--in the T of C that follows each month. The pastel illustrations are lively and the fables well told. The best illustration is November 9th's crow with added feathers. On July 24th, the ants give the cricket grain. On August 22nd we find a different approach to the cat playing dead.

1986 The National Button Bulletin, Vol. 45, No. 4, October 1986, including "Fables on Buttons." Article by Bonnie Nelson and Madge Sweat. Magazine. Printed in USA. Akron, Ohio: National Button Society. Gift of Robin C. Larner, May, '99.

"Fables on Buttons" comprises 124-151. The article promises to be continued, including bibliography, in future issues, although Robin tells me that the magazine is notorious for announcing such continuations and not delivering them. The coverage here goes far beyond what one finds in The Big Book of Buttons. The information on fables is scattered and inaccurate, but the pictures and descriptions of buttons are copious. Gustave Doré seems to have influenced far more designs than any other artist. Here is a listing of stories covered here: "The Monkey and the Dolphin," CJ, TT, TMCM, "The Peasant of the Danube," "The Rat Who Retired from the World," OF, "The Dog Which Carried Round His Neck His Master's Dinner," "The Fisherman Piping," "The Lion Who Bowed to the Palm Tree" (from Nivernois; new to me), OR, "The Wolf in Disguise," "The Goose and the Viper" (Hindustan; new to me), "The Goat on the Crag," "The Rose and the Butterfly" (Dodsley), "The Hare and the Frogs," "The Sick Stag," BC, "The Cat and the Looking Glass" (Florian), "The Discontented Squirrel" (listed as from La Fontaine, but I am not aware of it there), "The Stag and the Fox" (Lessing), "Four Friends," "The Eagle and the Jackdaw," "Chanticleer," WL, FC, "The Eagle and the Serpent," "The Heron," "The Hare's Ears," "The Forest and the Woodcutter," "The Cat, the Weasel, and the Little Rabbit," "The Shepherd and the Sea," "The Fighting Cocks and the Eagle," "The Nightingale and His Cage," "The Lion and the Serpent," "The Crow and the Snake," "The Monkey and the Cat," DLS, "The Falcon and the Hen," "The Parrot That Chattered in Greek," "The Cat, the Cock, and the Young Mouse," "The Travelers and the Purse," FWT, "The Oyster and Its Claimants," "The Countryman and the Serpent," and "The Hare and the Frogs." Wow! What a lovely, thoughtful gift!

1986 The North Wind and the Sun: A Fable by La Fontaine. Illustrated by Brian Wildsmith. Paperbound. Printed in Hong Kong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See 1964/86.

1986 The Panchatantra and Aesop's Fables: A Study in Genre. Chennabasappa Ishtalingappa Pawate. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Delhi: Amar Prakashan. $8 from Books of India, through Bibliofind, Oct., '98.

"This study, thus, gives the origin, meaning, importance and descent of the fable and attempts to prove that it really is an important branch of literature. This attempt is, perhaps, the first of its kind" (105, in "Conclusion"). This work is a strenuous attempt to show that fables are serious literature. Since I have been spending my days lately getting at least a little acquainted with a number of serious attempts to understand the fable genre, the claim to be first in this effort here is surprising. Would not Perry's Aesopica, cited here, have some claim to that honor? Have Germans been not theorizing about the fable genre forever? In any case, there has been lately a glut of people who take fable very seriously. There may be some assumptions by Pawate that will not hold up in a larger view of fables, especially that a good fable has "the deduction of a moral" (105). "Each and every fable is followed by a moral lesson" (105) might thus be an exaggerated claim. Morals do not need to be stated, and whole collections put the moral before the appropriate fable. "The maxim containing the moral of the fable, which occurs at the conclusion of each story, serves the aesthetic purpose of rounding off and no other. The witty maxims found at the end of Walt Disney comics serve the same purpose" (106). Do they? Is "That's all, folks!" equivalent to "Undank ist der Welt Lohn"? Pawate's attempt to demonstrate the seriousness of fable as literature tends to depend on Aristotelian (here regularly spelled "Aristotalian") characteristics, like having a beginning, middle, and end. Pawate is convinced that the form is not dead. Disney and Thurber seem to be his main evidence. 

1986 The Raven and the Fox & other Fables: Jean de La Fontaine.  Elizur Wright.  Lithographs by Geoffrey Trenaman.  #8 of 25.  Hardbound.  London: The Snake River Press.  £450 from Rooke Books, Bath, England, Feb., ‘18.  

1986 The Rich Man and the Shoe-maker: A Fable by La Fontaine. Brian Wildsmith. Paperbound. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See 1965/86.

1986 The Taill of the Paddok & the Mous. From The Morall Fabilillis of Esope by Robert Henrisone. With prints by Nicholas Parry. Limited edition. #2. Numbers 1-10 on Canterbury paper with watercolour illustrations. Boxed. Printed, bound, and signed by Nicholas and Mary Parry. Market Drayton: Tern Press. $76 at Cooper Hay, Glasglow, July, '92.

The five watercolor illustrations here are simply wonderful! The cover shows the mouse and frog tied together in a weird sort of embrace. Succeeding illustrations show the mouse at the riverside, the frog and mouse on land, the kite holding the two from his perch, and (my favorite) the mouse and frog in the water with the kite swooping down. Henrisone's version of the fable is fun. Both creatures are female. There is a long discussion about judging character by outward appearance. About halfway through the fable (line 410) the frog is identified as "foul, chattering" for those who have only suspected that she is up to no good. The kite catches both by the string during the struggle and devours both. The "moralitas" inveighs against false companions and treats the fable allegorically (before referring those with questions to the Friars): the mouse is the soul, the frog the body, the water the world, and the kite death. I am very glad now that I got this book while I had the chance during my first hour in Glasgow.

1986 The Taill of the Paddok & the Mous. From The Morall Fabilillis of Esope by Robert Henrisone. With prints by Nicholas Parry. Limited edition. #20. Numbers 11-100 on H.B.J. paper with lino-cut illustrations. Printed, bound, and signed by Nicholas and Mary Parry. Market Drayton: Tern Press. $34.20 at Cooper Hay, Glasglow, July, '92.

Henrisone's version of the fable is fun. Both creatures are female. There is a long discussion about judging character by outward appearance. About halfway through the fable (line 410) the frog is identified as "foul, chattering" for those who have only suspected that she is up to no good. The kite catches both by the string during the struggle and devours both. The "moralitas" inveighs against false companions and treats the fable allegorically (before referring those with questions to the Friars): the mouse is the soul, the frog the body, the water the world, and the kite death. This is a beautifully made book with pastel marbled covers. The four lino-cuts are not to my taste, but the second is strong, both for its ugly frog and its suggestive mouse-woman. The two are nicely tied together in the third cut.

1986 The Tortoise & the Hare. Adapted by Ken Forsse and Margaret Ann Hughes. Illustrated by Russell Hicks, Douglas McCarthy, Theresa Mazurek, Allyn Conley-Gorniak, and Julie Ann Armstrong. Fremont, CA: Worlds of Wonder, Inc. $1.50 at Toys R Us, Omaha, Aug., '91.

Boy, it took a lot of illustrators to do a simple book! For use with a (lacking) cassette. The story nicely includes the details that a child would want to know, e.g., what a tortoise or hare is, what their names were, how the tortoise worked out, and what route they ran. The end turns fable to fairy tale: the hare apologizes, the main thing is that you always do your very best, and they all live happily ever after!

1986 The Vixen and the Crane. Ukrainian Folk Tale. Translated from the Ukrainian by Mary Skrypnyk. Illustrated by Volodimir Holozubov. Kiev: Dnipro Publishers. $.99 at Red Balloon in St. Paul, July, '89.

A delightful book. My first delight is to find out that Aesop is at work in the Ukraine. My second delight lies in the wonderful illustrations, including the matching inside covers. The vixen and the crane are such good friends that they are godparents to one another's children.

1986 The World's Favorite Fairy Tales. Illustrations (c)Editions Lito-Paris. No author or illustrator listed. Printed in Czechoslovakia. NY: Derrydale. $6.98 at Bandana Square, March, '87.

Lots of LaFontaine fables on 192-237. Watercolor or acrylic illustrations. Maybe the best illustration in an average lot is for "The Reed and the Oak" on 230-31.

1986 Time for a Tale. Illustrated by Eric Kincaid, Gerry Embleton and Gill Embleton. No editor acknowledged. Newmarket, England: Brimax. $2.29 at Chandler's in Evanston, Sept., '91.

This book includes one fable, TH (34). It is both well told and well illustrated. The illustrations are better than those in other Kincaid versions. There is a nice interchange when the hare asks "Are you walking your slowest or your fastest?" "Always at the same pace, Hare. Just slow but sure."

1986 Tomie dePaola's Favorite Nursery Tales. Dust jacket. NY: G.P. Putnam's Sons. $17.95 at Kroch's & Brentano's, Chicago, Jan., '86.

Very nicely done. Nine Aesop's fables come into this short book. The art work is delightful, not least of all for the way it moves around the story and covers the page. My favorite illustration pictures the fish bubbling up in wonder at the lost bone of the greedy dog.

1986 Two Fables. Roald Dahl. With illustrations by Graham Dean. Published in honor of Dahl's seventieth birthday. Middlesex: Penguin Viking. $24 from Barbara and Bill Yoffee, Oct., '91.

Dahl is the noted author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and other stories. Both of these fables are delightful, ironic, contemporary: "The Princess and the Poacher" and "Princess Mammalia." Dahl is indeed a good story teller, even if these two ironic throwbacks to a different world are more fairy-tale than fable. The illustrations are suitably strong and weird.

1986 Up, Up and Away. Written by Barbara Hayes. Illustrated by Phillip Mendoza. A Town Mouse and Country Mouse Story. Printed in Belgium. NY: Honey Bear Books: Modern Publishing: Unisystems. $1.75 at Cheever Books, San Antonio, August, ’96. Extra copy for $2.50 from The Book Den, San Antonio, August, ’96.

Here is one of the four books in the series on the TMCM. This one has little to do with the originating fable. It describes a balloon trip (from elsewhere in Europe?) to Paris and the events there. Among the best of the delightful illustrations are those depicting motoring around the Arc de Triomphe (15) and having fun at a country fair (19).

1986 Walt Disney's Da bymusen besokte fetteren sin på landet.  2. opplag.  Hardbound.  Oslo: Donald Ducks Bokklubb:  Hjemmets Bokforlag.  See 1978/86.

1986 Walt Disney's Uncle Remus Stories.  Retold by Marion Palmer.  From the Original "Uncle Remus" Stories by Joel Chandler Harris.  Adapted from the characters and backgrounds created for the Walt Disney motion picture "Song of the South" and other Walt Disney adaptations of the original "Uncle Remus" stories.  Hardbound.  Racine, WI: A Golden Book: NY:  Western Publishing Company, Inc.  $10 from Spectator Books, Oakland, CA, June, ‘21.  

1986 Wolf's Favour. Fulvio Testa. Hardbound. London: Andersen Press. £6 from Rose's Books, Hay-on-Wye, UK, Dec., '12.

Rose's calls this a fable, and I will not argue. It is not a known -- at least to me -- Aesopic fable. Porcupine needs a nut and goes to the wolf to ask him to crack it. Wolf has never done a favor before. Doing this good deed carries wolf through the day. Porcupine offers squirrel some of the nut, and crumbs beckon to crow. Crow then is even willing to pick some grapes for fox. The pattern is that an animal hears about a good deed and approaches life with an upswing of hope. Chicken is next to be surprised by a favor. Even snake wonders what it would be like to do someone a favor -- and then does it by directing lamb to a particularly grassy field. The focus here is on the confidence that the doer of a favor generates and receives in the process. Testa's work remains highly engaging. Maybe his best illustration here has the wolf cracking the nut as the original favor. 

1986 Wonder Movies.  Paperbound.  NY: Merrimack Publishing Corporation.  $4 from an unknown source, August, '17.

1986/87 Aesop: The Donkey and the Dog. Illustrated by Svend Otto S. Twenty fables re-told by Joan Tate. Printed in Denmark. First published in Denmark in '86. London: Pelham. $12 at Swindon, Hong Kong, May, '90.

Sequel to the Aesop (1985) that the two produced together. I find the illustrations here better. The best: "The Affectionate Donkey" (7), LS (21), MM (25), "The Fox and the Billy-Goat" (33), and GGE (39). A Hong Kong find!

1986/87 Two Fables. Roald Dahl. With illustrations by Graham Dean. Published in honor of Dahl's seventieth birthday. First American edition. Dust jacket. Originally published in Great Britain by Viking, 1986. NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $5.40 from Ralph Casperson, Niles, May, '95. Extra copy with dust jacket for Canadian $16 from Contact Editions, Toronto, June, '03.

See my copy of the British original (1986). This copy has a different cover, different coloring for the spine title, and different fonts and organization for the early pages. The two editions seem, however, to use the same plates for the text. See my notes there.

1986/89 Fábulas: Félix María Samaniego. Introducción by Basilio Losada. Cubierta e ilustraciones interiores (7) de Jaime Gracia Albiol. Colleción Aedo. Printed in Mexico. (c)Verón/editor. Mexico City: Editorial Limusa. $8.95 at Allá, Santa Fe, May, '93.

This book is almost identical with an edition of the same name and format by Verón/editor in 1975. This edition is slightly taller. It also includes seven full-page colored illustrations. It has thinner paper. There are advertisements in the back for the Aedo Collection. See my comments on the 1975 edition.

1986/93 Verschlüsselte Wahrheit: Fabeln für Secundarstufe I.  Zusammengestellt von Rosemarie Lutz und Udo Müller.  1. Auflage.  Paperbound.  Stuttgart: Lesehefte für den Literaturunterricht:  Ernst Klett Schulbuchverlag.  $5.95 from Powell's on Burnside, Portland, August, '13.  

1986/96 Paramythia Tou Aisopou, Tritos Tomos. Nestoras Chounos. Nikos Neiros. Hardbound. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $9.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is the third of six volumes in a series that I found in Greek Video's catalogue. The first two volumes are under 197August, '97. Three stories: FWT; "The Suffering of the Wolf"; and "The Swan." I am unsure of the story in the last two fables. Is the last about the swan that sings just before its death and so saves itself? We have a different artist here from that in the first two volumes. A fox and an owl are pictured on the cover by Ntinos Anastasopoulos. The back cover of all six volumes is the same.

1986/96 Paramythia Tou Aisopou, Tetartos Tomos. Nestoras Chounos. Michales Benetoulias. Hardbound. Athens: Agkura D.A. Papademetriou. $9.98 from Greek Video Rec's & Tapes, Inc., Astoria, NY, Feb., '98.

This is the fourth of six volumes in a series that I found in Greek Video's catalogue. The first two volumes are under 1978/97, the third under the same dates as this fourth. Three stories: "The Monkey and the Dolphin"; "The Goat and the Wolf"; and "The Lion, the Rabbit, and the Stag." This is the first time that I have seen the dolphin kick the monkey! The monkey of the story, by the way, is clearly not the one pictured by Ntinos Anastasopoulos on the cover. The back cover of all six volumes is the same.

1986? The Cricket and the Ant: Fable by de La Fontaine. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. London: Grandreams. 1 Guilder at Amsterdam English used-bookstore, Dec., '88.

The book builds off of a fascinating concept: a second, longer story echoes the lesson of the fable. Here the fairy Elvira is sad over "enjoy now" Pixie Redbeard, angry with him, and deaf to his request. I could not disagree more with the philosophy of this application. I found five of the series of six booklets.

1986? The Hare and the Tortoise: Fable by de La Fontaine. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. London: Grandreams. 1 Guilder at Amsterdam English used-bookstore, Dec., '88.

The book builds off of a fascinating concept: a second, longer story echoes in human terms the lesson of the fable. Two painters race to finish their housepainting jobs. I found five of the series of six booklets.

1986? The Lion and the Rat: Fable by de La Fontaine. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. London: Grandreams. 1 Guilder at Amsterdam English used-bookstore, Dec., '88.

The book builds off of a fascinating concept: a second, longer story echoes in human terms the lesson of the fable. Pixie Pinky saves the Giant One-Eye. Curiously, a fairy tale explains a fable! I found five of the series of six booklets.

1986? The Raven and the Fox: Fable by de La Fontaine. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. London: Grandreams. 1 Guilder at Amsterdam English used-bookstore, Dec., '88.

The book builds off of a fascinating concept: a second, longer story echoes in human terms the lesson of the fable. A tinker exploits a rich man who wants to learn to sing; when the rich man is poor, the tinker disappears. The art is cute but sometimes anatomically off. I found five of the series of six booklets.

1986? The Wolf and the Lamb: Fable by de La Fontaine. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. London: Grandreams. 1 Guilder at Amsterdam English used-bookstore, Dec., '88.

The book builds off of a fascinating concept: a second, longer story echoes in human terms the lesson of the fable. Here the jealous king banishes the successful general on a pretext. The story is well conceived but poorly told. I found five of the series of six booklets.

 

To top

1987 A Child's Garden of Delights. Pictures, Poems, and Stories for Children. From the Collections of the New York Public Library. Compiled by Bernard McTigue. Dust jacket. Printed in Japan. NY: Harry N. Abrams. $17.98 at Aspidistra, March, '91.

A beautifully produced large book. It begins with a bang with "Mother Hubbard" and a lovely cut-to-shape booklet of "Baa Baa Black Sheep." Fables are represented by "Andy and Lion" (157); a survey of Aesop in the fifteenth (Medici), seventeenth (Barlow), nineteenth (Tenniel), and twentieth (Calder) centuries (214-18); and three fables from Tolstoy (219-20). A brief introduction insists that the book be read; it is a great introduction to a library!

1987 A Chinese Zoo: Fables and Proverbs. Adapted and illustrated by Demi. First edition, second printing. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Company. $14.95 by mail from The Story Monkey, August, ’96. Extra copy of the first printing for $1 from the Minneapolis Public Library, Jan., '97.

Here is another lovely book by Demi. The proverbs of the title are the morals of the thirteen fables, which invite reflection very effectively. The layout of each two-page spread is the same: a fan-design encloses the illustration, with text above left and right and moral in English and Chinese below in the center. My favorites include the stories of the hedgehogs and the supposedly stolen spade, of the bee-stung bear who explains "I only saw the honey," of the pandas with three-foot chopsticks in hell and heaven, and of the artist who exclaimed "It took a year to learn how to paint a perfect picture of the Dragon Queen in a flash!" Several fables present variations of better known stories. Thus DS features a phoenix over water, there are three blind mice around an elephant, a squirrel is ready to hold up the falling sky, and a lion approaches unicorns in TB. Well done, Demi! The extra copy has seen a great deal of use. Its dust jacket tells some interesting tales: Did Jovanovich bow out of the firm between the two printings? In any case, the firm's addresses both in San Diego and in New York have changed between printings.

1987 A Moral Fable-Talk. Arthur Golding. 125 Etchings by Marcus Gheeraerts from Mythologia ethica of Arnold Freitag (1579), the source in Latin for this translation. Introduction, notes, and glossary by Richard G. Barnes. Transcribed and edited from the autograph manuscript (c.1586) in the Columbia University Library. With sixteen-page flier. San Francisco: Arion Press. $175 at (more) Moe's, July, '92.

One of the finest treasures of my collection. I have had De warachtighe fabulen de dieren (1567) in my hands twice (at Justin Schiller's and at the L of C); I am glad to have so fine a presentation of Gheeraerts' work. De warachtige had 107 plates; Esbatement moral des animaux in 1578 added another 18 by Gheeraerts. The 125 plates here are taken especially from Stanford's copy of a third Gheeraerts fable book, this one in Latin. The paper may be a bit too thin: the following page may distract from the excellent art. As the colophon explains, the reproductions are uneven and sometimes unfortunately dark--but still overall lovely. Among the best of Gheeraerts' wonderful and pioneering etchings are the beaten horse (1), the ape and the imps (7), the lion and the mouse (12), the eagle and the fox (29), the ass and the little dog (31), the frog and the mouse (37), the frog and the ox (38), the fox and the goat (42), the stag and the oxen (49), the wolf in sheepskin (75), the clown and the satyr (83), the countryman and the adder (88), and the husbandman and the dogs (103). The work is well presented here as an emblem-book, with five elements carefully arranged on each pair of pages: story, moral, motto, scripture, and picture. Barnes' conjecture is that Gheeraerts proposed to Golding that he do a translation to utilize Gheeraerts' plates for an English edition. It never came to print. The manuscript has a fascinating history traced here in the extensive introduction. The end of the work presents a helpful array: a genealogy of Golding's fables, the influence of Gheeraerts' illustrations, annotations in the manuscript, helpful notes (especially vis-a-vis Perry), a glossary, and a bibliography. Gheeraerts was proud of the true character of these fables and of his pioneering art work. This book was on a shelf away from (more) Moe's usual fable books. Am I glad that I found it!

1987 A Treasury of the Great Children's Book Illustrators. Susan E. Meyer. Dust jacket. Illustrations (c)1983 Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Printed and bound in Japan. NY: Abradale Press/Harry N. Abrams, Inc. $25 at Jackson Street, July, '93.

Abradale/Abrams imprints are "reprints of backlist favorites designed to sell at popular prices." This is a beautiful book. Lavishly illustrated in large format, it presents thirteen artists born in the nineteenth century. Those directly associated with fables include Rackham (note the full-page colored fable illustration on 15), Tenniel, and Ernest H. Shepard, whose work I do not yet have. The long introduction is informative on the history of the legitimacy of children's literature. Fable was a strong genre for children, both in school and at home, by 1600. Fairy tales became the legitimate stuff of children's books in France by 1700 through Perrault, but not so in England for at least one hundred years. Nursery rhymes had not been collected at all before 1800. In the course of the nineteenth century, stories came to be written and illustrated expressly for children and expressly to entertain them.

1987 Aesop in Mexico. Die Fabeln des Aesop in aztekischer Sprache/A 16th Century Aztec Version of Aesop's Fables. Text with German and English Translation. From the Papers of Gerdt Kutscher, edited by Gordon Brotherston and Günter Vollmer. Band III of "Stimmen Indianischer Vólker." Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag. $39.95 by mail from Schoenhof's, October, '93.

A very nicely produced sideways book. Basically trilingual, it provides the Nahuatl text of the forty-seven fables, with German and English translations, illustrations from Mexico at the same time, notes and bibliography. T of C on 52-55. Four indices (Latin, Nahuatl, German, and English) on 256. The very good introduction led me to expect more differences from Aesop, for which the almost certain source is the Accursiana. Some of the transformations include the following. The "snowbound" condition of the farmer in #14 is described this way: "A man was cut off on his field, I don't know, for what reason." The fox becomes a coyote, the peacock a quetzal-bird, the cock a turkey, and the lion a jaguar. The Nahuatl seizes on every opportunity for dialogue and direct speech. This presentation of some of the fables makes them more intelligible to me (particularly #22 and #33), but #4 I still do not understand. In #6 the statue (of a beautiful female) lacks a heart, as the coyote caressing it finds out. "The Hares and the Frogs" (#37) may be the best fable here, well told, well expanded, strong psychologically. There are pleasant little designs on the left-hand pages, usually not of fables but of items mentioned in the fables. Fables against the rich seem strong here; gold for the Aztecs was "God-shit"!

1987 Aesop: The Donkey and the Dog. Illustrated by Svend Otto S. Twenty fables re-told by Joan Tate. Printed in Denmark. First published in Denmark in 1986. London: Pelham. See 1986/87.

1987 Aesop's Fables (paperback). Fritz Kredel. Paperbound. NY: Illustrated Junior Library: Grosset & Dunlap. $3.50 from an unknown source, March, '91.

This 1987 paperback printing seems identical with the 1981 paperback printing. Simple artwork that can be of value. The book includes several colored pages besides a number of black-and-whites. The tellings of the tales may be most helpful for the clear morals. See also the original hardbound versions of 1947. Copy A here is the 1987 printing.  Copy B is the 1988 printing.

1987 Aesop's Fables. Mulk Raj Anand. Paperbound. Printed in India. London: Oriental University Press. $8 from Books of India, Sept., '98.

Ninety-five fables in a book distinguished by different approaches to printing than we are used to. Thus the cover has "Aesop's Fables" stamped on it twice besides the title, and the author's name appears likewise twice. The T of C follows different standards than ours for capitalization, apparently capitalizing all nouns and some verbs. The T of C names for the stories do not always match the title-like phrases at the top of the texts. There are printer's errors, like the paragraph error on 4 and the frequent problems with quotation marks. Until just before the book's end, there is one fable to a page. The half-dozen simple illustrations have their own charm, like that for MSA on 103. An onlooking hare asks the fox in FG why he cannot get the grapes and receives the answer "They are sour" (9). "Han" seems to be the animals' favorite exclamation! The battered king lion, kicked by the donkey, bids him go and he does (13)! The dog gives the wolf's speech on 14! This fable actually turns out to be a new variation, since the wolf asks the dog not to bark when the former comes into the flock; when he gets in, he first eats the dog. The wolf in sheep's clothing just happens to be the one chosen by the shepherd for supper (17). Jupiter here becomes "The Great God." The version of "The Cat and the Parrot" (28) is one of the better versions I have seen; it climaxes in "The family does not like your voice as it likes mine." "The She-Pigeon and the Crow" is new to me (31). The goats in the cave do not butt the bull, but they ask him why he is a coward (34). Am I missing something in the moral on 42: "The poor man generally finds that a change of Master, means exchanging one master for another"? The dog in DS is crossing the river in a boat (47)! CJ's moral follows James in its ambivalence but adds a new twist: "The cock was sensible because he wanted to eat, but a woman would say it is better to have a jewel, rather than food" (54). Here is a good one-liner from the horse to his keeper: "Give me less of your praise and more of my corn" (55). When the fox loses his fear of the lion, the lion eats him in one gulp (56)! The creaking wheel story is told with the driver insulting the creaking wheels. The moral? "Those in authority think they are always right" (57). Mother finishes her remark to the moon by saying "You look better naked" (60). SW is a bet over "whichever of them made a traveller take off his tunic" (66). The detoothed, declawed lion in love runs away before he can be hit (67). Not only does the horse lose his freedom to get revenge on the stag, but the man does not even pause to kill the stag once he gets mounted (75). The weak old lion asks animals to come in order to clean his house (86). A girl, not a boy, hears the lecture while drowning (92). The moral? "One must help to relieve a suffer before giving advice." The mother of the sick kite asks which gods she can turn to, since she has robbed the altars of all of them (98). The moral for the boy with the nettles is "Do baldly what you have to do" (99). The last fable, without acknowledgement of Lessing, is his "Aesop and the Ass." One could see in this book how fables can easily get off the track!

1987 Aesop's Fables. Translator (Blanche Winder) and illustrator (Harry Rountree) not acknowledged. Sixteen of the forty-eight illustrations of the original are included and perhaps three-fourths of the texts. See 1920?/87.

1987 Aesop's Fables in Song. A musical book written and illustrated by Ralph Martell. Hollywood, CA: Ralmar Enterprises. $10 from the publisher through Dundee Books, May, '91.

For use with the tape of the same name. The lyrics are delightful, though not well sung on the tape. The illustrations are simple. T of C inside the front cover. "The Parrot and the Cat" is new to me. Many spectators watch the fox miss the grapes. DW and GB are especially good. LM (calypso) features the line "the last hill was someone's nose!" "The Porcupine and the Moles" has a polka rhythm. "The Rooster and the Diamond" has a nice moral: "The things we each value may not be the same..../And this goes for anything that we can name."

1987 Aiszóposz: meséi.  Translated by Sarkady Janos.  Hardbound.  Budapest:  Europa Konyvkiado.  2000 Forints in Budapest, August, '17.

1987 Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse. Leo Lionni. Part of Frederick and His Friends, a set of four books and a tape. NY: Dragonfly Books: Alfred A. Knopf. See 1969/87.

1987 Animal Fairy Tales. Various authors and illustrators. NY: Exeter Books. See 1982/83/84/87.

1987 Äsopische Fabeln mit moralischen Lehren und Betrachtungen. Samuel Richardson. Aus dem Englischen übertragen und mit einer Vorrede von Gotthold Ephraim Lessing sowie den vierzig Kupfertafeln (creator unacknowledged) der Erstausgabe von 1757. (Richardson's Aesop's Fables first appeared in 1740.) Berlin: Hennsel. See 1757/1987.

1987 Bedtime Stories. Compiled and adapted by Dina Anastasio. Illustrated by Lucinda McQueen. Dust jacket. Printed and bound in Singapore. NY: Grosset & Dunlap. $10 at New England Mobile Book Fair, Jan., '89.

The art here is distinctively cute, with a special preoccupation with the depiction of hair. Aesop's three fables here comprise the genre helped least by this artistic approach, though the city and country mice come off better than the milkmaid or the tortoise and the hare.

1987 Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel-Frankfurter Ausgabe-Nr. 61, 31. Juli 1987: Aus dem Antiquariat 1987, N. 7, including "Die Fabeln von La Fontaine in zwei frühen illustrierten Ausgaben." Article by Johanna Winkelmann. Magazine. Printed in Germany. Munich: Dr. Karl H. Pressler. DEM 6 from Christian Lenhardt at List & Francke, Meersburg am Bodensee, June, '99.

Winkelmann contrasts the approach and social context of two early illustrators of La Fontaine's fables. Before getting to them, she looks at La Fontaine's place in the fable tradition. He combines the ancient, school, children-oriented Latin-French prose tradition of fable and the recent emblematic tradition as entertainment for adults preceded by a proverbial moral; both traditions had grown up in the humanistic movement. The combination of versification and fictionality allowed La Fontaine to move fable from rhetoric to poetry, relax the emphasis on brevity, and avoid having to state a moral. He moved away from the strictly moral direction by his creative, spirited, detail-happy mode of narrating. Chauveau illustrated the original Barbin edition of six books in 1668 with copper engravings 5.5 x 7 cm, positioned above the fable title. Two further editions came in the same and following year. The fourth edition (1678/9) was extended to include two volumes of new fables, presumably Books VII-XI; Chauveau had conceived a part of these illustrations, but he died in 1676, and people in his studio had to finish the job. The publisher Barbin added a fifth volume (Book XII) in 1693/4, with illustrations done by former colleagues of Chauveau. This five volume Chauveau edition was a beloved publication until about 1710, mostly with Chauveau's original copper plates. After 1720 there were few and in the 1800's none. About 1750 the French book illustration market was booming, and taste was changing. Caron (1745), Oudry (1755-9), Fressard (1765-75), Vivier (1787), Dien (1796), Blanchard (1797) and others created illustrations for at least a part of La Fontaine. Only Oudry's work fell outside the pattern of smaller works; his plates each took a page. For 80 years his work was popular, sometimes with the original plates but mostly with smaller copies. The artistic works contrast. Chauveau wanted to remain true to the text. He chose a humble execution of the project and did not want to distract from the text. He got all the creatures mentioned by La Fontaine into the picture, even if it took picturing two scenes at once. Protagonists were routinely put into the foreground. The price of his approach is a certain lifelessness and lack of movement. The characters pose lost in themselves and do not engage the spectator. The characters are meant to be impressive shortened text-formulas. Oudry's illustrations, originally meant as plans for tapestries, are lavish, in decorative court interiors and delicately balanced landscapes. Oudry took the text as occasion for his own compositions, sometimes distanced from the literal text. He was a better animal-drawer than Chauveau, and like him he wanted to be true to nature. But he often puts them in lively, even theatrical poses. He gets us to the border crossing between animal and human. The book during Chauveau's time (Louis XIV) was a secondary cultural form; people were giving themselves to other kinds of activity around the court. Besides, Louis had implemented strict laws about book production. By the middle of the 18th century, the book was more important. People were reading and reading to each other. Good notes, including bibliography, and a few adequate illustrations.

1987 Choisis Ton Aventure avec La Cigale et la Fourmi.  Evelyne Lallemand.  Illustrations by Studio Jean-Pierre Legrain.  Hardbound.  Paris: Hachette.  €250 from a used bookshop on Boulevard St. Michel, Paris, June, '22

1987 City Mouse--Country Mouse and Two More Mouse Tales from Aesop. Text (c)1970 by Scholastic Inc. Illustrations (c)1987 by John Wallner. NY: Scholastic Inc. $2.50 at Walden, Jan., '88. One extra copy.

This is a charming booklet, especially the lead story, in which the two best paintings are those of the upturned nose and the conference inside the city mouse's hole with the dogs visible outside. The last picture and line of BC are also very nice. The text looks like an adaptation of Jacobs'.

1987 Cyndy Szekeres' Book of Nursery Tales. Illustrated by Cyndy Szekeres. Selected and adapted by Selma G. Lanes. Published in 1983 as A Child's Book of Nursery Tales. NY: Golden Book/Racine: Western Publishing. See 1983/87.

1987 De Ezel en de hond: 20 fabels van Aesopus.  L.M. Niskos.  Illustrations: Svend Otto S.  Hardbound.  Rotterdam: Lemniscaat.  €5 from Antiquariaat Klikspaan, Leiden, through Abe, July, '16.

1987 Der Karpfen wollte ein Hai sein: Tiergeschichten in vier Zeilen. Henryk Keisch. Mit Bildern von Jean Effel. Dust-jacket. Berlin: Eulenspiegel Verlag. See 1985/87.

1987 Dichos de Bichos: Fábulas en Verso. Horacio Bojorge, S.J. Dibujos de Michel Prince. Montevideo: Ediciones Paulinas. Gift of Eugene Rooney, S.J., Oct., '91.

My kind of a fable book. Fr. Bojorge has fun with the fables, whether adapting, expanding, or commenting. So far I have read Book I (of III). The Spanish seems highly idiomatic. In the best story in Book I, rats nest inside the wax-figure of a great person in a museum and bring it warmth (5). A boy berates roasting snails for hissing as their houses burn (6). A weasel detongues himself on a file (7). The ants give a long bureaucratic response to the hungry cicada (14). If your hen lays golden eggs, have her x-rayed (15)!

1987 Die Fabeln des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit. Ein Katalog der deutschen Versionen und ihrer lateinischen Entsprechungen. Gerd Dicke und Klaus Grubmüller. Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften #60. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. $10 from June Clinton, Nov., '93.

A wonderful find by June! This is a marvelous resource. The heart of it is a listing of 655 fables, with their principal story line and sources. The list is arranged alphabetically in German by the first substantive. I am delighted to find that there is a concordance of this book's cataloguing numbers with Perry's numbers on 889-91. The book will be a source of ideas for the English-language catalogue I would like to develop myself. It is encouraging to find a printer who misspells his own name, as "Wilhlem" Fink does on the page facing the title!

1987 Dix-Neuf Fables du Méchant Loup. Jean Muzi. Illustrations de Gérard Franquin. Paperbound. Paris: Castor Poche Flammarion. $4.25 from Pierre Cantin, Chelsea, Canada, through eBay, April, '00. 

The nineteen prose fables here are enjoyable. The print is larger than usual. The collection includes Aesop, LaFontaine, Renard, Kalila and Dimna, and international sources. The first is disarmingly simple. A wolf swallows a bird. The bird declares from inside the wolf that he is small, but that his meat is delicate. When the wolf opens his mouth to say "I know," the bird flies out. A countryman captured by a wolf offers a gift of the wolf's choice if he is released, and the wolf agrees and asks for a suit of clothes. The next day the countryman shows up late in a carriage. Stuttering and stammering, he finally admits that he has not brought the promised suit, but explains that he did not know the wolf's size. So he has brought two tailers in the coach. The wolf finally opens the coach door, only to find that the two "tailors" are large dogs who promptly pursue him. In the third story (19), the picture helps us to recognize how the snail outraced the wolf--namely by riding on his tail. Story #17, labelled as from the USA, is new to me. The wolf reneges on a hunting partnership with the rabbit, and the rabbit turns to the dog to help him get even with the wolf. The dog gets close enough that the wolf can see him the next day as the wolf divides the spoils with his "partner." The wolf is much more generous this time!

1987 Doctor Coyote: A Native American Aesop's Fables. Retold by John Bierhorst. Pictures by Wendy Watson. Dust jacket. Printed and bound in Japan. First American edition, apparently the first printing. NY: Macmillan/London: Collier Macmillan. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Christmas, '91. One extra copy of, apparently, the third printing.

The very existence of these fables is a revelation to me. The coyote becomes the hero/goat of every tale. The pictures tell these stories well themselves, without the text--but they suffer for a slide lecture because the coyote is always the central figure. Maybe one for comment, e.g., of the coyote and the goat in well.

1987 El muchacho que gritó ¡el lobo!/The boy who cried wolf. Eugenia De Hoogh. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. See 1977/87/89.

1987 Eric Kincaid's Book of Fairy Tales. Adapted by Lucy Kincaid. Illustrated by Eric Kincaid. Printed in Hong Kong. Newmarket, England: Brimax Books. $6.99 at Walden, Jan., '88. Second copy with a different cover printed as third printing in 1989 in Portugal, $5.99 at Target, Dec., '89.

This book includes "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse" which is identical with Brimax's Town Mouse and Country Mouse by the Kincaids in 1985. Otherwise there is no Aesop here. The back of the title page notes that the stories also appear as individual books.

1987 Fabeln, Märchen, Legenden: Holzschnitte zu Äsop, Prophet Jona, Philipp Otto Runge. Herausgegeben von Hans Marquardt und Henrik Hanstein. Woodcuts by Gerhard Marcks. First edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Leipzig: Verlag Philipp Reclam Jun. DM 24 from Historica Antiquariat, Dresden, July, '01. 

"Tierfabeln des Äsop" (1-49) forms one of the three segments of this book. The texts include both prose and verse and are apparently taken from Hausrath's Heimeran edition of 1940. An enclosed page of review speaks rightly of this book as "ein kleines Juwel." It is very nicely produced. Marcks' woodcuts are simple, even primitive, stylized, and very pleasing. Several of the best show the wolf and the lamb separated by print on 18; the hawk who will devour both frog and mouse on 28 (the same design is repeated on the book's cover); and the fox trying to eat out of the stork's vase on 31. This is the kind of book at which the Germans do very well. At the end of the book, Marquardt pays tribute to Marcks (97).

1987 Fabeln von Jean de La Fontaine. Nacherzählt von Eva M. Spaeth. Bilder von Eva Hülsmann. München: Meisinger Verlag. DM 14,80 in Heidelberg, Aug., '88.

Contemporary, lavish, crayon-acrylic drawings. The best are the centerfold of the frogs and crane, and the patient cat. Several stories are told unusually: the deer sees himself in a mirror (as a dog watches), and the rabbit and turtle are in a house.

1987 Fables de La Fontaine. Alain Huré. Hardbound. Paris: Criterion/Fleurus. $13.25 from Marie Gervais, St.-Urbain-Premier, Quebec, Canada, through eBay, June, '11.

Here are 21 fables in bandes dessinées, which we speak of these days in terms of "graphic novels." The view of the fables is animated from the start. In FS, the stork has monkeys cooking and serving her first-class meal, while the fox rides home hungry on his scooter (18). The cock in UP uses binoculars to see the supposed dogs coming (22). Some of the fables take only one page. FG (30) has just eight panels. Page 34 confirms my sense of how "The Cat and the Monkey" plays out; the cat is hunched up near the fire whisking the nuts back. The monkey eats them on arrival. That this is a graphic novel is clear on 35 when the lion decapitates the bear who picked up the foul scent in the lion's lair. Huré manages as a good cartoonist to make every fable fit onto a whole number of pages with no leftovers. It seems to me that the texts are all La Fontaine verbatim. Pages 49-60 give the texts of the fables, while 61 offers a T of C. This book belonged previously to a Canadian school. The book has a perfumed smell. I am surprised that I have never heard of Alain Huré before.

1987 Fables de La Fontaine.  André Verret.  Hardbound.  Paris:  Super Koala: Édition G.P.  See 1983/87

1987 Fables of Wisdom.  Inder Malik.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  New Delhi: Inder Malik?.  $14.95 from David Brubaker, Lititz, PA, through Amazon, Oct., '13.

1987 Fairytales and Fables. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. Printed in Czechoslovakia. NY: Exeter. $5.88 in downtown San Francisco, Dec., '90.

Another in the endless series of big, splashy, cheap Exeter kids' books. Two fables. TH is told differently: The animals gather against the boastful hare. Their spokesperson and starter for the race is Rabbit. The tortoise is over one hundred years old and sells vegetables. A swim, meals, sleep, and cake stall the hare, who can laugh about it all at the end. "The Tortoise and his Friends" (97) sounds Aesopic; the tortoise cleverly pits the elephant and the hippo against a rock and a palm tree.

1987 Favorite Fables. Retold by Amanda Atha. Illustrated by Jane Harvey. Printed and Bound in Singapore. London: Bracken Books. $4.98 at A-Z Books, North Platte, Jan., '94.

In the same series as Town Mouse & Country Mouse and Other Tales (1987); the two share three common titles, though both their texts and illustrations are different ("The Bear and the Bees," TMCM, LM). Twenty-four of the twenty-seven plates here also appear in The Big Book of Fables from Portland House (1987). As in the former, the drawings are pastel-heavy crayon or something similar. There is a standard format here: the left-hand page presents the text in a standard bower-frame with grains, flowers, a mouse, a butterfly, and some eggs. The right-hand page has a nearly full-page illustration under a garland design. There are some curious twists here, including these new or rare fables: "The Eagle and the Rabbits" (14), "A Swallow and a Spider" (22), "An Eagle and Other Birds" (32); the T of C has The for An), and "The Cat and the Mouse" (40). Some fables are presented differently, as when not the oak but its branch breaks in the illustration on 25. Some morals are new or surprising; the moral, for example, for "The Hornets and the Bees" (8) is "Disagreements are better settled by common sense than by law and judges who cost a great deal of hard-earned money" and for FG "It is easy to find an excuse for disappointment" (18). A typo switches the main character to the plural in "A Swallow and Other Birds" (34); again, the moral is unusually well pointed: "Fools will not believe in the effects of causes until it is too late to prevent them." Perhaps the best illustration is for AD (43), but do bird-hunters with guns use nets?

1987 Favole di Animali. Raccontate ai piu piccoli. Testi di Giuseppe Pozzoli e Pierangela Fiorani. Illustrazioni di Sergio Cavina. Milan: (c)Dami Editore. Gift of the publisher, Oct., '92.

A lovely gift. The book uses the illustrations from El Arca de las Fabulas (1983), but unfortunately converts the beautiful colored illustrations to simple black for the gold paper here. The wordless two mules of the title page are now on the back cover. There are almost twice as many tales here, so there are new illustrations, like the great face on the golden-egg man on 13. I like Cavina's art. T of C at the beginning. A very sturdy book.

1987 Fish Is Fish. Leo Lionni. Part of Frederick and His Friends, a set of four books and a tape. NY: Dragonfly Books: Alfred A. Knopf. See 1970/87.

1987 Flora and Fauna.  Michael Gernik and Alon Altras.  Illustrations by David Moskovich.  Hardbound.  Tel-Aviv, Israel: Mifalim Universitaim (Universities Publication).  $10 from Dr. Baruch Falach, Netanya, Israel, May, '12.

1987 Folk Tales and Fables of the World. Retold by Barbara Hayes. Illustrated by Robert Ingpen. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. NY: Portland House. $12.90, Fall, '87.

This lavish and lovely book contains, in its section on Europe, six fables around a wonderful picture (also on the jacket and the cover) containing all six fables. I would love to get the picture reproduced!

1987 Folk Tales and Fables of the World. Retold by Barbara Hayes. Illustrated by Robert Ingpen. Printed in Hong Kong. Buderim, Australia: David Bateman. $7.20 at ABC in Toronto, New Year's Day, '94.

See my comments on the almost-identical version published by Portland House. The cover is different: a bird tethered to a golden ball (front) and two green children (back) replace here the composite Aesopic-fable painting that forms both cover and dust jacket on the Portland House version. There is some damage to the spine, the corners, and the edges. I passed ABC by chance on New Year's Day on my way to visit John Martin in the hospital. I surprised the bookstore clerks by finding something!

1987 Fortellinger av Onkel Remus.  Joel Chandler Harris; Oversatt av Zinken Hopp, Sturid Sverdrup Lunden og Jon Mathisen.  Illustrert av Rune Johan Andersson.  2. utgave.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Stavanger, Norway: J.W. Eides Forlag.  See 1952/87.

1987 Frederick. Leo Lionni. Part of Frederick and His Friends, a set of four books and a tape. NY: Dragonfly Books: Alfred A. Knopf. See 1967/87.

1987 Granta, Volume 21. Spring, 1987. The Story-Teller. A paperback magazine of new writing. Includes John Berger's "A Story for Aesop" (11-20). Distributed by Viking Penguin. Cambridge, England: Granta Publications. $3.98 at Harvard Book Store Cafe. Extra copy for $3.50 at Normal's, Baltimore, Nov., '91.

Berger's piece works from Velazquez' portrait of Aesop in the Prado. Excellent probing remarks on the painting; the remarks are worth weighing for anyone interested in what Aesopic fable says about the human spirit. Berger finishes with a curious story within a story. I think he has something here.

1987 Horse Fables. By Susan Richards. With Illustrations By Ann DiSalvo. #147 of 1050. Dust jacket. Monterey, Kentucky: Larkspur Press. Spring, 1987. $22 from Don Besky, ABC Collectables, St. Paul, Oct., '97.

Six good fables, each with a pleasant black-and-white illustration. The fables touch on these lessons: that the person who creates freedom will be followed; that the person who does not do anything will be terrorized; that loving is not crowding; that, if one is silly about the things that do not matter, one will be able to be serious about the things that do; that it is better to sit on the fence talking over intentions than to lie at someone's feet hoping for the best; and that running is a gift of the free that should always be enjoyed and exercised. The last illustration—of mare and filly running—may be the best. I am delightfully surprised by this little book.

1987 Horse Fables.  Susan Richards.  Illustrated by Ann DiSalvo.  #705 of 1050.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Monterey, Kentucky: Larkspur Press.  $15 from Blue Cypress Books, New Orleans, August, '18.

1987 I'll Tell You A Story, I'll Sing You a Song. A Parents' Guide to the Fairy Tales, Fables, Songs, and Rhymes of Childhood. Christine Allison. Uncorrected page proof. NY: Delacorte Press. $9.95 at Dutton's, Burbank, Aug., '93.

See my comments on the book itself. A brief study of this proof reveals some interesting changes. "How to Use This Book" has been revised, for example, and noted in the T of C. The order of at least the T of C changes, but then the T of C does not agree with what is inside the proof. At least the fable section is, except for minor editorial corrections, the same as it will be in the final book. BW has different names in the T of C and in the book itself.

1987 I'll Tell You A Story, I'll Sing You a Song. A Parents' Guide to the Fairy Tales, Fables, Songs, and Rhymes of Childhood. Christine Allison. First printing. Dust jacket. NY: Delacorte Press. $15.95 at Black Oak, Berkeley, Dec., '87.

This book contains about twenty-five or thirty well told fables. The moral of FS is "A joke is not as amusing when you are its victim." Pages 97-8 give a fine little essay on fables. These excerpts reflect some of its wisdom: "More a case of intelligent gossip over a fence than a sermon," "more to illuminate than to instruct," "like cartoons today," "do not lengthen fables when you tell them." There are a few cheaply produced black-and-white illustrations for Aesop. I would think of giving this book as a gift.

1987 Il-Fenek u L-Fekruna u hrejjef ohra. (Peter Holeinone, NA.) Test ta' Annamarija Ciarlo. Desinni Ta' Tony Wolf. Hardbound. L-Enciklopedija Tal-Hrejjef. Malta: Klabb Kotba Maltin. Maltese Liri 4.50 from Books Plus, Sliema, Malta, June, '02.

This is my only book in Maltese! I found it immediately on my first outing from the hotel in Malta. It is identical with The story of the Hare and the Tortoise and other tales with the exception that the T of C here lists the start of TH on 10 rather than 9. I now have versions of this book from seven different countries, the others coming from England (1988), France (1989?), Italy (1989/92), the United States (1990), Canada (1990?), and Greece (1989?). Like the Greek edition, the series here is identified as encyclopedic in the banner at the top of both the cover and the T of C. The book came in a set including a cassette tape with the same title by Heart Productions in 1997. The book's first copyright is 1985, Little Star Publishing, Ltd. Great Britain. To my surprise, there is no mention, as there is in the other language versions, of Dami Editore. See my comments on the stories and illustrations under the other editions.

1987 Jean de La Fontaine: Fables choisies. Illustrations de Lena. Belgium: Editions Hemma. 19.50 F at Gibert Jeune, Paris, Aug., '88.

There are ten fables illustrated in cute and colorful style for kids. The best elements are the red nose on the golden-egg-farmer, the crane, and the sweating frog. The art is better than the cover would suggest.

1987 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. (c)1975 Jupiter Books. London: Bloomsbury Books. See 1975/87.

1987 Juan Manuel: El Conde Lucanor: A Collection of Mediaeval Spanish Stories. Edited with an Introduction, Translation and Notes by John England. Paperbound. Warminster, UK: Aris & Phillips, Ltd. $22.40 from David Brown Book Company, Oakville CT, Sept., '98.

This is an important collection of fifty-one medieval stories, presented here bilingually, with Spanish and English on facing pages. The stories are of varying quality. The pattern for each story has Count Lucanor asking his trusted counselor Patronio about a tough situation or decision that he is facing. Patronio typically says how difficult it may be to give good advice in this situation, and then brings up an anecdote or exemplum to give his advice. There is a set of notes on each story at the end of the book, particularly on its sources, strengths, and difficulties. Two of the stories that are not fables seem to me particularly strong: #42 is a great story of treachery destroying a solid marriage. It has traces of Iago and Dimna in it. A Beguine undermines a marriage to please the devil. And #50 is another good, though long, story. Saladin wants to have sex with the wife of a knight, whom he has sent off to get access to her. She agrees on condition that he answer her this question: "What is the best quality that a man can possess?" After searching high and low, including the papal court and the royal court in France, Saladin gets his answer from a wise old knight: "Shame." When he comes back to the lady, she pleads with him to act on what he has learned. His love for her changes from carnal to more spiritual. The collection includes several fables. #2 = MSA. #5=FC. In #6, a swallow talks with other birds about seeing flax seed sown. #7, "Dona Truhana," is MM, but with a jar of honey and laughter, with her hand striking her forehead as the cause for the jar tumbling. #12 is a new "Fox and Cock." After unsuccessful pleading and bullying, the fox attacks the tree, gnawing and banging it with his tail. The cock panics and flies to another tree. The fox understands, repeats, and gets the same result. Soon enough the cock runs out of energy going from tree to tree and the fox eats him. In #13, the man who cries while he kills the partridges he has caught is not to be trusted, pace the stupid partridge who takes his tears as a sign of hope or consolation. #19 is Kalila & Dimna's "Owls and Crows," while #22 is Kalila & Dimna's "Lion and Bull." #29 is also in Ruiz' "Libro de Buen Amor": a fox lies in the street pretending to be dead to escape eventually after a too-long spree in the henhouse. He suffers a number of indignities without budging, like the loss of fur, claw, and tooth. When he hears someone preparing to cut out his heart, he makes his successful attempt to escape. #32 is "The Emperor Has No Clothes."

1987 juliette et les fables de la fontaine vol 1. Hélène Ray. Illustration de Karine Georgel. Paperbound. Paris: tire lire poche: magnard jeunesse: magnard. $5 from Seizethebid on ebay, Dec., '03.

Here a cassette-tape and a book go well together. Juliette describes experiences in school around learning four fables of La Fontaine. With good musical background, she offers explanations of various turns in each of these: MM, FC, "Le Laboureur et ses Enfants," and FG. Georgel's art work is both plentiful and good. There are full and partial-page line drawings and colored illustrations. The reading is excellent on the cassette; it is done by Martine Regnier. The packaging -- a plastic and paper box -- for both book and tape is all but destroyed. I will keep the tape and book together.

1987 Jump Again! More Adventures of Brer Rabbit.  Joel Chandler Harris; Adapted by Van Dyke Parks.  Illustrated by Barry Moser.  First edition, apparently first printing.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  $5 from an unknown source, July, '14.  

1987 Krylov's Fables. Translated into English Verse with a preface by Bernard Pares. Westport, CT: Hyperion Press. See 1926/77/87.

1987 La Fontaine: Fables. Livres I á VI. Préface, Commentaires et notes de Roger Duchêne. Paris: Libre de Poche: Librairie Générale Française. 10 Francs on the Quai along the Seine, May, '97.

Here is a standard paperback presentation of the first half of La Fontaine's fables. One particularly attractive feature is the collection on 237-40 of "vers celebres." There is an AI of fables at the very back. The cover features a delightful detail of a Lorioux illustration of GA.

1987 La Fontaines Fabler. Fritt tolkade för barn av Gustaf Holmér och illustrerade av Ewa Östergren. Hardbound. Värnamo: Gidlunds, Fäiths Tryckeri. $10.50 from Tracy Ericson, Kennebunk, ME, through Ebay, June, '00.

There are twenty-five fables here, with texts in Swedish rhymed verse never over one page in length. Thus each fable gets a two-page spread with the text on the left and a full-page black-and-white drawing on the right. In fact Östergren contributes three elements to each fable: an initial, a little symbol, and a full-page drawing. I like the latter, but I hesitate on some that may tend toward the merely sentimental and cute. More of them are strong, clever, and filled with humor. The animals are routinely clothed. Among the best of the illustrations are: 2P (11); FM (15); GA (with great faces, 17); "The Rat and the Elephant" (33); "The Lion and the Mosquito" (41); "The Hare and the Frogs" (45); and DW (49). Do not miss the great Dr. Stork on 7! There is even an Efterskrift (54). There is just enough German and English resonance in the language here, as in this word, to give good hints.

1987 La lechera y su cubeta/The milkmaid and her pail. Eugenia De Hoogh. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. See 1977/87/90.

1987 Le Petit La Fontaine.  #58 of 60.  Hardbound.  Chester, NH: Ha' Penny.  $75 from Oak Knoll Books, New Castle, DE, July, '13.  

1987 Le Roman de Renard.  Simonne Baudoin.  Hardbound.  Tournai: L'Age d'Or:  Casterman.  €5 from a Buchinist, Paris, August, '14.  See 1958/87.

1987 Limericks, Fables, and Poems. Henry Gray James. LA: Universal Research. $12 at Dundee, May, '91.

Seventeen pages of fables by the official limerick writer of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The fables are unimpressive--alternately clever and preachy (e.g., "Architects" on 141). The two best fables are "The Physician" (141) and "The Ant and the Elephant" (140). The fables tend to allegory.

1987 Make Your Own Fable and Fairy Tale Books. Written by Dianna Sullivan. Illustrated by Beverly Ecker. Large-format pamphlet. Printed in USA. Huntington Beach, CA: Teacher Created Materials: Teacher Created Materials, Inc. $3.25 from Bob McLellan, Shelburne, Ontario, through Ebay, Nov., '00. Extra copy in poorer condition without an ISBN number on the title-page for $4.24 from Debbie Smith, Star, NC, through Ebay, August, '00. 

This is an 8½" x 11" paperbound book with detachable pages based upon seven stories, three of which are FG (34), LM (39), and TH (44). The same author works here who will work on the same publisher's Literature Activities for Young Children (1990). For each of these fables there is a special activity: making a pull-tab book for FG and for TH and making an accordion book for LM. In addition there are writing suggestions for subjects covered in each fable. Strangely, the stories themselves are never told in these pages! The illustrations are appropriately simple. The best of them may be the energetic fox on 36.

1987 Marie de France: Fables. Edited and translated by Harriet Spiegel. Illustrations taken from manuscripts. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. $7.47 at Harvard Book Store, June, '91.

A careful and enjoyable bilingual verse presentation of the earliest (c. 1160-90) extant collection of fables in the vernacular of Western Europe. Rhymed couplets of iambic tetrameter generally work well for Spiegel. Her helpful introduction is higher on Marie than I am after a reading of the first half of the 103 fables. I find some compositions of story elements strange and some epimythia askew. Half of the 103 are Aesopic, especially #1-40 (from Romulus Nilantii); one-third are human. Marie says Aesop translated his Latin from a Greek original! Different: the mouse gets free in "The Mouse and the Frog" (39); the hares wish only to emigrate (85); the stag makes no comment on his legs (93); the dog has a chain and a collar, not a rubbed neck (97); and the shepherd lies about the wolf with his eyes, not his hands or tongue (109). "The Sow and the Wolf" (83), new to me, has a good moral and good morality. All of the animals' deities in Marie are feminine. There is some yellow highlighting in the introduction. There are nice, but small, black-and-white illuminations with most of the fables.

1987 Maurice Boutet de Monvel: Master of French Illustration and Portraiture. Foreword by Ann Van Devanter Townsend. Washington, D.C.: The Trust for Museum Exhibitions. $6 at Idle Time Books, Sept., '91.

This is the catalogue of a travelling exhibition, including some excellent reproductions, colored and black-and-white. La Fontaine: Fables Choisies pour les enfants gets short shrift. Besides a comment on 9, there is a black-and-white "The Fox and the Crane" on 29 with a more helpful comment: "He cut them up in sequences and placed text and image on the page in such a natural fashion that they emphasized the droll and fascinating character of the fables."

1987 Modern Fables: Twenty of Aesop's Fables Brought Up to Date. Bernard Jackson and Susie Quintanilla. Third printing. Paperbound. Rochelle Park, NJ: The Peoples Publishing Group, Inc. $3.48 from Better World Books, June, '11.

This book is a pleasant surprise! It offers engaging versions of twenty basic Aesopic fables in terms that a grade school student of the mid-twentieth-century might well understand. The references are dated now, and culture has changed, but the transpositions are engaging. In the first story, a non-athlete saves the football player who had saved him from a bully. The scene is depicted on the cover, with a black-and-white Aesop sketched in behind the students portrayed in color. The beginning T of C lists the updated stories just across from their originals. About half of the fables are illustrated with a full-page black-and-white cartoon. A story telling of a fellow who waits too long to invite his girlfriend to the prom does make a good update of "The Angler and the Little Fish." A fellow kicking a lawn-mower does make a good contemporary rendition of the snake attacking the metal file. If one of the strengths of this collection is gathering ephemera, this is a major find. I had never heard of it before.

1987 My Book of Favorite Animal Stories. Various authors and illustrators. NY: Exeter Books. See 1982/83/84/87.

1987 My Book of 1-Minute Stories and Verses. No editor acknowledged. Most stories illustrated by Malcolm Livingstone. Printed and bound in Vicenza, Italy. (c)Marshall Cavendish. NY: Exeter Books. $3.98 at Odegard's, July, '89. Extra copy for $7.95 from Renaissance Bookstore, Palo Alto, Feb., '97.

Thirty-seven lively stories in a book I like. Ten are Aesop's fables, all with the delightful illustrations of Malcolm Livingstone from The Best of Aesop and Other Classic Fables (1985). This edition adds "The Silly Tortoise" with illustrations by Sue Porter. It changes the title from "The Wind and the Sun" to "Who's Stronger?" It drops TMCM. There are great stories here beyond Aesop, including "Red Nightcaps" and "Hannibal."

1987 My Sunday Book of Bedtime Stories. Various authors and illustrators. The text and illustrations first appeared in The Book of Bedtime Stories (1979). London?: William Collins Sons and Co. $5 at Green Apple, San Francisco, Dec., '90.

Two fables. The farmer is saved by the eagle from a chunk of falling city wall. The grasshopper admits his fault, and the ant welcomes him. The title page of this unusual book has no title! With so many illustrators, the quality of the art varies widely; neither fable has outstanding illustrations.

1987 Never Cry Wolf!: A Fable Retold.  Carol Cunningham.  #17 of 50; signed; mini.  Hardbound.  Sunflower Press.  $125 from Oak Knoll Books, Feb., '14.

1987 Satire from Aesop to Buchwald. Edited by Frederick Kiley and J.M. Shuttleworth. Twelfth Printing. Paperbound. NY: Macmillan and London: Collier Macmillan. See 1971/87.

1987 Stories from Aesop. Retold by Gwendoline Dun. Illustrated by Frank C. Pape. Oxford English Picture Readers: Grade One. Colour edition. Printed in Hong Kong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. See 1971/87.

1987 Stories from Panchatantra. By Shivkumar. Illustrated by Anil Vyas. Hardbound. 1987 reprinting. Printed in New Delhi, India. New Delhi, India: Children's Book Trust. See 1979/87.

1987 Swimmy. Leo Lionni. Part of Frederick and His Friends, a set of four books and a tape. NY: Dragonfly Books: Alfred A. Knopf. See 1963/87.

1987 Tales & Fables. Written and Illustrated by Vincent Torre. Written and Illustrated by Vincent Torre. Signed; #119 of 150. Hardbound. NY: The Inkwell Press. $49.99 from Scottsbooks, Milford, NH, through eBay, Feb., '09.

This is one of three Torre books identical in format that I was able to get in a group from Scottsbooks. Might it mean that I now have all of Torre's fable books? Like the other Torre books I have found, it is a beautifully produced book, set by hand and bound by hand. This book has twenty-three offerings on 118 pages. Each of the stories has an accompanying full-page silkscreen, and these seem to me to be again the strength of the book. Most of these verse stories are done in ababcc rhymes. The first is a surprising story of a stork who counsels an innocent young frog to take refuge in the stork's bill but then has conscience pangs and lets him free. One of my prizes goes to "The Peacock & the Penguin" (25) for the clever repartee, the good silkscreen image, and the well-fitted moral that his own beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Another favorite is "The Parrot & the Polar Bear" (59): the two meet going in opposite directions to lands envisioned as charming. As each hears the other proclaiming the problems of his own habitat, he turns back to his own land. This illustration is one of the more complex and colorful, I think. I also like "The Gargoyle & the Chilmney Swift" (80). The mean-spirited gargoyle eventually finds his complaining mouth stuffed by the nest of the happy and grateful swift. Among the non-fable "tales" might be "The Pearl & the Oyster" on 89. My grand prize goes to "The Pig & the Fox" (94) for its story. The fox convinces the pig that fat is now fashionable. The pig begins eating even more, and the farmer decides to slaughter him and make him into sausage, which the fox steals. "The flatterer seeks only to serve himself" (98). A last favorite, for both story and silkscreen, is "The Horse of a Different Color" (114). The carousel horse rejects the real horse when he finally sees one. Notice "did'nt" on 66 and "concensus" on 100.

1987 The Best of Fairy Tales and Fables. Illustrated by Eric Kincaid. Newmarket, England: Brimax. $5.98 at Crown Books, Chicago, Fall, '87.

Fables and fairy tales are mixed together here. There is a wider selection of Kincaid fables here than in Fabulas Classicas (1981/85). Some pictures are quite dramatic; printing them on poor paper does not help. I have no high praise for this one.

1987 The Big Book of Fables. Edited by Walter Jerrold. Illustrated by Charles Robinson and Jane Harvey. Dust jacket. Printed in Hungary. NY: Portland House. $9.98 at Schwartz, July, '87. Extra copy with torn dust jacket for $8 at Midway, July, '94.

I find nothing to indicate that the illustrations come from fifty years ago, which would have been my suspicion. Witty line-drawings, some silhouettes, and twenty-four full-color plates (less good than the others). The print is antique. I like this book. It is a steal for the price.

1987 The Big Lion and the Little Mouse. Storytime Classics. Tag-A-Long Series. By Harriet Kinghorn and Robert King. Illustrated by Jane Shasky. Minneapolis: T.S. Denison and Co. $3.50 in Council Bluffs, March, '91.

This is a large-format pamphlet kit including the story and simple reproducible materials for a flannel board story, room display, puppet story, and string puppets. The fable itself is very well told in a playful version that includes a pertinent little poem.

1987 The Blacksmith and his Dog. Adaptation of a fable by Samaniego. Illustrated by Vernet. The book is cut to fit the cover illustration. Third in a series of eight. Holland Enterprises Limited. Barcelona: Artes Gráficas Cobas. $.50 in Singapore, June, '90. Extra copy for $.57 at a parish book sale in Inverary, Scotland, July, '92.

Cute characters. Here the dog leaves the blacksmith and goes through farmwork and circus work on the way to discovering that work is work. Like all the books in this series, this one tells you "THE END" in case you did not notice!

1987 The Children's Treasury. Best-Loved Stories and Poems from Around the World. Edited by Paula S. Goepfert. Various illustrators. Dust jacket. Gallery Books. NY: W.H. Smith Publishers. $10.98 at Dalton, Jan., '88.

Ten Aesop's fables (several are listed as from Jacobs' edition) are mixed in. The Aesop illustrations by Peter Kovalic (388) are better than others (often trite), especially LM, "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing," DS, and GGE. The tellings and morals are good, especially GA and GGE. A wonderful treasury indeed!

1987 The City Mouse and the Country Mouse. Illustrated by Graham Percy. No editor acknowledged. (c)1987 by Editiones Peralt Montagut. Printed in Spain. NY: Derrydale Books. $3 at Powell's in Chicago, May, '89.

A high-class hardbound book with very good art. The guest is not just from the city but from the court. The country mouse offers better fare than in most versions. A dog, a cat, and servants menace. The country mouse escapes by night down a vine. Well done. I like this book.

1987 The Country Mouse and the City Mouse. Knopf Nursery Tale Library. Illustrated by Laura Lydecker. Based chiefly on L'Estrange. Manufactured in Singapore. NY: Alfred A. Knopf. $4.95 at Dalton, Jan., '88. One extra copy.

Charming watercolors, including the title page (getting and receiving an invitation) and back cover (mouse coachmen resting). In fact, the coachmen are a charming part of several of the illustrations.

1987 The Country Mouse and the City Mouse. Retold by Alan Benjamin. Illustrated by Jeffrey Severn. A First Little Golden Book. Racine: Western. $.85 at Milwaukee Public Museum, Nov., '87. Extra copy from Woolworth's for $.69, March, '88.

Nice touches: the two spend a night in the country, during which a visible frog and bugs disturb the city mouse, while the country mouse dreams of the city's delights. First a cat and then a dog intrude. The finish is excellent: they "promised to visit each other again someday.... And perhaps they will." The art has some lapses, e.g., in portraying the invading cat.

1987 The Emperor's New Clothes.  Hans Christian Andersen.  Pamphlet.  NY: Your Favorite Fairy Tales: Walt Disney Company.  $1 from Renaissance Books, Milwaukee Airport, June, '18.

1987 The Fables of Aesop.  Joseph Jacobs.  Richard Heighway.  Paperbound.  NY: Schocken Books.  See 1894/1987.

1987 The Fables of Aesop in Scots Verse. Retold by Robert Stephen. Illustrated by Helen Wheaton. Hardbound. Peterhead, Scotland: Aulton Press. $18.90 from Dillon's, Glasgow, July, '92. Extra copy for £8 from Dowanside Books, Glasgow, through ABE, April, '00.

A delightful large-format book that took some work to get. A casual inquiry at Dillon's uncovered the existence of this book; a call to Dillon's in Aberdeen and the British mail got it to me before our week's conference was over. Stephen has fun with the fables. One mouse, for example, declares that flushing the cat down the toilet would be inhumane (66)! There is a helpful Scots glossary at the end. TH gives a good example of Stephen's morals (15): "Slow an steady's better progress/Than the fast, erratic pace;/An ye never ken the winner/Till the feenish o' the race." Good illustrations feature: the hare and tortoise all decked out, including the hare's sneakers and the tortoise's tam o' shanter (9); the surrealistic, modern, disturbing astronomer in the road-work ditch; the frogs playing on their log king (33), wearing kilts and swimsuits and sitting at a frog-dimensioned cocktail table. Some stories are different: an old chairman-of-the-board mouse recommends belling the cat; "The Traveller and the River" (30) seems to make a fable out of a proverb; FG (52) becomes a short story (five pages long) of difficult travels with a different moral. The grapes may actually be sour when you reach them!

1987 The Fables of Mkhitar Gosh. Translated with an Introduction by Robert Bedrosian. Edited by Elise Antreassian. Illustrated by Anahid Janjigian. Introduction by Robert Bedrosian. Paperback. Printed in USA. NY: Ashod Press. $7.50 from Gutenberg Holdings, New Hampton, NY, by mail, August, '99.

Here is a curious collection of 190 items. Mkhitar Gosh is an Armenian Christian priest and doctor of the church who died in 1213. The introduction's last few paragraphs give a sense of his philosophy, with its emphases on order, obedience, clerical uprightness, and refusal to intermarry with Muslim overlords. Though these are almost all genuine fables, they seem to me seldom successful; they tend to be contrived. The strong tendency to allegorical or arbitrary interpretation does not make their case stronger. The fables are divided by subject matters, often with a comment to show the division points, which occur after #6 (celestial phenomena), #25 (trees), #35 (plants), #49 (beans, peas, and seeds), #61 (vegetables), #64 (mountains), #161 (animals), and the last, #190 (people). There are frequent fables of the Rangstsreit sort, in which two entities argue over precedence. Among the notable fables I found are these. The onion and garlic wanted to go along to a wealthy dinner party, intending to hide. They could not, and everybody else had to leave (#55). The cabbage boasted of its health-giving qualities, telling lies. Someone ate it and got sick. The cabbage's response to being called a liar: "Who cares! I got into you, even if I leave you in disgrace" (#61). A ram butted a tree and then complained against the tree for breaking its horns (#81). Goats seeing animals wagging their tails scolded them for not being modest, but their reason was really jealousy (#82). A mole asked a porcupine to send him his son as pupil and then asked the father to remove the son's coat, so that the teacher could kiss him. He ate the son instead (#111)! A quail with chicks saw a rooster thanking God and joined him, only to see the rooster then eat one of his chicks. The quail exclaimed that he now understood that the rooster gave thanks not out of reverence but out of greed (#117). The marriage of owl and eagle failed because either got laughed at half the day (#123). The raven priest refused to come to a celebration because it is only harder to put his black robes back on again if he takes them off (#134). A smart swallow harassed by mice put a cat's hair into her nest and was troubled no longer (#139).

1987 The Fox and the Grapes. Adaptation of a fable by Samaniego. Illustrated by Vernet. The book is cut to fit the cover illustration. Eighth in a series of eight. Holland Enterprises Limited. Barcelona: Artes Gráficas Cobas. $.50 in Singapore, June, '90. Extra copy for $.57 at a parish book sale in Inverary, Scotland, July, '92.

Cute characters. This is actually a double fable. First the fox chases some rabbits and condemns them when she cannot get them: they are too tough to eat anyway. Like all the books in this series, this one tells you "THE END" in case you did not notice.

1987 The Hen That Laid Golden Eggs. Adaptation of a fable by Samaniego. Illustrated by Vernet. The book is cut to fit the cover illustration. Fourth in a series of eight. Holland Enterprises Limited. Barcelona: Artes Gráficas Cobas. $.57 at a parish book sale in Inverary, Scotland, July, '92.

As often in this series, the fable is changed from its earliest versions. The farmer wants all his hens to lay two eggs daily. The text has him seeing a golden egg one day, while the illustration shows two! His reaction is to pamper this hen and feed her more so that he can get more eggs. She decides to teach him a lesson by laying ordinary white eggs. The farmer learns his lesson and apologizes to the hens. Like all the books in this series, this one tells you "THE END" in case you did not notice!

1987 The Instructive and Entertaining Fables of Pilpay. An Ancient Indian Philosopher. Containing a Number of Excellent Rules for the Conduct of Persons of all Ages, and in all Stations: Under several Heads. Paperbound. Fifth Edition. Corrected, Improved, and Enlarged; and Adorned with near Seventy Cuts neatly Engraved. London: Darf Publishers. See 1775/1987.

1987 The King's New Clothes.  Patricia and Fredrick McKissack.  Illustrated by Gwen Connelly.  Second printing.  Hardbound.  Chicago: Start-Off Stories:  Childrens Press.  $7.20 from Betty Mittendorf/TiffanyPower BKSLINEN, Ralston, NE, through Abebooks, Nov, '22.

1987 The Lion and the Fox. Adaptation of a fable by Samaniego. Illustrated by Vernet. The book is cut to fit the cover illustration. Second in a series of eight. Holland Enterprises Limited. Barcelona: Artes Gráficas Cobas. $.57 at a parish book sale in Inverary, Scotland, July, '92.

As often in this series, the story has changed radically from its earliest versions. The old lion plays sick, so that the animals will bring him nice food. Different animals get different impressions of the lion's sickness; the clever fox hearing them peeks through the window and catches the lion cooking a meal for himself. The fox gives the lion a tongue-lashing. For Aesop the guests were the food, and the fox, seeing only one-way footprints, did not come close enough to be caught. Like all the books in this series, this one tells you "THE END" in case you did not notice.

1987 The Lion and the Mouse: An Aesop Fable. Retold by Mary O'Toole. Illustrated by Marjory Gardner. Pamphlet. Printed in Hong Kong. Cleveland and Toronto: Modern Curriculum Press. $0.48 from Half-Price Books, Cleveland, OH, April, '02.

This 9" x 5½" landscape-formatted pamphlet was a nice gift to find on the last afternoon of my thirty-day retreat. Here the female mouse runs onto the lion's nose. The artist cleverly puts the lion's "ROAR!" upside-down, like the lion, when he is held in the net.

1987 The Lion, the Wolf and the Fox. Adaptation of a fable by Samaniego. Illustrated by Vernet. The book is cut to fit the cover illustration. Fifth in a series of eight. Holland Enterprises Limited. Barcelona: Artes Gráficas Cobas. $.50 in Singapore, June, '90.

Cute characters. "Messenger" is spelt "messanger." Like all the books in this series, this one tells you "THE END" in case you did not notice!

1987 The Lion's Paw: A Tale of African Animals. By Jane Werner Watson. Pictures by Gustaf Tenggren. (c)1959 Merrigold Press, Racine. Copyright renewed 1987. NY: Merrigold Press. $4.95 from Kettersons' Old Market Bookstore, '94.

See my remarks on the 1959 original Little Golden Book. Though the paper here is much fresher, the detail on the pictures is much sharper there than here. My, how stories recirculate!

1987 The Little Shepherd and his Flock. Adaptation of a fable by Samaniego. Illustrated by Vernet. The book is cut to fit the cover illustration. First in a series of eight. Holland Enterprises Limited. Barcelona: Artes Gráficas Cobas. $.50 in Singapore, June, '90.

Cute characters. There is one grammar mistake: "having ran." Like all the books in this series, this one tells you "THE END" in case you did not notice!

1987 The Magic Carpet and Other Tales.  Retold by Ellen Douglas.  Illustrations of Walter Anderson.  First printing.  Hardbond.  Dust jacket.  Jackson and London:  University Press of Mississippi.  $15 from the Bay Area, July, '15.

1987 The Moral Fables of Aesop by Robert Henryson. An Edition of the Middle Scots Text, with a Facing Prose Translation, Introduction, and Notes by George D. Gopen. Hardbound: Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. See 1571/1987.

1987 The Moral Fables of Aesop by Robert Henryson. An Edition of the Middle Scots Text, with a Facing Prose Translation, Introduction, and Notes by George D. Gopen. Paperbound: Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. See 1571/1987.

1987 The Mother Deer and her Fawn. (Back cover listings substitute "the Fawn.") Adaptation of a fable by Samaniego. Illustrated by Vernet. The book is cut to fit the cover illustration. Sixth in a series of eight. Holland Enterprises Limited. Barcelona: Artes Gráficas Cobas. $.50 in Singapore, June, '90. Two extra copies for $.57 each at a parish book sale in Inverary, Scotland, July, '92.

Cute characters. This fable seems to me to have less point than many others. Like all the books in this series, this one tells you "THE END" in case you did not notice.

1987 The Panchatantra. Translated from the Sanskrit by Arthur W. Ryder. Paperback. Printed in Bombay. Bombay: Jaico Publishing House. See 1949/87.

1987 The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse. By Beatrix Potter. London?: Frederick Warne. See 1918/87.

1987 The Tortoise and the Geese: A Tale of Pride. In English and Urdu. Eve Gregory and Dorothy Penman. Urdu version by Khalid Hasan Qadiri. Urdu calligraphy by Munir Ahmed. Illustrated by Barbara Howden. London: Edward Arnold Publishers. $1 at Bryn Mawr Lantern, Georgetown, Jan., '96.

My first work in Urdu! The tortoise gets the idea of the stick. Everything works fine until people seeing them say of the tortoise "How clever he must be. How does he do it?" The tortoise is killed. Simple black-and-white illustrations.

1987 The Tortoise and the Hare. Retold by Margo Lundell. Illustrations (c)1984 by John Nez. A Golden Book. NY: Western Publishing Co. $1 at Walden in Omaha, May, '90. Extra copy of a later printing from an anonymous donor, March, '95.

The hare is such a boaster that the female tortoise cannot take it from him, though he is a friend. The owl judges. The hare stops just before the finish line to wait for the tortoise. "Slow and steady often wins the race" (emphasis added by me). I will keep the second copy in the collection because it has a sharper title-page illustration.

1987 The Tortoise and the Hare. Storytime Classics. Tag-A-Long Series. By Harriet Kinghorn and Robert King. Illustrated by Jane Shasky. Minneapolis: T.S. Denison and Co. $3.50 in Council Bluffs, March, '91.

This is a large-format pamphlet kit including the story and simple reproducible materials for a flannel board story, room display, puppet story, and string puppets. The fable itself is told in a good, long oral version.

1987 The Tortoise and the Hare. Retold by Margo Lundell. Illustrated by John Nez. A Golden Book. NY: Western Publishing Co. See 1984/87.

1987 The Town Mouse & the Country Mouse. An Aesop Fable adapted and illustrated by Janet Stevens. Dust jacket. NY: Holiday House. $13.95 in Portland, Aug., '87.

A delightful but expensive little book. The story is well elaborated, with fine homey touches and good art. The two mice contrast strongly in character.

1987 The Treasury of Children's Classics. Compiled and edited by Samuel Carr and Carolyn Jones. Dust jacket. First published by Octopus Books, Ltd. Printed in Czechoslovakia. NY: Weathervane Books: Crown Publishers. $10 for the last copy at Schwartz, Fall, '87.

A dozen fables together in a section with black-and-white reproductions from Charles Robinson (The Big Book of Fables, 1987). There is nothing spectacular here.

1987 Town Mouse & Country Mouse and Other Tales. Retold by Geraldine Carter. Illustrated by Jane Harvey. London: Bracken Books. $4.98 at Walden, Jan., '88. Extra copy for $2.65 from Blake Books, Oct., '94.

Two other Aesop's fables included are LM and "The Bear and the Bees." The drawings are pastel-heavy crayon or something similar. There is a good expression on the town mouse's face in the country. Otherwise I am not taken by the illustrations. The drawings are not the same as those in The Big Book of Fables (1987).

1987 When the Animals Could Talk: Fables.  Ivan Franko, translated by Mary Skrypnyk.  Illustrated by Yuli Kryha.  Hardbound.  Kiev: Dnipro.  $7.50 from Magus Books, Seattle, July, '15.

1987 [Korean]. (Sun and Wind). The cover's picture is a composite of a shepherd boy, frogs, a fox and stork, and the sun. Edited by Young Mu Kim. Illustrated by Man Ki Shim. Seoul: Bum Woo Publishing Co. $2.10 at Kyobo in Seoul, June, '90.

A pleasing simple book of the above four fables and TB. This book seems typical of recent Korean work, for it is both colorful and vivid. The "echoes" are particularly good, e.g., that of the fellow diving into the water under the sun's influence on 10. The best illustrations are for OF, particularly the skipping frogs and the expanding mother.

1987/89 Aesop's Fables. #8 in English-Korean Bilingualism series. No illustrations. No translators acknowledged. Seoul: Sam Joong Dang Publications Co. Ltd. $2.80 at Kyobo in Seoul, June, '90.

A nicely produced paperback. T of C at the beginning. Ninety-seven fables. Some fables have morals, while others do not. I thought the T of C and texts might be lifted from a normal English edition, but inspection reveals some telltale signs of foreign typesetting, e.g., "feared" divided into two syllables (6), "I shall not miss you go away" (34), "peices" (44), and "camfortably" (48).

1987/90 The Clever Moth and Other Animal Fables. Radimir Putnikovich. Illustrations by Roberta Carabelli, Ermes Miceli and Sarah Harwood. Hardbound. Printed in Singapore. NY: Bernie Bear Books: Book Essentials. $5 from Linda White, West Baldwin, ME, through Ebay, Dec., '00. Extra copy for $8 from Alibris, Oct., '00.

Apparently first done by Porthill Publishers, Middlesex, England in 1987. This edition was produced by Porthill for Book Essentials. This book represents one of the few times that I have bought the same book twice without meaning to buy it twice. The disturbing fact is that the two purchases were within sixty days of each other. There are nine stories here. The illustrations to all tend to be psychedelic; they show little need to use color realistically. In the title story, the clever moth who has studied (and eaten) lots of books is stumped by a question from a fly about why a crumb of cake gets caught in his throat. The hedgehog accosted by both a fox and an owl for the delicious pear that she is carrying throws the single pear to the two of them. They fight and chase each other so intently that she is soon able to pick up her pear. "The Three Fish" communicates effectively that the liar can end up swallowing himself. Here a pike tells an outrageous story about devouring his own tail after he has consumed a whole river. In "The Turkey and the Cockerel," the former cannot stop criticizing those around him; the moral urges that we not criticize if we cannot do as well or better ourselves. "The Goose and the Swan" teaches--again, effectively, I think--that "it's wrong to imagine that if we have one thing similar to somebody else, then we are the same in every way." "The Deer and the Spider" works like LM. The grateful spider spins webs in front of a cave that shelters the deer, and hunters pass the cave by. In "The Two Mice" the older of two mice leaves ship because his biscuit is wet--and therefore, he concludes, the ship is leaking. The ship has rough going and sinks, while the adventuresome mouse hangs on to a sausage for dear life. A young wild goose pays with her life when she separates from the flock and is overtaken by the hawk. In the last story, the monkey is rewarded because he, unlike the parrot, can make up new things and do them by himself. Would the latter fable disagree with the first fable in Kalila and Dimna, where the monkey stupidly imitates the carpenter chopping wood--without understanding how to do it correctly.

1987/90 [Korean]. (Aesop's Fables). A lion, a crow, frogs, and a mouse on the cover. Edited by Sang Chul Shin. Illustrated by Yang Chan Haw. Seoul: Yearimdang Publishing Co. $3.50 at Eastgate stall, June, '90.

Twenty-eight fables with strong, lively illustrations. The mouths and eyes are sometimes strangely depicted for our taste. The best pictures go with GA, TMCM, MSA, and BW. The book is apparently second in a series of forty-four children's books.

1987/91 Short Latin Stories. Philip Dunlop. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. $7.96 from The Scholar's Choice at a CAMWS convention, Omaha, April, '95.

Here are fifty Latin prose stories graded in difficulty according to the Cambridge Latin Course for students in their first three years of Latin. Four of the fifty are Aesop's fables: LS (#4), WL (#9), "The Lion, the Flea, and the Spider" (#17), and BF (#33). You never know where Aesop will show up next!

1987/92 Aesop’s Tales (Japanese). Third edition. Tokyo: Ondori Company: Kyozai Syuppan Co., Ltd. 150 yen at Miwa, Kanda, Tokyo, July, ’96.

Here are five very colorful fables in a squarish booklet moving from right to left in Japanese style, with a very nice symbol along with the text on each right-hand page. The fables included are: MSA, "The Donkey Drinking Dew," GA, "The Fox and the Monkey King," and DS. I recognized the pictures and tracked down the parallel: Aesop’s Fables (Chinese) from 1991/94, the book Shoji found for me when we were in Yokohama’s Chinatown. The format and quality of material in this Japanese edition make for real sparkle!

1987/95 Las manchas del sapo: How the Toad Got His Spots. Marjorie E. Herrmann. Paperbound. Lincolnwood, IL: Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series: National Textbook Company. $12.94 from The Story Monkey, Omaha, April, '96.

Here is an aetiological fable. True to the fashion of this series, the story's illustrations are repeated as the story is told first in Spanish and then in English. Luisito loves to sing and dance, even though he is not particularly good at either. He desperately wants to join the birds' great dance and songfest in the sky. He sneaks into the eagle's guitar case. He does not know it, but the birds discover him during their great feast in the clouds. He is having so much fun dancing to their songs that they can see him jumping up into the air. They plot to let him fall on the flight back home. He does, and so picks up all his spots and splotches. Luisito found them ugly, but the other toads see them as badges of courage. He was the first toad to fly!

1987/96 El pájaro Cú/The Cú Bird. Marjorie E. Herrmann. Paperbound. Lincolnwood, IL: Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series: National Textbook Company. $12.95 from The Story Monkey, Omaha, April, '96.

This story seems to be on the borders of fable. It has an aetiological slant, though it may be hard to feel invited to perceive a lesson. God runs out of feathers, and so one bird has none. Owl and the majority of birds want to give this bird each one of their feathers. Peacock opposes this idea: he will be too vain. The birds go ahead and dress him. He finds himself beautiful and will not associate with them. He even flies away. Other birds blame the owl, who becomes an outcast. The roadrunner takes pity on the owl and visits him with food. Crow is out to kill the owl. Owl and roadrunner decide to find the Cú bird. Since then roadrunner runs by day with his eyes glued on the road crying "Cu-rút." And the owl by night around the swamps and woods shouts "Cú, Cú." What kind of birds are torgons (10)? 

1987? Die Stadtmaus und die Feldmaus. Übersetzer: Marion Bornhövd-Hommer, Angelika Druminski. Mit Zeichnungen von Graham Percy. Printed in Spain. Distributed with an audio cassette dated 1988. (c)Peralt Montagut Verlag. Together $9.95 at europa books, Chicago, March, '95.

The pictures here are exactly the same as in my 1987 Derrydale edition. I find it interesting that we have acknowledged translators of an unacknowledged text! See my comments in the English version. Note that I also have a French version, likewise listed under 1987?.

1987? El Ratón de Ciudad y el Ratón de Campo. Ilustrado por Graham Percy. Hardbound. Printed in Barcelona. Cuentos en Imágines: Peralt Montagut Editions: Imajen. Gift of Vera Ruotolo, March, '03.

Distributed with an undated audio cassette from Peralta Montagut. The pictures here are exactly the same as in my 1987 Derrydale edition and the French and German versions, likewise listed under "1987?" Of the sixteen books in the series "Cuentos en Imágines," this is the only fable. The guest is not just from the city but from the court. The country mouse offers better fare than in most versions. A dog, a cat, and servants menace.

1987? Le Rat de ville, Le Rat des champs. Illustré par Graham Percy. Printed in Spain. Distributed with an undated audio cassette. (c)Peralt Montagut Editions. Together $9.95 at europa books, Chicago, March, '95.

The pictures here are exactly the same as in my 1987 Derrydale edition. Note that I also have a German version, likewise listed under 1987?.

 

To top

1988 A Celebration of the Aesopic Verse of Constance Carrier. Excerpts from Esopus Hodie, Aesop Today (1985) by Dorothy MacLaren, with poetry by Constance Carrier. Limited edition of 200; these copies are unnumbered and apparently out of series. Newington, CT: The Society for the Preservation of Aesop. Gift of Dorothy MacLaren, Feb., '95, along with an extra copy lacking the spine-string.

On the good copy, the golden egg on the cover is indeed colored gold, as it was on the cover of Esopus Hodie. This booklet seems to be a collection of the first page of Esopus Hodie's four-page presentation of each fable, together with the same book's collection of morals at the end. Only "The Cock and the Jewel" changes its illustration to one used elsewhere in the earlier work. The booklet was prepared by Dorothy and Walter MacLaren for Constance Carrier's birthday.

1988 a choice for children: poems, fables and fairy tales. Sergei Mikhalkov. Designed by Vladimir Surikov. Fables translated by Fainna Glagoleva and Dorian Rottenberg. (c)1980 Progess Publishers. Printed in the USSR. (c)1988: Moscow: Raduga Publishers. $5 at Biermaier's BH Books, Minneapolis, July, '94.

Sixteen prose fables make up one of three sections in this book (75-86). Particularly good among these original fables are "The Nuisance" (76), "The Storks and the Frogs" (81), "A Bit Too Much" (82), "Favours" (84), and "The Puppy and the Snake" (85). T of C at the beginning. Lively colored cartoon-decorations throughout.

1988 a choice for children: poems, fables and fairy tales.  Sergei Mikhalkov, translated by Fainna Glagoleva and Dorian Rottenberg.  Vladimir Surikov.  Hardbound.  Moscow: Raduga Publishers.  $5 from Montclair Estates on Piedmont, Oakland, August, '17. 

1988 A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine. With Pictures by Percy J. Billinghurst. No translator acknowledged. Dust jacket. London: Hampstead Editions. $5 at Pendragon Books, Berkeley, June, '89.

Almost identical with the Greenwich House (Crown) edition of the same title in 1983. Some of the illustrations are superior here. Some of the differences from that edition are these: the frontispiece of a lion has moved and is much darker, there is no foreword, and the cover and dust jacket differ from those in 1983. Billinghurst does some lovely illustrations.

1988 A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine. With Pictures by Percy J. Billinghurst. No translator acknowledged. Dust jacket. NY: Park South Books. $6.50 at Second Chance Books, Omaha, April, '93.

Identical with the Hampstead edition of the same title (1988). It looks from the advertisements and the absolute identity of the books as though Park South is the New York branch of whoever is behind Hampstead Editions. See my comments under the Hampstead listing.

1988 A Kaleidoscope of Fairies & Fables. Re-told by Robert Mathias. Color illustrations by David Frankland. Line illustrations by Meg Rutherford. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. London: Hamlyn. $7.50 from Fahrenheit's Books, Denver, April, '99.

See the 1983 Aesop's Fables done by the same people and published by Silver Burdett. Silver Burdett had the book then from Hamlyn, who had the copyright. Here Hamlyn cleverly uses the same materials again, as they had already used some of Mathias and Frankland's work in My Gold Storybook in 1981. Here there are twenty fables scattered over the book, but always in two-page spreads facing each other. Back then I chose as one of the best of the line drawings "The Stag and the Pool" (109). Now I would add BW (209). Frankland's work may be best exemplified by "The Monkey & the Buffalo" (59). Meg Rutherford's initials and dates are still clear on many of the line drawings, and the dates have not been changed.

1988 A Magical Menagerie: Tales from Perrault, Andersen, La Fontaine and Grimm. Retold by Sheila Wainwright. Illustrated by Francis Wainwright. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. NY: Henry Holt and Company. $16.95 at Brookline Kids' Bookstore, Feb., '89.

The book contains three fables from each of the four writers. The tellings are good. The illustration of the stork with the flat dish of the fox deserves a prize. The fox actually expresses anger, and the stork replies with the moral.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Volume I. My Book About: Reading, Writing, Thinking. Creative Approaches to Language by Dr. Kathryn T. Hegeman. Well-Done Series. Monroe, NY: Trillium Press. See 1985/88.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Volume II. My Book About: Reading, Writing, Thinking. Creative Approaches to Language by Dr. Kathryn T. Hegeman. Well-Done Series. Monroe, NY: Trillium Press. See 1985/88.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Volume III. My Book About: Reading, Writing, Thinking. Creative Approaches to Language by Dr. Kathryn T. Hegeman. Well-Done Series. Monroe, NY: Trillium Press. See 1985/88.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Volume IV. My Book About: Reading, Writing, Thinking. Creative Approaches to Language by Dr. Kathryn T. Hegeman. Well-Done Series. Monroe, NY: Trillium Press. See 1985/88.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Nora Fry. Edited by Lois Hill. No translator acknowledged. Stamford, CT: Longmeadow Press: Dilithium Press. See 1921/88.

1988 Aesop's Fables. A Pull-the-Tab Pop-Up Book. Claire Littlejohn. Printed in Colombia. NY: Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of NAL Penguin. $11.20 at the New England Mobile Book Fair, Jan., '88. One extra copy.

A genuine delight. You help the rabbit try to beat the turtle across the finish line. You lift the fox up to near the grapes. The crow ends up thirstier from all the thinking about the pitcher. The bees swarm in nice spirals. New to me is the story about the shepherd who loses his coat getting acorns for his sheep.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Retold in Verse by Tom Paxton. Illustrated by Robert Rayevsky. First printing.  Dust jacket. NY: Morrow Junior Books. Gift of Pat Cullen, Sept., '89.

This is my idea of what a contemporary book of Aesop's fables should be: witty stories (here in verse) with well executed and witty pictures. The fox (with the grapes), the "sick" lion, and the goose-slayer all have great expressions. Notice the apparent imitation of Gheeraerts in the netted lion. Excellent! Paxton is a writer of popular songs.

1988 Aesop's Fables.  Retold in Verse by Tom Paxton. Illustrated by Robert Rayevsky. Second printing, signed by Tom Paxton.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  NY: Morrow Junior Books:  Morrow.  $13.95 from Books of Wonder, Dec., '90.

1988    Aesop's Fables.  Retold in Verse by Tom Paxton. Illustrated by Robert Rayevsky. Third printing.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  NY: Morrow Junior Books:  Morrow.  $5 from an unknown source, Sept., '93.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Charles Santore. No editor acknowledged ("from an excellent classic translation," a note from editor Claire Booss indicates). Signed by Charles Santore. Fifth printing. Dust jacket. Printed in Italy. Dilithium. NY: JellyBean Press. Gift of Neil Gallagher (Marketing Communications Coordinator for Merrill Lynch) through Mary Pat Ryan, May, '92.

A really lovely, lively book. The art is big, witty, and strong. Note the triple foldout of the end of the TH race: the animals from all the fables reappear here. Also excellent: "The Monkey as King" (19). Santore's work here is the background for some of the illustrations in Merrill Lynch's opulent advertising campaign launched during the '92 winter olympic games. Because the three copies I have are of different printings, including a signed copy and a first printing, I will keep all three in the collection.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Charles Santore. First printing. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. NY: JellyBean Press. Gift of Mary Pat Ryan, Jan., '89.

Here is a first printing. I have also a fifth printing signed by Charles Santore and a third printing. As I mention there, this is a really lovely, lively book. The art is big, witty, and strong. Note the triple foldout of the end of the TH race: the animals from all the fables reappear here. Also excellent: "The Monkey as King" (19). Santore's work here is the background for some of the illustrations in Merrill Lynch's opulent advertising campaign launched during the '92 winter Olympic games.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Charles Santore. Third printing. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. NY: JellyBean Press. $9.99 from an unknown source, April, '94.

Here is a third printing. I have also a fifth printing signed by Charles Santore and a first printing. As I mention there, this is a really lovely, lively book. The art is big, witty, and strong. Note the triple foldout of the end of the TH race: the animals from all the fables reappear here. Also excellent: "The Monkey as King" (19). Santore's work here is the background for some of the illustrations in Merrill Lynch's opulent advertising campaign launched during the '92 winter Olympic games.

1988 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Walt Sturrock. Designed and edited by Jean L. Scrocco. Printed in Singapore. "From editions in the public domain." First edition? New Jersey: Unicorn Publishing House. $12 at New England Mobile Book Fair, Jan., '89.

Great pictures, though they may tend to the romantic and even sentimental. The best for me are the first two, of the lost wig and of the frogs at the well's edge. Are they done with acrylics?

1988 Aesop's Fables: A Collection of Aesop's Fables. Retold by Graeme Kent. Illustrated by Eric Kincaid. Printed in Hong Kong. Newmarket, England: Brimax. See 1981/84/88.

1988 Aesop's Fables for young readers: Teacher's Edition. Laurel Hicks, Editor. Illustrated by Stan Shimmin. Pensacola, FL: A Beka Book: A Ministry of Pensacola Christian College. $8.50 from Dan Burrell, Charlotte, NC, through Ebay, May, '00.

See the 1976 (original?) printing and my later 1979/86 printing. This teacher's edition adds a number of things, starting from a cover-scene of the finish line of TH. A set of 32 gray pages is added before the usual 96-page book. These gray pages include questions and discussion material on each of the stories (9-29). Answers are filled in right in their exercises throughout the normal book. I am lucky to have found this just as I was about to process the two printings of the students' edition.

1988 Aesop's Fables (Japanese). Dialogue: Eiko Kakuno. Illustration: Yoko Imoto, Noboru Baba, and Eisuke Yamazaki. #10 in a series. Dust jacket. Tokyo: Sawako Noma Company: Kodansha Company. ¥600 at Miwa, Tokyo, July, ’96. Extra copy of the second printing (1996), a gift of Raphael Sakurai, S.J., April, '96.

Another well-made, well-designed, sturdy book. It contains thirteen fables. For me, the best illustrations are those in the "fuzzy-focus" style: TMCM, OF, SW, FG, LM, and SS. The cartoon presentation of the ants’ home (28-9) is also good. After the fables, there are all sorts of games using the fables and their symbols, including paper-folding. T of C at the Japanese front of the book; it helps distinguish the work of the three artists. In the extra copy, look for differences on the (Japanese) back of the dust jacket, including a hike in price from ¥1200 to ¥1400, and on the information-page at the (Japanese) back of the book.

1988 Aesop's Fables (Japanese). Hardbound. Dust jacket. 300 Yen from an unknown source, Sept., '96.

A bright picture of DLS graces the front cover and dust jacket of this lively children's book. Its 48 heavy, stiff pages present BF (2-9); OF (10-17); BW (18-23); SW (24-29); TB (30-35); DLS (36-41); GA (42-28). In concept the book seems very close to a pair of Gakken volumes I have listed under 1994--right down to the page count per book. Like those two volumes, this book follows the stories with some black-and-white pages of games and exercises on paper of lighter weight. Up to 48, there is text on the right, with a small colored symbol, and a full-page colored illustration on the left; the last page breaks the mold by combining text and illustration. The cartoon illustration style is big and bold and full of color. The back cover has a striped design; the dust jacket uses the same design but adds a frog in the middle.

1988 Aesop's Fables: One-Minute Bedtime Tales. No author or illustrator acknowledged. (Apparently based on Aesop's Fables [1965] and More Aesop's Fables [1966] from Ideals.) Nashville: Ideals Publishing Corporation. $8 at the New England Mobile Book Fair, Feb., '89.

This book has a distinctive, simple, and lively art style. The milkmaid carries her pail in her hand. The best illustrations are of GGE and FG. Do not miss the moral of DS: the good things that you have are lost when you are unwilling to share. Hmm.... What happened to 2P from 1966?

1988 Aesop's Fables: Posters & Reproducible Pages. Jo Ellen Moore and Leslie Tryon. Literature Mini Unit. Grade: 2-6. Monterey, CA: Evan Moor Corporation. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Nov., '95.  Extra copy for $4.76 from barnesandnoble.com, Jan., '99.

The book works off of a poster I already had found, listed under "Literature Posters" in 1988. Here it is included folded up at the book's center. Six fables are featured: TMCM, LM, GGE, FG, FS, and TH. Simple, playful art graces the poster. The angry fox and the scurrying mice are perhaps the best characters here. FS opens surprisingly with the two "friends for many years." There are pop-ups to make and color, a mini-theater, a crossword puzzle, and a word search. Clever activities using the stories for children.

1988 Aesop's Fables: Posters & Reproducible Pages. Jo Ellen Moore and Leslie Tryon. Paperbound. Monterey, CA: Evan Moore Corporation. $4.76 from barnesandnoble.com, Jan. '99.

This is a more recent version of the booklet already listed under the same year by the same publisher. This copy represents some change and so I list it separately. The chief change is that the back cover now lists a price of not $4.95 but $5.95. There are also several changes to the inside front cover. There is a new formulation of the permission to reproduce the book ("for classroom use only"). This book adds a telephone number for seminars run by the publisher. The "MPC" on the back cover has changed from 495 to 595. A quick check on the internet shows 138 definitions for the acronym "MPC." One might fit here: "most probable cost." As I mention in my comments on the original, the book works off of a poster I already had found, listed under "Literature Posters" in 1988. Here it is included folded up at the book's center. Six fables are featured: TMCM, LM, GGE, FG, FS, and TH. Simple, playful art graces the poster. The angry fox and the scurrying mice are perhaps the best characters here. FS opens surprisingly with the two "friends for many years." There are pop-ups to make and color, a mini-theater, a crossword puzzle, and a word search. Clever activities using the stories for children.

1988 Almost Aesop: A Suite Based on Aesop's Fables. Words and Music by Andrea Klouse. Paperbound. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation. $1 from an anonymous vendor, through eBay, August, '09.

A brown pictorial cover opens this 16-page unstapled pamphlet offering three songs for two voices based on Aesop. That cover picture includes the six characters paired off in the fables: TH, BW, and LM. A short introduction warns "Be on the 'look-out' for some surprising endings, should one 'read between the lines.'" I am regularly surprised, as here, to find quotation marks used for emphasis. The lyrics rhyme. The tortoise and hare race to the "Barber Shop beyond the Old Towne Square." The hare seeks a shorter way off the path. The lyrics here end this way: "The moral of this story demonstrates how it's much farther to take a 'HARE-CUT' in the woods instead of at the Barber's!" "Wolfie" says to the shepherd boy "I came, I conquered, I took!" "GULP!" The joke in LM comes with the moral: "There's no one too small to heed a friend's call and don't ever take a long nap 'LION' down." Pun-lovers will perhaps love these lyrics.

1988 Andy and the Lion. James Daugherty. Second printing. Paperbound. NY: Trumpet Club. $2 from Aardvark, San Francisco, August, '94.

Here is a copy of the second printing. As I mentioned of the first, this paperback edition is smaller than the Viking Penguin Puffin printed in 1989. This copy is in better condition than my copy of the first printing. 

1988 Andy and the Lion. A Tale of Kindness Remembered or The Power of Gratitude. By James Daugherty. By arrangement with Viking Penguin. NY: The Trumpet Club. See 1938/66/88.

1988 Animal Fables and Other Tales. Retold by Enid F. D'Oyley. Illustrations by Larissa Kauperman. First American Edition. First published by Williams-Wallace Publishers, Canada, 1986. Paperbound. Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc. $5.95 at Borders, Rockville, Feb., '92.

A thirty-five page pamphlet containing twelve stories with six illustrations. They are not fables but rather folktales brought especially by the Yoruba to Brazil, the Caribbean, and the Southern USA. The black-and-white art at least suggests a perspective different from mainline North American. The stories have plenty of standard folktale material: gods, etiology, boasting, tricking, and magic. The best of the stories is "The Tortoise and the Elephant" (18). Note "The Monkey and the Wax Doll" (28), our "Tar Baby" story. The orthography is sometimes poor. Some stories here tend to start new episodes when the story is already well done or to take it all back in the last sentence (e.g., 33).

1988 Basni. Ivan Andreevich Krylov. Illustrated by I.A. Popov. Moskow: Covetskar Rosser. $8.95 at Schoenhof's, Georgetown, Feb., '92.

A compact edition with T of C at the rear. About one-quarter of the fables are illustrated. Are these done in charcoal? They are delightful but indistinct in this printing format.

1988 Cinquante fables de Jean de La Fontaine. Illustrées par Ch(arles). H(enri). Génot-Boulanger. #167 of 1000; boxed. Hardbound. Paris: Aux dépens de Claude Tchou pour T.M. £50 from Bibliografi, Ascot, Berkshire, UK, through eBay, Jan., '08.

The existence of this book is news to me. I consider myself lucky to have found it on eBay. Génot-Boulanger writes a pointed two-page prologue. He rightly asserts that La Fontaine is mostly 1) a children's book that is known, 2) a schoolbook that is memorized, and 3) a frequent "édition illustrée." He for his part has wanted in each fable to illustrate not the title but the moral or at least the the verse or verses that focus the moral. Toward that purpose, he adds a helpful comment on each illustration. So each fable has three parts in its presentation: picture, short comment, and text. The pictures are strong, colorful, full-page. Thus for GA (9-11), Génot-Boulanger chooses "What were you doing in the summer?" as the moment to illustrate -- and takes the moral of the fable to be that we should work in youth to secure our old age. The lion that follows for LS is deliberately "heraldic" (14). This same lion is embossed nicely on the front cover. The wolf towers over the lamb in the next illustration. Génot-Boulanger writes "L'aggresseur? Les puissants diront toujours que c'est l'agneau" (18). Other strong images include "The Eagle and the Crow" (37); "The Dolphin and the Monkey" (63); "The Rooster, Cat, and Young Rat" (91); "The Young Widow" (99); MM (111); "The Women and the Secret" (123); "The Wolf and the Shepherds" (169); "The Old Man and the Three Young Men" (185); and "The Monkey" (209). Regularly, the appearance of the full-page title-less illustration, always on the right, challenges the reader to assess the art before turning the page to read the comment on the left or the text on the right. This succession changes unfortunately for those fables too long for one page, like MSA. The illustrations seem to my untrained eye to be water-colors. They lack a certain brightness. T of C at the end. The illustrator, I have learned, gave his significant collection of La Fontaine materials, 240 volumes, to the La Fontaine museum in Chateau-Thierry after his death in 1989. Curiously, this volume is not mentioned as one of his gifts to that library! Not in Bodemann.

1988 Classic Bedtime Fairytales and Fables. Anne-Marie Dalmais. Illustrated by Violayne Hulné. Translation by Iain Halliday of a Mondadori Edition from Milan of 1987. Printed and bound in Spain by Artes Gráficas, Toledo. NY: Derrydale. $6.98 at Royal Discount Bookstore, Brookline, MA, April, '89. Extra copy for $4.50 from Wahrenbrock's Book House, San Diego, Aug., '93.

A large children's book with stories from Aesop (1), Reynard (2), La Fontaine (6), and Anderson (5). Aesop's fable, "The Big Fish and the Little Fish," is among the better illustrated. The illustrations are lively and colorful, especially those of the red Renard and of the weasel before and after. Still, they are a bit on the sentimental side popular these days. The tales are longish.

1988 Coloriages 2: 6 fables de La Fontaine. Creation P. Thomas. Illustrations by Delorme. Text by A. Ronac. Printed in Italy. No place mentioned: (c) Dargaud Editeur 1983. 5 Francs at Mona Lisait, Paris, May, '97.

A large pamphlet coloring-book with a colored page facing a black-and-white page for eadch of the six fables. Maybe the best fun of all here is the image of the ship going down at a rakish angle while the monkey lifts his hand and sits on the back of the dolphin's head. At the end of the book, each of the six fables is told in French prose. The collector in me is sorry that I have not (yet) found Coloriages 1.

1988 Contemporary Fables.  H.B. Smith.  First edition.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  NY: Vantage Press.  $13 from an unknown source, August, '13.  

1988 Cry Wolf and other Aesop Fables. Paintings by Barry Castle. Retold by Naomi Lewis. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. NY: Oxford University Press. $12 at the New England Mobile Book Fair, Jan., '89.

This curious book puts together sophisticated stories with versified, many-sided morals and a strange art style. The latter can be provocative. Faces are done in a style different from the rest of the picture. Elements of the picture are lifted and put on the facing page. The best moral, for "The Eagle and the Tortoise," includes seven lessons.

1988 Das Leben der Thiere. Janosch (Horst Eckert). Vierte Auflage. Hardbound. Weinheim & Basel: Beltz & Gelberg. See 1981/88.

1988 Decorative Tiles Throughout the Ages. Introduction by Hans van Lemmen. Printed in Italy. NY: Crescent Books. $6.40 at Aspidistra, Sept., '91.

A beautiful large-format book of forty plates. Plate 17 represents a page of Minton's catalogue of about 1880, which advertises twelve and shows six fable tiles designed by J. Moyr Smith. Plate 23 is a page of Maw's catalogue of about 1880, which shows six of a series of twelve tiles from Aesop's fables.

1988 Delos, Volume I, Number 3. Quarterly. Edited by Reed Whittemore et al. College Park, MD: Center for World Literature. $2 at Turtle Island, Jan., '91.

Half of this number goes to fables. T of C on 3-4 gives an overview of this eclectic gathering. The best fable section surveys FC (19-34). The "Packets" by Bates and Whittemore tend to move outside the fable genre. "Perennial Adventures" notes that both Phaedrus and LaFontaine wrote under absolute monarchs. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century fabulists returned to the age-old cynical morality of Phaedrus with some parody. Recent works represented here tend to absurdism and existentialism. The visual art is as eclectic as the texts.

1988 Demi's Reflective Fables. Retold and illustrated by Demi. Dust jacket. NY: Grosset & Dunlap. $16.95 at Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, May, '89. One extra copy with slight water damage along the tops of pages.

A lovely book of thirteen ancient Chinese fables, which happens to include one usually told as an Aesopic fable: "The Bat and the Weasels." The book's special approach is reflection: a mirror on the flyleaf lets a reader look at each fable's picture in reverse. The best fable in this approach is "The Butterfly's Dream." Is the dreamlife of butterfly or the other life of the caterpillar the dream? Excellent illustrations throughout.

1988 Der Blick vom Turm: Fabeln von Günther Anders. Mit Bildern von A. Paul Weber. Dritte Auflage. Hardbound. Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck. See 1968/88.

1988 Der Fuchs und der Bär.  Gottlieb Conrad Pfeffel.  Wood-engraving by Karl-Georg Hirsch.  #70 of 120 numbered copies signed by Hirsch.  Single portfolio.  Bayreuth: Einblattdruck XII: Bear Press Wolfgang Benda.  CHF100 from Peter Bichsel, Zurich, July, '23.

1988 Der Hase und der Mond: Namibische Fabeln und Märchen. Erzählt von Alfred Wellm. Illustrationen von Eva Natus-Salamouon. Hardbound. Der Kinderbuchverlag. See 1985/88.

1988 Der Kuckuck sprach zur Nachtigall: Fabeln von Luther bis Heine. Paperbound. First edition. Berlin/Weimar: bb Taschenbücher: Aufbau Verlag. DM 2 from an unknown source in Germany, July, '01.

Pages 175-85 offer in a T of C an overview of the extensive contents of this paperback. There are a lot of texts here! They seem to be all from writers of German. Other than a list of sources there is nothing but texts. On the cover, an ass holds a mirror up and sees himself as a man. I would not have guessed the DDR as the source of a lively paperback book like this.

1988 Der Löwe und die Maus: Sieben alte Fabeln.  Neu erzählt von Hans Baumann.  Mit Bildern von Monika Laimgruber.  1. Auflage.  Hardbound.  Hildesheim: Stern-Blumen-Bücher:  Gerstenberg Verlag.  €9.50 from Antiquariat Librelli, Lüneburg, Germany, Sept., '12.  

1988 Die Bilderwelt im Kinderbuch. Kinder- und Jugendbücher aus fünf Jahrhunderten. Vorgestellt für Kinder u. ihre Begleiter. Heiner Jacobs. Köln: Stadt Köln. $5 at Moe's, June, '89.

This little pamphlet is beautifully produced. It is a child's guide to the "Children's Books" exhibit in Cologne in 1988. One chapter is devoted to fables, including three illustrations: one from 1501 very close to the Ulm woodcut of Aesop; one from Mouton's "Esopus bey der Lust"; one from Hachette in 1935. The booklet contains some beautiful colored illustrations.

1988 Donde las dan, las toman: Segun la fábula de Fedro "La zorra y la cigüeña".  Adaptación: Elisa Ramón.  Ilustración: Montse Tobella.  Hardbound.  Barcelona: Fábulas Universales:  Ediciones Ángulo.  $25 from Christian Tottino, Buenos Aires, through eBay, March, '16.

1988 Dryden's Final Poetic Mode: The Fables. Cedric D. Reverand II. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. $8.75 from Harvest Book Company, Ft. Washington, PA, August, '02.

This book seems to me to be a typical example of American literary criticism in the late Twentieth Century. Since it concerns the only fable in the collection, one portion of particular interest to Aesopic fable researchers will be the section on Dryden's "The Cock and the Fox," which is his rendition of Chaucer's "The Nun's Priest's Tale" with significant attention paid to the added or expanded passages vis-à-vis Chaucer's text. Reverand sees the story as "whirling ideals and principles around in a carnival fun house" (155). There are legitimate competing viewpoints that vie for our assent, but we are knotted up in laughter. The inversions already in Chaucer are extended. Dryden's expansions and additions have to do particularly with woman, flattery, and poetry. As to the latter, even Dryden the poet is implicated in the parody on singers like Chanticleer's father, for Dryden too is a singer. A key part of the story is Chanticleer's citing and mistranslating of the statement "mulier est hominis confusio." The cock translates "Woman is to Man his Soveraign Bliss" (158). The section concludes with this sentence: "The result, rather than being disquieting, is exhilarating contradiction, an ironic chaos that playfully keeps the reader off-balance and laughing heartily at the contradictory game."

1988 Early American School Books.  Paperbound.  Maynard MA: A Long Ago Book:  Chandler Press.  $5 from an unknown source, August, '15.

1988 El águila y el escarabajo. Fábulas Mickey. Félix María Samaniego and Walt Disney. Text by F. Capdevila. Segunda Edición. León, Spain: Editorial Everest. $3.20 at Tamanaco Libros Tecnicos, Caracas, May, '91.

Verbatim text of Samaniego followed by sixteen pages of vintage Disney. The eagle becomes a wolf, the dung beetle a duckling, the hare a bird, Jupiter a bear. Generally an excellent match, though the wolf does not devour the birds. The duckling's ultimate ploy is to put a skunk in the wolf's dresser in the bear's house! A delightful little book!

1988 El cuervo y el zorro. Fábulas Mickey. Félix María Samaniego and Walt Disney. Text by F. Capdevila. Segunda Edición. León, Spain: Editorial Everest. $3.20 at Tamanaco Libros Tecnicos, Caracas, May, '91.

Verbatim text of Samaniego followed by sixteen pages of vintage Disney. This crow has to make several attempts to find food. His cheese is bigger than his mouth; it is knocked off the branch by an operatic gesture. A delightful little book!

1988 El Leon y el Ratón: Nueva versión de un cuento de Esopo. Por Mary Lewis Wang. Ilustrado por Tom Dunnington. Preparado bajo la direccíon de Robert Hillerich. Traductora: Lada Josefa Kratky. Cuentos para empezar. Chicago: Childrens Press. $.25 at the Milwaukee Public Library Bookseller, June, '96.

See the English parallel by the same publisher in 1986 and my comments there.

1988 Eric Carle's Treasury of Classic Stories for Children. By Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm selected, retold and illustrated by Eric Carle. First printing. Paperbound. NY: Scholastic Inc. $5 at Know Knew Books, Palo Alto, Nov., '96.

As far as I can tell, there is nothing new here in fables; Carle is drawing on his 1980 Twelve Tales from Aesop. The one story from there that is dropped here is "The Birds, the Beasts and the Bat." I liked Carle's work when I first became acquainted with it. I like it even more now. I waited to get this book until I found the right bargain, and this is it!

1988 Fabeln aus aller Welt. Aquarelle von Jula Scholzen-Gnad. Hardbound. Weissenseifen, Germany: Werkgemeinschaft Kunst und Heilpädagogik Weissenseifen. DM 22,80 from Engel & Co., Stuttgart, August, '01.

This is a beautiful little book in landscape format. The color background of its left-hand pages is uniform; these pages serve to present the texts in each of the two-page combinations here. The twelve fables presented are listed at the back of the volume. This is the first time I have read Hans Sachs' lovely verse version of GA, or perhaps an adaptation of it; the grasshopper goes off to suffer the whole winter long. The illustration for "Der Fuchs und die Gans" is very well executed; the text for this fable comes from Heinrich Pröhle. I am happy to see Steinhöwel included for CP. Luther is also here with DS, and the illustration is again good. Lessing's "Der Pfau und der Hahn" is nicely pointed. The peacock says to the rooster: "Look how proudly a rooster walks, but people speak not of the 'proud rooster' but only of the 'proud peacock.' It is not fair." The rooster responds: "People overlook a well founded pride. The rooster is proud of his wakefulness and his manliness. All you have to be proud of is color and feather."

1988 Fabeln, Märchen, Legenden: Holzschnitte zu Äsop, Prophet Jona, Philipp Otto Runge. Herausgegeben von Hans Marquardt und Henrik Hanstein. Gerhard Marcks. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Frankfurt am Main: Buchergilde Gütenberg. DM 28 from Altstadt Antiquariat, Freiburg, August, '01.

Here is a West German edition of a book published a year earlier in East Germany. This edition, too, was printed in Leipzig. The book has a colorful history, as the colophon page near the end makes clear. A part of the fable edition apparently appeared first in 1941 in the Heimeran Verlag in Munich. I suspect that that edition is Hausrath's translation of the fables. The edition which this one is republishing was done by Verlag Philipp Reclam Jun. in 1987. Let me repeat some of my comments on that book. "Tierfabeln des Äsop" (1-49) forms one of the three segments of this book. The texts include both prose and verse and are apparently taken from Hausrath's Heimeran edition of 1940. An enclosed page of review speaks rightly of this book as "ein kleines Juwel." It is very nicely produced. Marcks' woodcuts are simple, even primitive, stylized, and very pleasing. Several of the best show the wolf and the lamb separated by print on 18; the hawk who will devour both frog and mouse on 28 (the same design is repeated on the book's cover); and the fox trying to eat out of the stork's vase on 31. This is the kind of book at which the Germans do very well. At the end of the book, Marquardt pays tribute to Marcks (97).

1988 Fables.  Paul David Holman.  #131 of 500.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Published by Paul David Holman.  $30 from Bishop's Curiosities, Lawrence, KS, through AbeBooks, May, '22.

1988 Fables and Fantasies. Organized by Duke University Museum of Art. From the Collection of Susan Kasen and Robert D. Summer. With an introduction by Donald B. Kuspit. (c)1988 Duke University Museum of Art. $15 from Dundee, April, '91.

A glossy exhibit catalogue of a show united around a central concept. These forty-four recent works are "related by their use of myth, legend, or personal fantasy as a mode for expressing the troubled human condition in the face of the anxieties and uncertainties of the `post-modern' world" (Michael Mezzatesta, the museum's director, on 4). Kuspit writes "Most of the works are narrative; they obviously depict human affairs. More significantly, they are implicitly allegorical. They...articulate a myth of humanness" (6). Even more specifically, they are about "lost human integrity." Kuspit devotes several paragraphs to what these "artist fablists" attempt to accomplish. I find the works of Gingerich, Howson, and Campbell most engaging.

1988 Fables, Foibles, and Foobles. By Carl Sandburg. Edited and with an Introduction by George Hendrick. Illustrated by Robert C. Harvey. Paperbound. First edition? Urbana: University of Illinois Press. $6.57 from the publisher, July, '92. Extra copy for the same price from the same source.

A disappointing book. A helpful introduction gives some sense of the genesis and context of these little works. They are mostly snippets playing with conundrums, language, and nonsense. Good and typical of the book's material is the "In Egypt" paragraph in the "Hongdorsh Says and Ways" section (71). "Onkadonk Dreams, Drooms, Dromes" (75) begin to approach being fables. Fables themselves begin on 85. Among the best: "Nothing in the Box" (92), "Five Book Thieves" (103), "Two Toads and a Chinese Lily" (104), "Sixty and Sixty-six" (105), and "The Careful Straw People" (107).

1988 Fables for God's People. John R. Aurelio. Paperbound. NY: Crossroad. $3.98 from Better World Books, Feb., '10.

I was previously given a copy of this paperback book printed in 1991. Now I have chanced upon what is apparently the original 1988 printing. As I wrote there, I have very mixed feelings after reading this whole book; the reading was sometimes a chore. Aurelio, who acknowledges Aesop as a master without equal, here writes adult stories for the child-hearted. At their best the stories climax in the introduction of a dimension that we did not suspect existed. Among the best are "The Artisan's Apprentice" (1), "The Maybe Miracle" (65), "The King and His Three Servants" (76), and "The Falcon and the Crutch" (97). Other typical stories include: "The Bridge" (17), "The Box" (38), "The Burden" (54), "The Peddler" (69), and "The Most Agreeable Kingdom" (90). Some strong themes are that the gospel is a treasure to share and that possessions possess us.

1988 Fables of Aesop. S.A. Handford. Choun English Library. (Back-page advertisement speaks of "Leading English Literature Library" and gives A. Handford as translator.) No illustrations. Seoul?: Choun Moon Wha SA. $2.10 at Kyobo in Seoul, June, '90.

Clearly related to Choun's bilingual Fables of Aesop (1980/88), even down to the book's size and cover art. Again, the first 203 of Handford's 207 fables are presented, with the same footnotes. An analysis of the footnote spacing shows that the plates from that edition are joined here. In both, partially filled pages of the Penguin are combined. This edition wisely copies Handford's T of C.

1988 Fables of Aesop. The World Literature Bestseller: English-Korean Bilingualism. S.A. Handford (English). No indication of Korean translator. No illustrations. 1988 reprint of a 1980 edition? Macaw Series. Seoul?: Choun Publishing Co. See 1980/88.

1988 Fables, suivies de Aesope Revu et Corrigé.  Ambrose Bierce.  Traduit de l'américain par Jérôme Vérain.  Dust-jcket.  Hardbound.  Paris: Archipels: Éditions Clancier-Guénaud.  €3.77 from Medimops, Berlin, through ZVAB, March, '20.

1988 Fables, Tales, and Stories/A Captive in the Caucasus. L.N. Tolstoi. Russian Reader with Explanatory Notes in English and a Russian-English Vocabulary. Third edition. Moskow: Russky Yazyk Publishers. $2 from Foreign Language Bookstore on M Street, DC, May, '92.

Apparently an updating of the 1960 booklet of the same name. The notes continue to look helpful, as does the vocabulary at the end. Pages 22-36 contain the same twelve "Fables and Tales" as in 1960 but add three more Aesopic fables. Similarly the next section adds three animal stories, and the following adds a further story of children. There is a foreword on Tolstoy the teacher, and an afterword on Tolstoy in the Caucasus. Another pleasant little find.

1988 Fábulas de Esopo: Un libro animado. Claire Littlejohn. Cali, Colombia: Editorial Norma. $7 at Librería Tecnica Dieguez, Caracas, May, '91.

Exact equivalent in Spanish of Dial's English Aesop's Fables (1988); the latter was also printed in Colombia. A genuine delight. You help the rabbit try to beat the turtle across the finish line. You lift the fox up to near the grapes. The crow ends up thirstier from all the thinking about the pitcher! The bees swarm in nice spirals. New to me is the story about the shepherd who loses his coat getting acorns for his sheep.

1988 Favorite Fables and Fairy Tales. Amanda Atha (not acknowledged). Illustrated by Jane Harvey. Hardbound. Printed in Hungary. London: Bracken. $8.99 from Kristi Goldsberry, Lakewood, CO, through EBay, Nov., '03.

This child's book seems to overlap extensively with Favorite Fables, done by the same people one year earlier. There is no mention here of Amanda Atha, even though the texts I have checked seem to be identical. The fables and their illustrations which I comment on there show up here. See those comments. As I mention there, the drawings are pastel-heavy crayon or something similar. The binding is giving way on the inside. The first eighteen selections of the forty-three stories here represent the concentration of fairy tales as distinct from fables.

1988 Fibelgeschichten. Günter Bruno Fuchs. Paperbound. Berlin: Die Friedenauer Presse. €10 from Antiquariat Rolf & Monika Ihring, Berlin, August, '09.

Apparently this work was first published by the Friedenauer Presse in 1969 in an edition of 400 copies. The flyleaf says that this 1988 copy follows that original. I cannot yet be sure, but I believe that this was a press in the Russian Zone of the city; it was in any case famous for Russian literature. The fables and quips reported here would fit that regime. I have to admit that most escape me; perhaps the language is too colloquial for me. "How much do you want lay on?" asks the car dealer. "One" is the answer: "One handcuff for every member of your company!" (3). "From 1525" recommends that one bow deeply enough when the ruler is distant, less deeply when he is closer. Stand up when he is right before you. Now guess his answer to this show of friendship (9). Does the ass declare a "strike" -- a secret departure from his office -- rather than fight back for all the beatings he has taken (9)? I think that there is a good wordplay I can catch in "Ein Augenzeuge spricht": the presiding officer grasped the word, led it out the side exit into free space, and returned without words to applause for his presence of mind in a tough situation (11). "Das Wort ergreifen" means generally to speak up, but here it has the man grabbing free speech and throwing it out. "Sanierung der Stadtviertel" takes a hard line. A man sits on his suitcase in a caved in house. A dynamite specialist waves him in a direction with loud cries, but the seated man remains seated and waves back (10). "Vor Redaktionschluss" sounds like Thurber's "Don't get it right; get it written!" The future belongs to the four-legged man, the man who has troubled himself to grow two more legs. This is progress! Print this text now! So here is another ephemeral flower for the fable collection's bouquet! It did get printed! 

1988 Fifty Fables of La Fontaine. Translated by Norman R. Shapiro with illustrations by Alan James Robinson. Dust jacket. Review copy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. $16 at Starr or MacIntyre & Moore, Cambridge, Feb., '89.

A lovely bilingual edition with excellent rhymed translations and notes. The black-and-white art is not outstanding; the best illustrations are those of the lion and gnat (also on back cover) and of an old cat and a young mouse.

1988 Fifty Fables of La Fontaine. Translated by Norman R. Shapiro with illustrations by Alan James Robinson. Paperback. Review copy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. $15 from Encore Editions, Fort Worth, TX, by mail, March, '98. Extra copy for $12.95 from The Book Stop, Tucson, AZ, Nov., '01.

See my comments on the hardbound edition. The frog of OF has a very human face; the straight frontal approach is unusual for this story (between 5 and 6). The frog seems to be clutching the mouse from behind as the hawk's talons appear in the oval picture of FM (between 47 and 48). I notice that this is one of the few illustrations of TT that uses a complex tree branch rather than a straight stick for the flight (between 95 and 96).

1988 Fifty Fables of La Fontaine. Norman R. Shapiro. Illustrations by Alan James Robinson. Review copy. Paperbound. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. $7.95 from Daedalus Books, Portland, OR, July, '11.

I have copies of both the hardbound and paperbound editions of this book. This copy seems rather to be a review copy, sent to the writer or to reviewers. All three editions seem to have the same pagination and illustrations. As I wrote of those two editions, this is a lovely bilingual edition with excellent rhymed translations and notes. The black-and-white art is not outstanding; the best illustrations are those of the lion and gnat (also on back cover) and of an old cat and a young mouse.

1988 Foxy Fables: A Royal Feast. Story by Neil Morris. Created in clay by Rony Oren. Paperbound. Printed in Hong Kong. London: Frame by Frame: Hippo Books: Scholastic Publications Limited. AU $1.50 from Anthony John Boulding, Brisbane, Australia, through eBay, August, '03.

Based on the animated TV series. Photographs of the characters in action are well done. Elvis the Lion King is lazy and impatient. He wants more and more food. Jeremiah the Jackal is his lackey. Soon Elvis is demanding that Brixton the bunny give him dinner. Brixton then plays the old "lion in the mirroring well ruse" on Elvis. Perhaps the best of the photographed clay scenes is taken from the bottom of the well; it shows Elvis looking frightened into the mirroring well. The next scene has fun showing Elvis holding his nose as he jumps feet-first into the well. There are instructions at the end on how to make one's own clay characters.

1988 Foxy Fables: Dinner for Two. Story by Neil Morris. Created in clay by Rony Oren. Paperbound. Printed in Hong Kong. London: Frame by Frame: Hippo Books: Scholastic Publications Limited. AU $1.50 from Anthony John Boulding, Brisbane, Australia, through eBay, August, '03.

Based on the animated TV series. Photographs of the characters in action are well done. They include some fun, as when the fox looks over his photograph album and finds Francine the stork. "She's a game bird. I'm sure I could cook up something special for her!" The kitchen in which the fox cooks has a portrait of the fox on its wall. Over this portait is draped a first-place medal, as it turns out, for cooking. Francine's beak gets curled as she tries to eat some of the fox's soup from a bowl. Work with clay is at its best here in presenting the soup that is on fox's cheek and spoon and spilling from his bowl near the center of this unpaginated pamphlet. Another prize-winner is the booklet's picture of the two main characters with jars on their faces. Fox needs to use a hammer to get the jar off of his nose and face! In the last picture, fox is eating the menu. There are instructions at the end on how to make your own characters. This pamphlet is fun!

1988 Foxy Fables: The Tar Doll. Story by Neil Morris. Created in clay by Rony Oren. Paperbound. London: Frame by Frame: Hippo Books: Scholastic Publications Limited. $3.95 from Awesome Books, Wallingford, UK, April, '12.

I seem now to have three of this series. See also Royal Feast and Dinner for Two, both catalogued under 1988. Like the others, this pamphlet of 16 pages is based on the animated TV series. Photographs of the characters in action are well done. The chief characters here are Brixton the rabbit, the Tar Baby, Herman the bear, and Fox. Before they boil Brixton in the pot, he begs that they not throw him among the thorny bushes. After they fall for it, Fox at home in an easy chair reflects on the day's events: "Well, I suppose I've learned something. If you try to harm others, you end up looking a fool." The last few pages show a child how to make either Fox or Brixton out of clay. The best scenes, I believe, are the cover's scene of a Brixton thoroughly stuck all over to the Tar Baby, and Brixton's clever "plea from the pot" not to be thrown into the thorny bushes. Brixton has flesh-colored hands that underscore his human trickiness. Herman and Fox have hands too, but theirs are not flesh-colored.

1988 Foxy Fables: Hard Cheese. Story by Neil Morris. Created in clay by Rony Oren. Paperbound. London: Frame by Frame: Hippo Books: Scholastic Publications Limited. £2.49 from Awesome Books, Wallingford, UK, April, '12.

I seem now to have four of this series. See also "Royal Feast," "Dinner for Two," and "The Tar Doll," all catalogued under 1988. Like the others, this pamphlet of 16 pages is based on the animated TV series. Photographs of the characters in action are well done. The chief characters here are Cranium the Crow and Fox. The necessary length of a TV episode may hurt the fable here, I believe. As soon as Fox appears, Cranium suspects that he is after the cheese. Cranium first sets the cheese down, and then later uses it like barbells to display his strength. He clamps his beak around it to be safe and even sings through the cheese. I'm not sure La Fontaine's fable profits from all these stages. The "lesson" is theorized about here by Fox back in his lair enjoying his conquest. A reader cannot be too sure whether Cranium learned anything at all. The last few pages show a child how to make either Fox or Cranium out of clay. The best scenes, I believe, are the cover's scene and the story's late scenes involving the cheese in Cranium's mouth. I may have the full set: the last page mentions the other three members of the series that I have. 

1988 Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales.  Selected, translated, and adapted by Barbara Cohen.  Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  NY: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Books.  $6 from Renaissance Books at the Airport, Milwaukee, June, '23.

1988 Giovanni Meli: Moral Fables. A Bilingual Edition. Translated into English Verse with an Introduction by Gaetano Cipolla. Illustrated by William Ronalds. Volume 6 of Biblioteca di Quaderni d'italianistica. Ottowa: Canadian Society for Italian Studies. $20 from the publisher, Spring, '90.

A very good introduction to a fabulist I had not known. Eighty-nine fables. The closest parallel is LaFontaine; but Meli is briefer, less preachy, and less witty. Some fables begin with a moral comment; some end with funny vulgarity. The translator's care for rhyme leads to some confusing word order. The funniest fables are #53 and #80. Fables borrowed from Aesop or LaFontaine, often with changes of characters, include "The Crabs" (#2); "The Mouse and the Hedgehog" (the snake in Aesop, #5); "The Cat, the Foreigner, and the Abbot" (the dog with master's lunch, #8); "The Cat and the Blacksmith" (dog, #14); "The Dogs" (chained, #28); "The Mother Mouse and Her Little Mice" (cock, #64); "The Dog and the Monkey" (an excellent fable, #65); "The Red Donkey and the Animals" (the lion's skin, #73); "The Wolf and the Lamb" (#77); and "The Donkey, the Master and the Thieves" (#86).

1988 Great Tales of Old. (Illustrated). Compiled by Peter Dixon. Various artists, including Rackham for Aesop. NY: Lantern Books. $7 at Pageant, NY, May, '91.

The introduction expresses pride at bringing together Aesop, Grimm, Anderson and fairytales from England and from around the world. Forty-two fables in forty pages, all following V.S. Vernon Jones and using Rackham's art. The print is poor. The book does not even bother to reset the type. An erratum slip for 37 is the only deviation from Jones: the editors forgot to continue the fable on the next page! This book has a smell all its own.

1988 Ignacy Krasicki: Bajki. Ilustrowal Jan Marcin Szancer. Hardbound. Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza. Gift of Piotr Twardecki, S.J., August, '03.

This book seems to be a (smaller?) reprint of the original Polish edition, perhaps from 1956. In that year a German edition was made from the original, Ignacy Krasicki: Fabeln by Alfred Holz Verlag in Berlin. That book (9¼" x almost 13") is larger in format than this (8¼" x 11¼"). They present the same forty fables and the same illustrations, though the pagination is different. As I wrote there, perhaps a quarter of the fables represent Aesopic material. There are also a number of fine pithy fables after the manner of Aesop, as when the mouse tells the turtle how pitiable he is for having to live in a virtual prison; the turtle answers that it may be narrow and small but it is his (8)! I enjoy the answer of the clever man to the fool who has just asked him what use reason is: "Reason is useful for silence to stupid questions" (39). There is a T of C at the rear. The illustrations are less well done here, and the book has suffered some hard wear. There are some notes at the end before the T of C.

1988 James Northcote: Five Fables Reprinted. Pamphlet. Cambridge: Friends' Press, Fitzwilliam Museum. $25 from McLean Arts & Books, McLean, VA, through ABE, Nov., '99.

This 23-page pamphlet reprints five fables from the Chiswick Press original of 1833 with eight woodcuts by apprentices of Thomas Bewick and James Northcote, with a facsimile of a letter by Bewick relating to the book. Jaffé's introduction describes Northcote's apprenticeship to Sir Joshua Reynolds and his unusual method for visual composition in his old age. It seems he collected a large number of images of animals which he had cut out. These he would maneuver on a piece of paper and, when he had finally selected from them, he would paste them down. Then he would add a few pen or pencil touches, and William Harvey would do the rest. For each fable there was a head piece, a figurative capital, and a tail piece, the latter often recalling a familiar parallel Aesop fable. The illustrators are Charles Gorway, Charlton Nesbit, Ebenezer Landells, John Jackson, John Thompson, and Thomas Williams. The five fables are "The Fairy Gift," "The Monkeys," "The Parrot and the Singing Birds," "The Young Lady and the Pig," and "The Bee and the Butterfly." It has been long since I have read Northcote. So the first fable surprises me when a mother, given three wishes for her newborn son, asks with all three that he have impudence. An illustration I have seen frequently graces "The Monkeys," which observes that monkeys prefer to steal each others' food--and make a mess of it--to eating their own. The parrot, critic of everyone else's song, is asked to sing and declines with the line "I whistle, but I never sing." A pig was kept as a pet by a young woman and groomed carefully; when he once saw a pool of mud, he went straight for it and lost all his privileges. It turns out that the butterfly has travelled a great deal but learned nothing, as the bee points out to him. A very nice little booklet.

1988 Jean de La Fontaine: Bajki. z ilustracjami Grandville'a. Paperbound. Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. 21.10 Zloti from Antykwariat Bibliofil, Krakow, July, '09.

Here is the one bibliophilic treasure I bring away from my one trip to Poland. Krakow was guaranteed to have more and better bookshops than Warsaw. I found this same book in two of them, but kept only the first, this paperback edition. It selects among La Fontaine's fables, as the T of C on 339-43 shows; it gives the number of each fable presented here within its book. The Grandville illustrations come through very well! "The Fox and the Crow" (not Grandville's illustration!) appears in silhouette on the purple cover. The obverse of the title-page seems to indicate many translators.

1988 King of the Birds.  Shirley Climo.  Illustrated by Ruth Heller.  Signed by Ruth Heller; First edition, first printing.  Hardbound.  NY: Thomas Y. Crowell.  $9.50 from Powell's, Portland, August., '13.

1988 La cigarra y la hormiga. Fábulas Mickey. Félix María Samaniego and Walt Disney. Text by F. Capdevila. Segunda Edición. León, Spain: Editorial Everest. $3.20 at Tamanaco Libros Tecnicos, Caracas, May, '91.

Verbatim text of Samaniego followed by sixteen pages of vintage Disney. Pete Pata Palo (a dog?), alias "el Cigarra," runs into Grandma Duck but refuses to work for her. Against the pattern of Samaniego's ant's response, Grandma takes him in and gives him work. A delightful little book!.

1988 La Liebre y la Tortuga. Jean de la Fontaine. Ilustrado por Rogerio Borges. Título en Portugués: A Tartaruga e a Lebre. Impreso en Brasil. Melbooks. São Paolo: Melhoramentos de São Paolo. $5 at Europa, Chicago, March, '95.

Twelve stiff pages offer considerable elaboration of LaFontaine's story. We hear of a monkey, armadillo, and jaguar before the race is ever mentioned. I have one other, La Liebre y las Ranas (1988), in the set of eight.

1988 La Liebre y las Ranas. Jean de la Fontaine. Ilustrado por Rogerio Borges. Título en Portugués: A Lebre e a Rã. Impreso en Brasil. Melbooks. São Paolo: Melhoramentos de São Paolo. $5 at Europa, Chicago, March, '95.

Twelve stiff pages offer a version in general contact with LaFontaine's story. This version greatly reduces the hare's self-reflection. The inciting incident is also not a sound but the rabbit's seeing himself in the water. I have one other, La Liebre y la Tortuga (1988), in the set of eight.

1988 Las Mejores Fabulos de Todos los Tiempos: Esopo, Fedro, La Fontaine, Iriarte, Samaniego. First edition. 1500 copies. Paperback. Printed in Mexico. Mérida, Mexico: Dante/Quincenal: Producción Editorial Dante, S.A. $8.59 from Francine Juneau, Montreal, through Ebay, Oct., '01.

Here is a standard inexpensive paperback fable edition. I find both the title and the selections curious. The title surely claims a great deal in its phrase "de Todos los Tiempos"! Five fabulists cover all ages! The amount given to these five is also curious. Aesop has ten texts, Phaedrus five, and La Fontaine six. By contrast Iriarte has thirty-nine and Samaniego sixty-eight! There are no illustrations inside the book. I think the pretty colored cover is stolen from Kaulbach's Reineke Fuchs. There is a T of C at the end.

1988 Le Lion et la souris/The Lion and the Mouse. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fables Bilingues. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. See 1978/88/92.

1988 Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien Illustrées de Discours Moraux, Philosophiques, et Politiques. Avec des Reflexions Morales Par J. Baudoin. Signed by Bonnot? Hardbound. Original: Brussels: Chez François Foppens. Current work: Paris: Chez Jean de Bonnot. €40 from Librairie Epsilon, Paris, Jan., '05. 

If there were a single original behind this book, it would fit between Bodemann #67.2 by Jean du Bray (1659) and #67.3 by Foppens (1682). Bonnot's introduction speaks of taking up the translation of Baudoin and Boissat published in 1633; I do not find this edition in Bodemann. Bonnot calls the illustrations chosen for this edition "les plus délicieuses jamais gravées par un artiste pour les Fables d'Ésope" and writes that they come from an unknown Flemish master of the sixteenth century. He takes them from an edition done in Anvers in 1593. A special feature of this volume, I believe, is the "Index Illustré" at the end which presents the thirty illustrations for each of the thirty chapters on Aesop's life and the one-hundred-and-sixteen illustrations for each of the fables in enlarged form--about 3½" x 2½"--by contrast with their appearance with the standard chapters and fables, when they are about 2" x 1½". What this volume lacks--on its title-page and in the book itself-- by contrast with both #67.1 and #67.2 is "Nouvelle Edition. Augmentée de beaucoup en divers endroits. Ou sont adiovstées les Fables de Philadelphe." #67.3 drops the material from Philadelphe but keeps the other "additions" that go beyond the book in hand. #67.3 has thirty illustrations to the vita, as here, but one-hundred-and-seventeen fable illustrations, as opposed to the one-hundred-and-sixteen here. Did Bonnot perhaps drop one of Baudoin's texts because the Anvers volume had no illustration for it? Bonnot's watermark (crossed canons) on the paper is clear on pages like 339. Some fable numbers--like Fable XLIII on 197, LXXXIV on 279, and LXXXIX on 289--have no punctuation after the number. The rest have a period. The pattern seems repeated in the "Index Illustré." The figures in the illustrations, both human and animal, are rather full-bodied. Perhaps the most vigorous of the illustrations of the life of Aesop is the last, showing him pushed off of the cliff and losing his cap in the process. Among the fables, some of the liveliest illustrations belong to Fable XXIV (the old dog chases a stag); LIII (stag and horse); LXIII (OR); LXXXI (the book-thief and his mother); and C (the envious and greedy men). This is a splendid volume in red leather. Is that a hand-signature from Bonnot on the third page?

1988 Les Fables de La Fontaine.  Avec les Dessins de Gustave Doré.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  Paris: Éditions de la Fontaine au Roi.  $26 from Marie Gervais, St.-Urbain-Premier, Quebec, Canada, through eBay, May, '16.

1988 Little Red Riding Hood and Other Tales. Retold by Geraldine Carter. Illustrated by Dorothea King. Printed in Hungary. London: Bracken Books. $3.88 in downtown San Francisco, Dec., '90.

From the same series as Town Mouse & Country Mouse and Other Tales (1987). "The Fox and the Crane" has lively illustrations which show the crane spilling her dish and the fox laughing. DS is unique for not showing in its pictures the scene of the dog over the water. The third fable is "The Swallow and the Flax." The illustrations are between cute and pretty.

1988 Marc Chagall: La Fontaine: Fables: 100 acquaforti originali dipinte a mano dall'artista presentate dalla Libreria Antiquaria Pregliasco. Marc Chagall. Large pamphlet. Torino: Libreria Antiquaria Pregliasco. $26 from Alibris, Feb., '00.

This is a beautiful catalogue. After a page of commentary on this unusual set of art works, there are thirty-six colored reproductions of individual works among the hundred that Chagall did for the project. The hundred are listed in fact by French title on the last page. It is my understanding that the set was up for sale one by one by the Libreria Pregliasco in conjunction with the Galleria Accademia in Turin--for 1,450,000 Lire each. My favorites as I look at these beautiful illustrations this time through include "The Eagle and the Beetle" (17), SS (19), CW (25), FG (35), "The Shepherd and the Sea" (41), MM (75), "The Cobbler and the Financier" (79), and "The Shepherd with His Animals" (including a squealing pig, 92). This is one of those surprise finds as I combed through seemingly endless lists of Alibris books available.

1988 McCall's Needlework & Crafts. Magazine. ABC Consumer Magazines, Inc. $5.95 from Vanessa Wilmoth, through eBay, Dec., '02. 

Four pages in this April, 1988, magazine deal with Aesopic fables. On 40-43, four sweaters are pictured under the title "Knits for Kids: Classic Tales." The four sweaters picture WSC, GA, TH, and GGE. Plans for knitting the first two are pictured on 105 and 26, respectively. The plans for the latter two are included in a separate leaflet, a coupon for ordering which is found on 116. The sweaters are quite pleasing. Their backs continue and vary the dramatic scenes on the fronts. Aesop gets around!

1988 Mon Grand Livre de Fables de la Fontaine. Hardbound. Printed in Spain. Mantes-la-Jolie, France: Editions Ronde du Tournesol. $5 from Francine Juneau, Montreal, Canada, through Ebay, Nov., '00.

Straight La Fontaine verse texts with lively part-page colored illustrations for children. Here for the first time, I think, I have seen the bird illustrated as receiving only a flesh-wound from the feathered arrow (11), even though the fable starts with the words "Mortellement atteint"! There is a good illustration of the hanging cat on 36. Perhaps typical of this large-format book's illustrations is that on 80-81 for the less known "Le Loup et le Chien maigre." Asterisked words in the fables appear in the glossary (87-90). There is a T of C at the back. I had the sense that I had seen this artist's work before. The cover illustration has a signature something like "Ariz" or perhaps "Ariza," and my records show that I have Mon Grand Livre de Fables d'Esope from the same publisher in 1989 with an artist whose name I guessed to be "Ariza." This collection sometimes makes detective work easy!

1988 My Book of Animal Stories. No general editor acknowledged. Artists include Roger Langton, Richard Hook, Rowan Clifford, Ken Stott, and Malcolm Livingstone. Printed in Spain. London: Marshall Cavendish. $5 in Evanston, Sept., '91.

Five stories. One is a reprint in large format of Stott's MSA from The Best of Aesop (1985). The donkey "was last seen swimming strongly out to sea," and the illustration does the line justice. Malcolm Livingstone also does the lively illustrations for "The Lion and the Peacock."

1988 Oddkins: A Fable for All Ages. Dean R. Koontz. Illustrations by Phil Parks. Created by Christopher Zavisa. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Warner Books. $9 from Second Story Books, DC, Nov., '91.

I know this book is sappy, but I love it! From its sharp acrylics to the toys' spirit, I find myself in here. The tale is spun too long, but there are good adventures along the way. Of course it does not fit my own definition of fable. Will Victor and Colleen marry? I had a great time with this book.

1988 Oriental Stories for Young and Old. Leon Comber. Illustrated by Teo Kim Heng and Lo Koon-Chiu. Singapore: Graham Brash. See 1979/88/89.

1988 Selections from Aesop's Fables Illustrated with Reproductions of Fifteenth Century Woodcuts. Ulm illustrations. Introduction by Kit Currie. Limited edition of 1500. Hardbound. A. Colish, Inc. $12 from Lexicon, NY, through Ebay, Dec., '02. Extra copy for $27 from Alibris, Jan., '01.

This is perhaps an unusual fine edition in that it does not tell where its publisher has his press. The texts of the forty-nine fables seem to be based, at least in part, on James' version of the fables. There are some twenty-one illustrations, all taken from the Ulm Aesop. Besides eighteen matched with individual fables, there are illustrations on the frontispiece, title-page, and second title-page. Like the titles of individual fables, the illustrations are done in red. They are careful and appealing. The paper is Strathmore Pastelle. With lovely print, sharp illustrations, and strong paper, this is a very pretty book. The extra copy, which has a smudge on its cover, is inscribed "For Royal---my favorite young printer! Thanks for all your help. Love, Julia. May, 1991."

1988 Tableaux des XIXe et Xxe Siècles, Sculptures Vente a Paris Drouot Montaigne. Jean de La Fontaine. Various artists. Paperbound. Paris: Ader Picard Tajan. €20 from Courant d'Art, Paris, Feb., '10.

Here is a catalogue for an exhibit/sale that included individual items from the 1961 La Fontaine: 20 Fables published in Monaco and printed in Paris. See my description of the copy in the collection under that date. Here the section is titled "Ensemble de 20 Dessins, Aquarelles et Gouaches: Illustrations pour 20 Fables de La Fontaine." The artists are listed: Brayer, Brianchon, Buffet; Caillard, Carzou, Chapelain-Midy, Desnoyer, Fini, Fontana-Rosa, Foujita, Georg; Nobili, Oudot, Picart le Doux, Planson, Terechkovitch, Touchagues, Vertes, Villon, and Waroquier. Selections are presented on 4 to 11. All are in black-and-white except for Foujita's "The Animals Sick of the Plague" (9). I am happy to see that a collection I found for $1550 is selling for between $200 and $3000 for each piece!

1988 The Ant and the Pigeon. Lev Tolstoy. Translated by K.M. Cook-Horujy. Drawings by Mikhail Romadin. Published in Russian in 1978. Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Moscow: Raduga Publishers. $5.95 at Red Balloon in St. Paul, May, '90. Extra copy for $5.36 from Szwede Slavic Books, Palo Alto, March, '97.

A wonderful little book with 105 excellent versions and lively color paintings. A helpful introduction notes that Tolstoy's "translations" of Aesop are in various forms, usually without morals. The versions are concise and pointed. Particularly well told fables: 70 and 148. The best illustrations are on 76 and 114. Tolstoy often successfully substitutes one animal for another traditional one (e.g., 74, 123, 144, 155, and 158). Two stories which I had earlier thought non-Aesopic, at 38 and 136, are re-worked episodes from his life: on drinking the sea and finding a real person. A beautiful little find!

1988 The Blue Donkey Fables. Suniti Namjoshi. Cover painting and line drawings by Beth Higgins. Paperbound. London: The Women's Press. £ .50 from Emily Hollins, Dumfries, Scotland, through eBay, Sept., '03. 

Namjoshi is also the authoress of Feminist Fables, listed under 1981/90. Here we have an enjoyable collection of poems and stories. The first series of fables is Thurberesque: What happens when a town has a blue donkey? In fact the blue donkey returns in many of the stories later in the book. Groups of poems and groups of prose fables tend to alternate in the course of the book. What Namjoshi offers here as fables may be rather parables in the sense I have tried to promote, i.e. "past-tense fictional stories that question and challenge the hearer's or reader's values." The set of poems beginning with "Lion Skin" (33) mixes in, I believe, the fable about "The Lion in Love." In any case, it becomes quite erotic here. I read the first half of this book. One of my favorites is "Magpie" (55). This paperback is, alas, falling apart. Shipping for this book cost six times the book's very reasonable auction price!

1988 The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer: A Selection.  Retold by Selina Hastings.  Illustrated by Reg Cartwright.  First American Edition, first printing.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  NY: Henry Holt and Company.  $5.95 from Powell's, Portland, August., '13.

1988 The Complete Fables of Jean de la Fontaine. Edited, with a Rhymed Verse Translation by Norman B. Spector. No illustrations. Dust jacket. Review copy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. $25 at Starr in Cambridge, Jan., '89. Extra copies of the regular edition for $25 in DC, Spring, '92, and for $12.30 at Book Forum, Denver, March, '94.

An ambitious undertaking by the now deceased translator. Bilingual on facing pages throughout. It looks like the translations are very careful. They follow the meter of the original exactly. Worth trying for the person who has time to read through all of LaFontaine in only one edition.

1988 The Complete Fables of Jean de la Fontaine. Edited, with a Rhymed Verse Translation by Norman B. Spector. No illustrations. Uncorrected paperbound proofs. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. $7.50 at Kulturas in DC, June, '89.

This book represents the first proofs in my collection. Comparison with the final product reveals small layout changes. The pages of the preface are mixed up. The final edition ends up some twenty-two pages longer than the proofs. The proofs lack the AI at the back and the (minimal) graphics.

1988 The Emperor's New Clothes.  H.C. Andersen; Retold by Neil and Ting Morris.  Katrina Longden.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  Nashville, TN: Children's Classics:  Ideals Publishing Corporation.  $3 from the West Coast, July, '15.

1988 The Fable of the Bees. Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. By Bernard Mandeville. With a Commentary Critical, Historical, and Explanatory by F.B. Kaye. Volume One. Paperbound. First edition? Indianapolis: Liberty Classics. Originally published at Oxford by the Clarendon Press. See 1924/88.

1988 The Fable of the Bees. Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. By Bernard Mandeville. With a Commentary Critical, Historical, and Explanatory by F.B. Kaye. Volume Two. Paperbound. First edition? Indianapolis: Liberty Classics. Originally published at Oxford by the Clarendon Press. See 1924/88.

1988 The Fables of Aesop. Illustrated by Frank Riccio. Apparently edited by Meg Wolitzer, who writes the foreword. Chicago: Calico: Contemporary Books. $7.95 at Children's Bookstore in Brookline, MA, Feb., '89.

A good paperback book. The versions seem based on Jacobs. The morals are very well chosen. Riccio's art comes in several forms, including the excellent colored illustrations (on the cover and inserted into the text). The best are the first three. Another type succeeds well on 107 ("The Fox and the Goat"). Riccio gives his philosophy of Aesopic illustration on 203. AI on 197.

1988 The Fox and the Crane. Adapted by Zhang Zhijun. Illustrated by He Giaoling. First edition. Pamphlet. Printed in China. Beijing: Dolphin Books. $2.25 from The Prince and the Pauper, San Diego, Jan., '01.

This is a 20-page pamphlet with a surprising ending. The tale follows the usual progress of "The Fox and the Stork" until the crane's return meal for the fox. Here the crane asked the fox, who had struggled with the bottle on the table, to wait a minute. "The the crane brought out a plate of meat soup." The fox lowered his head in shame, but the crane urged him to help himself. The fox apologized for his bad treatment of the crane, and they became good friends. I do not think that I have ever before seen a positive ending to this fable. Is this Chinese oneupmanship of decadent Westerners?

1988 The Fox and the Grapes. A Pop-Up Book. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Printed in Colombia. NY: Derrydale Books: Crown Publishers. $3 at Aspidistra, May, '89.

Large-format pop-up with very kitschy pictures. Good moral: "A nasty remark will not help you get what you want."

1988 The Hare and the Tortoise. A Fable by Aesop. Retold and illustrated by Gerald Rose. First printing? Printed in Hong Kong. Aladdin Books. NY: Macmillan Publishing Company. $3.95 at Book Bay (in Santa Cruz?), Summer, '89. Extra copies gifts of Daniel Carlisle, Aug., '93, and of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Nov., '95.

Brief, like the other three books in this set. Maybe the brevity hurts here. The drawings are lively, but the race is unmotivated. Moral: "Sometimes it is better to be slow but sure."

1988 The Lamb and the Butterfly. Arnold Sundgaard. Pictures by Eric Carle. First edition, first printing. Hardbound. NY: Orchard Books: Franklin Watts. $3 from Linda Hickman, Severn, MD, through eBay, May, '04. 

Though the seller incorrectly listed this book as written by Aesop, it offers the stuff of fable. Lamb and butterfly meet in a meadow, and the lamb has incessant questions for the fluttering butterfly. Through their interaction, and particularly through the intervention of a rainstorm, the lamb learns that butterflies cannot live the way lambs do. Earlier, when the butterfly fluttered away, the lamb ran after it to ask more questions. When the butterfly flies south to stay warm in the winter, the lamb does not run after him any more. She "never asked a Butterfly to join a flock of sheep again." One recognizes Carle's bright and lively work right away. Maybe his best picture here is of the wet, bedraggled butterfly on the lamb's back

1988 The Lion and the Mouse. A Pop-Up Book. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Printed in Colombia. NY: Derrydale Books: Crown Publishers. $3 at Aspidistra, May, '89.

Large-format pop-up with very kitschy pictures.

1988 The Lion and the Mouse. Hardbound. Toronto: Cat Publishing. $12.50 from Tavistock Books, Alameda, CA, April, '12.

This is a large-format pop-up book with kitschy pictures. I found it twenty-three years ago at Aspidistra Books in Chicago. Now I found it online. This copy is identical, even down to acknowledging Ottenheimer Publishers and being printed in Colombia. Now, though, its publisher is Cat Publishing in Toronto rather than Derrydale Crown.

1988 The Lion and the Mouse. A Fable by Aesop. Retold and illustrated by Gerald Rose. Printed in Hong Kong. Aladdin Books. NY: Macmillan Publishing Company. $3.95 at Book Bay (in Santa Cruz?), Summer, '89.

Well done. Here many mice run around on the lion, who ends up in a cage held together by rope. Not quite as good as The Raven and the Fox, but still a strong book for very young readers.

1988 The Lion and the Puppy and Other Stories for Children. By Leo Tolstoy. Translated by James Riordan. Illustrated by Claus Sievert. First edition, first printing. Dust jacket. NY: Seaver Books: Henry Holt and Company. $8.95 at Powell's, Portland, March, '96.

Twenty-five stories that present Tolstoy very well. A concern with humanity is, I would say, the common thread through these strong vignettes, which are mostly short stories rather than fables. These are thus stories of pain inflicted or remembered, of modest achievements through hard work, or of learning. The good introduction speaks about Leo Tolstoy's school at his country home ("Clear Glades"). Besides an eloquent version of the title story, there are three pieces regularly included among fables: "Two Merchants" (32) with a great illustration of the iron-eating mice working on tools, nails, pots, and pans; "The `Dead' Man and the Bear" (40) with a good illustration (but why is the man shirtless?); and "Better to Be Lean and Free Than Plump and Chained" (47) with a good two-page illustration. Among the best of the other stories are "The King and the Shirt" and "The Old Poplar." A favorite book.

1988 The Little Clay Hut: Russian Folk Tales About Animals. Drawings by Evgeny Rachev. No authors acknowledged. Various translators. This edition 1988. Moscow: (c)Raduga Publishers 1987. $5.50 at Kaboom, New Orleans, Dec., '92.

This book is almost identical with the 1975 first printing by Progress Publishers, whose copyright this edition recognizes. See my comments there. There are lots of little changes from one edition to the other: typeface, back cover, some copyright notices (e.g., on 50), the direction of the printing on the spine, and the spelling of Rachev's first name: "Evgeny" facing the title page in both editions to "Yevgeny" here and "Yevgeni" there three pages later. Some illustrations may be superior here to those in the 1975 edition. I believe this book was selling for $35 at Old Children's Books. I had narrowly decided to pass up that copy two hours before I found this copy at Kaboom. Then two months later I found the first edition for even less money!

1988 The Mouse Couple: A Hopi Folktale. Retold by Ekkehart Malotki. Illustrated by Michael Lacapa. First edition. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Singapore. Northland Publishing. $8.95 from an unknown source, June, '97.

Though the story here is listed as a Hopi folktale, this is the age-old story of the right spouse for a proud couple's daughter. The story is highly developed here; this book is fifty-six pages long. The mice parents have been unable to have their own children and have long prayed for a child. They find her in the snow. The father journeys far to the east to find the young sun, who sends him over the mountain to the clouds. The leader of the clouds sends him to the North Winds. The reaction of each of the "powers" is suited to the character. The gentle rain offers the pipe and is very agreeable; the powerful north wind with tousled hair and wild appearance is abrupt and gets right to business. The latter recommends the Butte, whom even the north winds have not been able ever to topple. The mouse father is relieved not to have his daughter marry the chief of the winds! The Butte admits that he is not even a leader, since he just stands in one place. He recommends no one in particular but points to the holes that mice have made in him and allows that they could even topple him. He sends the father home to find for his daughter one of her own kind. The father does just that. The "Southwestern" art takes us to beautiful mesas and kivas. Repeated geometric patterns and pregnant symbols grace the pages. One turns the page to find dramatic revelations, e.g., of the mice's underground home (6-7) or of the canyon of the North Winds (26-27). A beautiful book!

1988 The Raven and the Fox. A Fable by Aesop. Retold and illustrated by Gerald Rose. Printed in Hong Kong. Aladdin Books. NY: Macmillan Publishing Company. $3.95 at Book Bay (in Santa Cruz?), Summer, '89.

A wonderful little book. The version used is clean and tight. The illustrations are strong. The fox's whole Gestalt is whispy and greedy. I agree with the back cover: this book is suitable for the youngest child.

1988 The Ringdoves: From the Fables of Bidpai. Retold and Illustrated by Gloria Kamen. Hardbound. Dust jacket. First edition, apparently first printing; signed and inscribed by Gloria Kamen. Printed in Japan. NY: Atheneum: Macmillan. $25 from Steven Cieluch, Allston, MA, Dec., '96. Extra unsigned copy for $6 from Constant Reader (?), Dec., '98.

The telling here is absolutely true to my sense of the "Friendship" story among the four friends in Kalila and Dimna, with only this change, that the trapper of the ringdoves is the same hunter who later ties up the gazelle and then the turtle. Kamen's illustrations are in a simple and attractive Eastern style.

1988 The Silly Turtle and other Stories from the East for children. Stella Sandahl. Illustrated by P.S. Nandhan. Toronto: TSAR Publications. $3.50 at The Book House on Grand, July, '94.

This book tells fourteen stories from the Panchatantra and Jatakas traditions. The selection is excellent. I would say that it covers the best and best known of the stories. New to me and funny: "How the Dungbeetle Learnt His Lesson" (from the dunging elephant, 45). Two of the stories are told in versions that are new to me. TT (29) has Shellneck the turtle himself come up with the idea of flying on a stick held by the swans. People in a city over which they fly say that they are carrying something like a wagon wheel. "The Brahmin with the Goat and the Three Rogues" (41) has the three rogues "see" different kinds of dead animals instead of the live goat actually being carried. The primitive illustrations are not to my taste. The book's paper has four sections of different colors.

1988 The story of the Hare and the Tortoise and other tales. Illustrated by Tony Wolf. Text by Peter Holeinone. (c)Dami Editore, Italy. Printed in Italy. Bridlington: Peter Haddock, Limited. $4 at Pegasus in Berkeley, Aug., '94. Extra copy for $4 from Know Knew Books, Palo Alto, Feb., '97.

Surprises continue. I thought I was buying an extra copy of a book I already had. I do have it in exactly the same form, but from Gallery Books in New York. So here is the earlier British edition. Check my comments there, and do not overlook La storia della Lepre et la Tartaruga e tante altre (1989/92). Note that three-fourths of FG has elapsed before the fox even notices the grapes. (28-29). And the burst button on the fat stoat's trousers (23) is cute.

1988 The Tortoise and the Hare. A Pop-Up Book. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Printed in Colombia. NY: Derrydale Books: Crown Publishers. $3.50 at Louis Kiernan, Hyde Park, May, '89. One extra copy.

Large-format pop-up with very kitschy pictures. In 1997, this book is offered for $17.50 by Trevor Blake in Portland, Oregon.

1988 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. A Pop-Up Book. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Printed in Colombia. NY: Derrydale Books: Crown Publishers. $3.50 at Louis Kiernan, Hyde Park, May, '89. One extra copy.

Large-format pop-up with very kitschy pictures.

1988 The Wedding of the Rat Family. Retold by Carol Kendall. Illustrated by James Watts. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Japan. NY: Margaret K. McElderry Books: Macmillan Publishing Company. $7.00 from Magers & Quinn, Minneapolis, March, '99.

Delightfully illustrated with detailed rat faces against simple backgrounds. The text of the story is developed at some length. The circumstances of the family are, for example, developed at length. They were proud but had reason to be humble and also anxious. The mother-rat ("Precious") thus claims that her great-grandparents dined at kings' tables, while the text goes on to point out that they dined under the tables and after the kings! The father-rat ("Beloved") proclaims "We must marry our daughter Mulan up in the world!" And his wife has made a list of requirements for a potential spouse, who must be: rich, powerful, influential, and of ancient ancestry. There is a glorious picture as Mr. Rat addresses the sun. Most of those he goes to see are pleasant, but wall is abrupt and hostile; two stones bounce out of the wall toward Mr. Rat as he speaks. He and his wife then conceive the bright idea to marry her into the cat family. Another of the best illustrations shows the cats' court. A favorite illustration of mine shows all sorts of mice preparing clothes and gifts and chariots for the marriage. A huge procession of well-fattened rats brings the family into the cat family mansion, where the cats spring upon the whole party and eat them! The poor rats left behind soon pick up and became fat and happy. And this new clan of rats lives proud that they are stronger than Wall who is stronger than Wind…. The last picture is appropriately of a fat cat licking its chops!

1988 Wolf! Wolf! Retold and illustrated by Gerald Rose. Printed in Hong Kong. Aladdin Books. NY: Macmillan Publishing Company. $3.95 at Book Bay (in Santa Cruz?), Summer, '89.

A wonderful little book. The version used is clean and tight. The illustrations are strong and enjoyable. Here is some irony: Gerald Rose did a Wolf! Wolf! with Elizabeth Rose in 1974. I am surprised that he did not at least change the title when he did this book alone.

1988 12 Fables en Sabir Franco-Arabe et Ben-Ali à l'École, Scène Comique en Sabir. Par Marcus. Pamphlet. Paris: Les Editions Théâtrales Art & Comedie; Ex-Editions Jean Picot #83: Edicom Direct S.A. 30 Francs from Henri Veyrier, St. Ouen, Paris, July, '01.

Here are twelve fables in Franco-Arabic pidgin. I am surprised at how much sense I can make out of these texts. There is a short translation of Arabic words into French on the first page. The selection here is heavy on traditional favorites from La Fontaine: GGE, "The Worker and His Sons," LM, WL, MM, FS, FC, GA, OF, "Les Animaux Malades de la Peste," TH, and "L'Huitre et les Plaideurs." The final page, "Ben-Ali à l'École," is a scene in pidgin for two characters. The first page of text shows a copyright of 1947, but the back cover shows a publication date--like that of the second volume of fables in slang in this series--of 1988. As with that volume, the printer here is Aymard in Pont-du-Chateau.

1988 15 Fables Célèbres Racontées en Argot, Recueil No. 2. Par Marcus. Pamphlet. Ex-Editions Jean Picot #82: Edicom Direct S.A. 30 Francs from Henri Veyrier, St. Ouen, Paris, July, '01.

Here is Volume II of fables in slang. I notice several curiosities. First, this was published in 1988, while my copy of Volume I was published in 1998. This volume has a larger format (about 7½" x 11"). Though the publisher is the same here, the printer is Aymard in Pont-du-Chateau. Though the cover-design is again reminiscent of Rabier, it is different from the design on the cover of Volume I. In this case, the first fourteen of this pamphlet's fifteen fables are from La Fontaine. They include MM, FC, LM, OR, FS, GGE, WS, and TMCM. The fifteenth, "Le vacher et le garde chasse," is Florian I 11. This volume lists eighty-seven numbers in the series. Only three deal with fables, and I have a copy of each of those three, including 12 Fables en Sabir (#83). Now I need to go out and find the volumes with matching format for each of these lovely finds!

1988 25 Fairy Tales and Fables. Stories selection: Viera Janusova. Translation: Heather Trebaticka. Illustrations: Alexej Vojtasek. Hardbound. Printed in Czechoslovakia. NY: Derrydale Books. $6.51 from Manon Pallandt, Silver Spring, MD, through Ebay, June, '00.

This is a typical Derrydale book, large in format (9½" x 12") with bright and nicely detailed art. Among the twenty-five stories, I find many that are etiological. Perhaps eight could be considered fables, but they are not well-known stories. They include: "The man, the buffalo and the tiger" (44), "The shaggy goat and the hedgehog" (49), "The deer and the jaguar" (63, familiar to me from somewhere), "The bear and the mosquito" (82), "The tomcat, the cockerel and the fox" (120), "How the wolf went fishing" (151, including a new twist after the usual "frozen tail" story), "Why monkeys don't build houses" (155), and "The man and the dog" (159). Among the best illustrations are those of the man covered with birch bark and leaves (72) and the tomcat enjoying life at home (123). There is a typo ("birth" for "birch") on 72. The book has the musty smell of an old book. ©1988 Slovart Publishers, Bratislava.

1988 [Korean]. (Aesop's Fables), Volume 1. (D12). Cover picture: Fox with his tail lost in a trap. Edited by Sang Nam Han. Illustrations by Nam Ku Haw. Seoul: Ge Kyoung Sa. Gift of Robert McIntosh, June, '90.

About 120 fables, most with simple black-and-white illustrations. The book begins with many fox stories. The best illustration may be that of crabs on parallel courses on 147.

1988 [Korean]. (Aesop's Fables), Volume 2. (D13). Cover picture: Crow dropping a pebble into a vase. Edited by Sang Nam Han. Illustrations by Nam Ku Haw. Seoul: Ge Kyoung Sa. Gift of Robert McIntosh, June, '90.

About 120 fables, most with simple black-and-white illustrations. The book begins with many lion, ass, and wolf stories. The last few pages have advertisements for computer and children's books.

1988 [Korean]. (Lion and Mouse/Fox and Grapes). Cover picture: Lion with a green-eyed fox reading Aesop with the title name on the wrong side of the book! Editor and illustrator not acknowledged. Seoul: Hak Won Chul Pan Gag Sa. $5 at a street stall near Eastgate in Seoul, June, '90.

Splashy large illustrations on thick paper. This book of Aesop is apparently #29 in a series of fifty for children. Two divisions with five well known fables in each. The best pictures are for TMCM and BF. The layout of the book, especially early, may be surprising for us.

1988/89 Marie de France: Fabulas Medievales (Ysopet). Edición de Joëlle Eyheramonno. Illustratión de Jason Carter. Second edition. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Madrid: Grupo Anaya. $35 from Robinson Street Books, Binghamton, NY, through Abe, August, '11.

This book not only reproduces one of my favorites, Jason Carter's Medieval Fables: Marie de France, published by Dragon's World, Ltd. It adds about 75% more fables -- but, alas, no more Carter illustrations. The pattern seems clear. A fable is illustrated with a facing Carter illustration, as in the Dragon's World edition. Then follow two pages of pure text, either one or two fables. Then there is another fable with a facing Carter illustrtation. As a result, this book has 159 pages, where the earlier edition had 71. The book is also something of an international triumph. As the verso of the title-page notes, its texts were first published in Germany -- Halle, to be specific -- in 1898 as a critical edition of a French original, the "Ysopet." Those texts were reprinted in Geneva by Slatkine in 1974. Carter published them with his illustrations for the British publisher Dragon's World; the book's copies then were printed in Hong Kong. Now this edition is done by Grupo Anaya in Madrid. And this copy was distributred by REI in Mexico. Whew! In a moment of leisure, I hope to probe how faithful these texts are to the Ysopet. As I wrote then, this book offers lovely, lavish illustrations--with a touch of influence from India--well worth including in a lecture, especially DS, TMCM, and "The Stag."

1988/91 Fables for God's People. John R. Aurelio. Paperback. NY: Crossroad. Gift of Mary Pat Ryan, March, '93.

I have very mixed feelings after reading this whole book; the reading was sometimes a chore. Aurelio, who acknowledges Aesop as a master without equal, here writes adult stories for the child-hearted. At their best the stories climax in the introduction of a dimension that we did not suspect existed. Among the best are "The Artisan's Apprentice" (1), "The Maybe Miracle" (65), "The King and His Three Servants" (76), and "The Falcon and the Crutch" (97). Other typical stories include: "The Bridge" (17), "The Box" (38), "The Burden" (54), "The Peddler" (69), and "The Most Agreeable Kingdom" (90). Some strong themes are that the gospel is a treasure to share and that possessions possess us.

1988/95 Les Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrations de Danièle Bour. Préface de Marc Soriano. Nouvelle Tirage. Hardbound. Paris: France Loisirs. $15.50 from Barbara Cannon, Tucson, AZ, through eBay, Oct., '06.

Here is something strange. The format of this book is exactly like that of a book published in 1992 by Grasset Jeunesse, 50 Fables de La Fontaine. It also has a preface--but a different one--by Marc Soriano. This volume has the title The Fables of La Fontaine, but it just happens to have fifty fables. Hmmmm.. I find no overlap between these two editions. This book seems to be the source for the smaller Italian paperback "Jean de la Fontaine: Favole," which is listed under "1993/97." Many of my comments from the Grasset publication of 1992 apply as well to this volume. The finely detailed primitive paintings recommend this book highly. They range from full page illustrations down to single figures taking part of a page. Among the best of the smaller colored designs is that of the drowning child on 19. Among the best in the half-page variety are SS (27), which extends just beyond its borders to make its point; FG (45); and "The Wolf, the Mother, and the Infant" (53). Among the best full-page illustrations are the wolf become shepherd (41), TB (59), and TH (67). The latter is also the cover's image. The two images for SW contrast nicely (62-63). On 49, text and design are for once not well integrated; some of the print falls on the image of the horse. There is a T of C at the end. Inscribed in English in Paris in 1996.

1988/95 Pérez y Martina/Pérez y Martina. Marjorie E. Herrmann. Paperbound. Lincolnwood, IL: Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series: National Textbook Company. $12.94 from The Story Monkey, Omaha, April, '96.

This story does not strike me as being a fable in the traditional sense. However, it is a delightful story. Martina is a beautiful ant. Many wooers come beneath her balcony: cat, duck, dog, rooster, frog, bull, pig, and finally the hoped for mouse Pérez. To each she answers "Maybe yes, maybe no. How will you speak to me in the future?" Pérez wins her heart and they marry. Alas, Pérez carelessly falls into a Christmas rice pudding that Martina is making for him. Everyone runs to Martina's house. Pérez is saved in the nick of time, and everyone stays to celebrate Christmas. The picture of Pérez floating in the pudding (25) is excellent! And what is one to learn from this story? 

1988/96 Aesop's Fables. Illustrations by Kazuyoshi Iino. Retold by Ralph F. McCarthy. Kodansha English Library #39. Tenth printing. Tokyo: Kodansha International, Ltd. ¥621 at Charles E. Tattle, Kanda, Tokyo, July, ’96.

This small paperback has forty numbered fables, told well and idiomatically. There are language notes on each fable at the rear (109-24). The selection of fables here includes many engaging but little-known members of the Aesopic canon. WS is told differently: the traveler puts on his coat while the wind is stepping up its ferocity. The object of the competition is handled well, for the wind says "Watch me rip the clothes right off his back" (12). "The Farmer and His Sons" (19) has a novel moral: "The will to work is man’s greatest treasure." I am surprised and delighted to find "The Wild Goats" (36) included. "The Sickly Lion" (44) is cleverly handled. The fox says that he sees the tracks of many going in and that he will wait till he has seen a few come back out. LS is told with just the ass for a partner (58). I find the illustrations delightful. Human hair projecting out to the sides seems to be one of Iino’s trademarks here. Another is something between a signature and some fractured letters, generally in a lovely design, put into some free space in the picture. Colored illustrations alternate with black-and-white. I am still puzzled by the cover picture: Why is this boy carrying a fox and a crow? Do not miss the fine CM on 31, the great mice-meeting on 64-5, and FM on 90-1. The book has one last delightful touch: the partial second dust jacket, really a band about two inches high that slips around the book’s two covers. As always, the Japanese know how to present something! If someone asked me to recommend a pocket Aesop, this would be a real contender.

1988? Fabels voor Kinderen. Berymd door Lea Smulders. Met prenten van Ton Hoogendoorn. De Bilt: Cantecleer. $7.25 at de kinderboekwinkel, Amsterdam, Dec., '88.

Lively colored and black-and-white illustrations match the rhymed versions. The best of them include the dancing milkmaid (51), the zippered donkey (63), and FG (64). Some pictures may lose dramatic effect by including too much of the story in one image.

1988? Les plus belles fables de La Fontaine. Alexandre Rakham. Paperbound. Publicis Koufra: Le Crédit Mutuel. €2.40 from Yvette Navarro, Dijon, France, through eBay, July, '04. 

This booklet has an unusual format, since it is 11½" across and about 8" high. Each of twenty fables has a two page spread combining four elements: a monochrome strip of designs including things like weather-vanes and geometric figures; a title; La Fontaine's text; and a very strong, dramatic multi-colored illustration of the fable. This last element frequently includes, humorously exaggerated, the key point in La Fontaine's fable. Thus the fox in FC plays a banjo; the frog in OF is attached to the kind of hand-pump one would use for a bicycle tire; the dog in DW offers a golden collar on a pillow as though it were a crown; the wolf in WL has knife and fork in hand; the crane in FS has a crumpled beak; the ass in "L'Ane et le petit Chien" is bringing a bouquet of roses, and the dog is biting his tail. The ant in GA, repeated on the cover, is a shapely woman in an ermine cape. Now that is an understanding of this fable that I had never considered! Does it not undercut the story in LM to have the lion in a metal cage and to allow the mouse to hold the key? There is a T of C at the front. The booklet has the look of a holiday gift, and a line on the bottom of the rear cover states "Le Crédit Mutuel vous offre les plus belles Fables de La Fontaine." This booklet was worth waiting for!

 

To top

1989 A Century of Emblems: An Introductory Anthology.  Charles Mosley.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Hants, England: Scolar Press.  $50 from Oak Knoll Books, Feb., '20.

1989 Aboriginal Fables and Legendary Tales. By A.W. Reed. Illustrated by E.H. Papps. Paperback. Printed in Singapore. Frenchs Forest, Australia: Reed Books Pty Ltd. See 1965/89.

1989 Aesop: A Fable Collection. Rev. Gregory I. Carlson, S.J. Paperbound. Omaha: Creighton University. 

Here is an early, perhaps even the first, of the printed catalogues for this collection.  It encompasses 153 pages.  The book, spiral bound, may well have been something of a Christmas present for friends.  It contains about 744 books.  This version includes the database of the collection at the book's end.  It has a yellow cover with black printing. 

1989 Aesop: Tales of Aethiop the African, Volume I. Jamal Koram. Illustrations by Demba Mbengue. First edition, first printing. Silver Spring: Flying Lion Press: Sea Island Information Group. $5 from Kelmscott, June, '92.

A curious book that badly needs an editor. Punctuation, grammar, and spelling mistakes abound. Even pagination is a mystery: the two-page introduction that starts on ii is followed by a preface listed as on iii. The introduction claims that Aethiop was a student of the African "mystery schools" and mentions the report that "every ancient Greek author either quoted or mentioned Aethiop in their writings." There are twenty-nine fables here, listed--not in the order of their appearance--with their lessons on iv. Ten illustrations--not in order--are listed on i. Almost all of the fables have the byline "As told by" or "Adapted by" Jamal Koram the Storyman. At the end of the glossary and pronunciation guide (47) we learn that "African-Americans were never, and shall never be slaves." A slave is defined as "someone who has lost control of his or her ability to be themselves, or to be free" (52). The fables frequently shift traditional characters to African characters. Some fables are developed in distinctively different ways. Thus the resident moles poison the intruding, squatting porcupine (1). The wolf eats the boy in the middle of his last shout (5). "The Lion and the Water Buffaloes" adds to the usual "unity" moral this one: "Respect our mothers" (13). Many of the illustrations are on the backs of the pages they are meant to illustrate. The "horse and the deer" becomes "The Zebra and the Ikiti" (17). Koram moralizes in unusual fashion on his version of TH, in which a terrapin takes the place of the tortoise: "Slow and steady wins the race, if you are racing against arrogance and stupidity. Otherwise, quick, fast, and steady wins the race against all comers." There is a fine moral for FC, which includes a civet here, not a fox: "Know yourself and love yourself, and you will always be able to separate the message from the messenger" (22). DLS has both a good promythium and a good moral: "If you don't know who you are, you will try to be some of everybody.... Sometimes it is better to be yourself and to keep your mouth shut" (31). Is there a strange transformation in the last story? I think that usually a donkey carries a priest who carries the statue. Here an Ethiopian captive is able to join in on the project (46).

1989 Aesop: Tales of Aethiop the African, Volume I. By Jamal Koram the StoryMan. Illustrations by Demba Mbengue. Signed, inscribed first edition, second printing. Paperbound. Printed in USA. Beltsville, MD: Sea Island Information Group. $2.50 from Donald Smith, Taylorsville, KY, through Ebay, Feb., '01. Extra copy for $4.25 from Black Oak, Berkeley, July, '00.

See my comments on the first printing of this curious paperback booklet. I thought then that it needed an editor. The good news is that it found one! A number of problems in the first printing are cleaned up in this second printing. Now, for example, the booklet has a title-page! The pagination now makes sense. Not all the improvements possible have been made. There are still some claims in the introduction that many will find hard to believe. Further, the ordering principle of the illustrations and the lessons is still a mystery to me. Finally, we still get Jamal Koram's name after almost every individual fable. However, there is so much improvement! The book has changed its last and perhaps most difficult statement--"African-Americans were never, and shall never be slaves"--to the, I think, more appropriate statement "Although Africans suffered greatly under this terrible system recognized as slavery, most Africans here in America never lost their will to be free." The whole book has been newly typeset, and in that process a number of solecisms have been removed. The "Glossary and Pronunciation Guide" (42) now makes clear which words come from which stories, and so it is easier to use. On the fables themselves, see my comments there. There is no longer any reference to The Flying Lion Press, and Sea Island Information Group, according to the title-page, is now in Beltsville, MD, though their PO Box seems to be still in Silver Spring. The first copy here, no doubt the latest, removes "Vol. I" from the cover and puts it on the spine.

1989 Aesop's Fables. A Collection of Aesop's Fables. Retold by Graeme Kent. Illustrated by Eric Kincaid. Printed in Spain. NY: Checkerboard Press. $9.95 at Bookworm, Omaha, Nov., '89.

Almost identical with the most recent Brimax edition, Aesop's Fables: A Collection of Aesop's Fables (1981/84/88) by the same author and illustrator. There are some differences here: the title graphics on the cover, the copyright information (now there is no acknowledgement of earlier copyrights), the poorer quality of the pages and the pictures (thinner and less glossy here), and the place of printing (the earlier edition was printed in Hong Kong). My, how Aesop travels!

1989 Aesop's Fables. Introduced, selected and illustrated by John Vernon Lord. Retold in verse by James Michie. Dust jacket. London: Jonathan Cape. $7.51 at Gilmorehill Books, Glasgow, July, '92. Extra copy with damaged cover and dust jacket for $5.98 at Half Price Books, Des Moines, April, '93.

A great find on my first afternoon in Glasgow! Apparently this book is for sale only in the United Kingdom--unfortunately for the rest of us. The dust jacket is right: Lord's 100+ illustrations are exquisitely detailed. They are strong and sharp, with the texture of scrimshaw, right from the dust jacket cover on. Among the best illustrations: the fox in the well (27); the cat and the cock (33); the wolf, the fox, and the ape (48-9); the mouse, the frog, and the hawk (94); and FG (115). The illustrations are deliberately put into the twentieth century urban setting of Ditchling, Sussex. The illustrator rules this book: Lord invited Michie to translate certain fables. This book represents Michie's first Aesop. DS (13) gives a good sense of the strength and weakness of Michie's verse. Less successful is LS (11). Though he feels free to expand, Michie offers generally well contained, pithy stories with good rhythms in irregular rhyme schemes. This book will always be worth consulting for a contemporary version of a fable. There are 200+ fables here. Check the preface for Lord and Michie's position against morals, the acknowledgements for dates and numbers of fables in the major editions, the excellent short bibliography (155-6), and the index of fable titles (157-60).

1989 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Fulvio Testa. No editor acknowledged. Dust jacket. Printed in Italy. NY: Barron's Educational Series. $10.35 at the New England Mobile Book Fair, Jan., '89. Extra copy gift of Maureen Hester, July, '90.

An enjoyable book, characterized by its brightly colored end papers and picture borders. Several fables are especially well told: FC and "The Little Bird and the Bat." The hare plays solitaire before falling asleep. Lions and cats here have big eyes. This is a good example of a book well put together.

1989 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Fulvio Testa. Third printing. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. NY: Barron's Educational Series: Barron. Gift of Maureen Hester, July, '90.

This third printing is very similar to the first printing. Now it is printed in Hong Kong, and the price has gone up from $12.95 to $14.95. As I wrote then, this is an enjoyable book, characterized by its brightly colored end papers and picture borders. Several fables are especially well told: FC and "The Little Bird and the Bat." The hare plays solitaire before falling asleep. Lions and cats here have big eyes. This is a good example of a book well put together. 

1989 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. No author acknowledged. Dust jacket. Printed in Belgium. (c)Neugebauer Press in Salzburg. Saxonville, MA: Picture Book Studio. Gift of Marian Dennison, Nov., '89.

Another victory for Neugebauer. A wonderful book. Zwerger's twelve ink-and-wash illustrations are witty and delightful. The best illustration features the camel dancing and the animals laughing. Other good illustrations present the curious country mouse, the amazed Satyr, the leaping frogs, the tortoise and the hare with runners' numbers on their backs, the sow with pacifiers, and the moon-mother with sewing work. The morals are reflective, e.g., for "The Dog and the Sow": Foolish comparisons lead to broken friendships.

1989 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. No author acknowledged. 4.75" x 4.375". Printed in Hong Kong. (c)Neugebauer Press in Salzburg. Saxonville, MA: Picture Book Studio. Gift of Linda Schlafer, Jan., '92. Gift of Mary Pat Ryan, Aug., '95. One other extra copy, Fall, '92.

Identical with the larger format book printed in Belgium. Another victory for Neugebauer. A wonderful book. Zwerger's twelve ink-and-wash illustrations are witty and delightful. The best illustration features the camel dancing and the animals laughing. Other good illustrations present the curious country mouse, the amazed Satyr, the leaping frogs, the tortoise and the hare with runners' numbers on their backs, the sow with pacifiers, and the moon-mother with sewing work. The morals are reflective, e.g., for "The Dog and the Sow": Foolish comparisons lead to broken friendships.

1989 Aesop's Fables. #8 in English-Korean Bilingualism series. No illustrations. No translators acknowledged. Seoul: Sam Joong Dang Publications Co. Ltd. See 1987/89.

1989 Aesop's Fables Retold in Verse Braille. By Tom Paxton. Spiralbound. Livonia, MI: Seedlings, Braille Books for Children. $15.50 from Karen Peebles, Deland, FL, through eBay, August, '03. 

Here is a large-format spiral-bound Braille edition done from the Morrow Junior Books edition of 1988. I am delighted that Seedlings chose the Paxton version to present to their readers because Paxton, a writer of popular songs, composes witty stories in verse. I believe that this is the first book I have in Braille in the collection.

1989 Aisty i Lyagushki (Stork and Frogs).  Sergei Michalkov.  Illustrations by E. Popkova.  Paperbound.  Moscow: Detskaya Literatura: Children's Literature.  $5 from Valentina Kudinova, Kharkov, Ukraine, through eBay, June, '12.  

1989 An ABC of Fashionable Animals. By Cooper Edens, Alexandra Day, and Welleran Poltarnees. First edition. Illustrations from books published between 1842 and 1938. San Diego: Green Tiger Press. $6.35 at Bargain Books, San Diego, Aug., '93.

A beautiful book in excellent condition. The illustrations are very well reproduced. Poltarnees' introduction speaks of his planned Encyclopedia of Dressed Animals. Two illustrations here are taken from fable books. The first under M for "Mouse" is Winter's illustration of TMCM for The Aesop for Children and Aesop's Fables for Children (both published in 1919). It is insufficiently labeled "Milo Winter, magazine illustration, n.d." Winter may also have published the illustration in a magazine, but the tie with TMCM seems likely to have originated the picture. The other is Billinghurst's wolf from A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine (1900/20?, 1983, and 1988 twice). The back endpaper's cat selling "Sumpfbräu" is delightful!

1989 Androcles and the Lion. An Aesop fable adapted and illustrated by Janet Stevens. Dust jacket. NY: Holiday House. $14.95 at Bookworm, Omaha, Nov., '89.

A well-told big-book version that helps the story by having the cruel master shackle Androcles and by making Androcles a friend of animals before he meets the lion. The best illustration has the lion holding his paw over his eyes during the "surgery." A very nice book.

1989 Andy and the Lion. A Tale of Kindness Remembered or The Power of Gratitude. By James Daugherty. A Puffin Book. NY: Viking Penguin. See 1938/66/89.

1989 An Einem Schönen Sommertag: Fabeln. Neu Erzählt von Max Bolliger. Mit Bildern von Jindra Čapek. Zweite Auflage. Hardbound. Zurich: Bohem Press. DM 12,80 from LezeZeichen, Muenster, August, '01. 

Here is the German original of the Dutton 1989 publication, Tales of a Long Afternoon. As I mention there, I really like this book. It gathers its five fables into one story. Four "one-upmanship" fables break up the storytelling group as animals proclaim "it served him right: Das ist ihm recht geschehen." But in each case the victim animal begins to think only of how he can get revenge. The peacocks picked out even the crow's crow-feathers! The victims on one side and the winners on the other begin to fight, not just verbally. "Der Schöne Fetsplatz verwandelte sich in ein Schlachtfeld." The lion restores harmony by telling LM, after which a mouse crawls out of a hole, whistles, and joins the celebration. The excellent paintings are tapestry-like. Is that Gheeraerts' influence behind the LM painting? The first edition might have been in 1988; that at least is the date of Bohem's copyright.

1989 Animal Frolics. Pamphlet reproduction. Printed in Hong Kong. NY: Merrimack Publishing Corporation. See 1890?/1989.

1989 Anno's Aesop. A Book of Fables by Aesop and Mr. Fox. Retold and illustrated by Mitsumasa Anno. Dust jacket. First printing? NY: Orchard Books: Franklin Watts. $16.95 from The Children's Bookstore, Chicago, May, '89. Extra copies gifts of Maureen Hester, July, '90, and Mary Pat Ryan, Dec., '93.

An engaging but frustrating book, done from a 1987 Japanese original. Uses Jones' 1912 edition for most of its English versions. The book's fiction is that a young fox finds the book and asks Mr. Fox to read it for him. He does so, giving his own idiosyncratic versions of the pictures, almost completely independent of the fables, which he cannot read. This fiction soon strains the reader. We are left with wonderful pictures and often maddening interpretations. The "counterpoint" approach, brilliant in itself, comes off best with "Sour Grapes" and FS. For many others, the joke wears out. Mercury is changed to Jupiter in the "Woodcutter" story. See the perceptive NY Times review enclosed.

1989    Aus alten Kinderbüchern: Fabel auf Fabel.  Joachim Schmidt.  Illustrations after Johanna Sybilla Krauss.  1. Auflage.  Hardbound.  Berlin: Der Kinderbuchverlag.  €22 from Versandantiquariat K. Stellrecht, Obersulm, June, '24.

1989 Basni (Russian). I. A. Krilov. Illustrations by Sergei Artiyusenko. Paperbound. Kiev: Veseika. $9.99 from Depa Velipurska, Gorlovko, Ukraine, through eBay, Dec., '10.

This is one of the better Krylov presentations I have seen, particularly because of the colored illustrations. These begin with the fine "Quartet" on the cover, continue with the title-page's FG, and then continue with "The Monkey and the Spectacles"; OF; WL; "The Lion and the Leopard"; "The Wolf in the Kennel"; "The Pike and theCat"; "The Ass and the Nightingale"; "The Elephant and the Pug"; "The Swan, the Pike, and the Lobster"; "The Monkey and the Mirror"; "The Pig under the Oak"; and "The Pike." The illustrations in the booklet have a clever interpretative silhouette underneath of humans: Are they doing what the fable talks about? There is a T of C at the end.

1989 Bedtime Tales. Linda Jennings. Illustrated by Hilda Offen. Dust jacket. Printed and bound in Hong Kong. Cathay Books. London: Octopus Books. $6.98 at Dalton, Omaha, Nov., '89. Extra copy for $7.50 from Birdsong, Albuquerque, May, '93.

Fifteen fables in a typical contemporary edition. The colorful, soft illustrations are pleasing and fun. Sometimes the end of a fable is softened. For example, the tortoise is only bruised when the eagle drops him from the sky.

1989 Boastful Mr. Bear. Text and illustrations by Peter Firmin. The Old Tree Stories. Manufactured in Hong Kong. NY: Delacorte Press: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Christmas, '93.

Advertised on the back cover as containing "delightful twists of Æsop's Tales." It seems like the Aesop being presented here is LM. After doing everything on his own, the bear realizes that he cannot pull a thorn from his own tail. The moral stated on a last page, where all the story's characters have gathered, deals with how good it is to have friends. The art is contemporary and delightful, enhanced by the enjoyable dung-ball soccer and croquet games of some bugs.

1989 Chiquita y Pepita: Dos ratoncitas/Chiquita y Pepita: The City Mouse and the Country Mouse. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. See 1978/89.

1989 Classic Children's Stories. Adapted by Lucy Kincaid. Illustrated by Eric Kincaid. Printed in Portugal. NY: Chex Books. $2.50 at Toy Liquidators, Nebraska Crossings Mall, Nov., '93.

TMCM in the well known version by the Kincaids appears here after "The Wizard of Oz," "Pinocchio," and "The Snow Queen." Like the others, TMCM is followed by two pages of characters and other vocabulary words. This is a nice big, sturdy, stiff, large-lettered book for first readers.

1989 Das Hausbuch der fabelhaften Fabeln. Fröhliche, fiese und frivole Fabeln von Aesop bis Robert Gernhardt. Aufgespürt und zusammengetrieben von Pedro Zimmermann. Geschmückt mit tierischen Tafeln von Michael Sowa. First edition. Zürich: Haffmans Verlag. Gift of Andreas Gommermann, Aug., '93. Extra copy for €10 from Antiquariat Rohde, June, '07.

I really like this book! The art (on both sides of inserted pages) is delightful. It puts animals into human settings, as on the cover where a pig dives off of a diving board into a pond. Another haunting image faces 161: a tree in the middle of the ocean. The book forms an outstanding example of one-to-a-page stimulating, wiseacre fables. As the Nachwort (especially 197) explains, this edition favors prose, the ironic, and the non-didactic. Zimmermann finds that Phaedrus began the process of making the Aesopic fable pedagogical and literary. He reworks all the Aesop, Phaedrus, Babrius, Romulus, and Steinhöwel that he presents. There is no LaFontaine in this book! If the fable on 41 is from Babrius, it is new to me! Pestalozzi's "The Old Bear on the Fir Tree" (91) is fine. Heine's "The Dog with the Master's Meat" (131) is another great fable. Typical of this book's challenge are Schopenhauer's "Die Stachelschweine" (153), Brecht's "Die Hilflose Knabe" (165), and Schnurre's "Gehorsam" (189). Anouilh's contribution (133) keeps the same tone, but it is Zimmermann that calls this fox a Jesuit. At last Krylov's "The Swan, the Pike, and the Crab" (169) makes sense to me: these three could have pulled the cart, but they went in different directions. Dario Fo's "Obszöne Fabel" (187) is something else!

1989 Der Esel und der Hund.  Jean de la Fontaine. Deutsche Uebersetzung: Karen Elsabe Barbosa. Rogério Borges. Hardbound. Printed in Brazil. Cologne, Germany: Schmusi: Kaufhof Aktiengesellschaft. $5 from Deborah Schwabach, Gilbertsville, NY, through Ebay, May, '00.

This is a stiff-paged book about 9¼" x 6" presenting five scenes, each on a two-page spread. The good German prose rendering of La Fontaine, featuring the brothers Hans and Peter, climaxes in the fine moral "Jeder ist, was er ist." The book is one of a series of six, as the back cover makes clear. ©1988 Companhia Melhoramentos de São Paulo, 1989 Lizensausgabe für Kaufhof Aktiengesellschaft, Köln, Deutschland.

1989 Der grüne Esel: Sieben alte Fabeln. Neu erzählt von Hans Baumann. Mit Bildern von Monika Laimgruber. Hardbound. Hildesheim: Stern-Blumen-Bücher: Gerstenberg Verlag. €9.81 from Versandantiquariat Monika Bolz, Bonn, Sept., '12.

BC (La Fontaine) is told with an unusual reversal: an older mouse suggests the bell and a younger mouse asks who will hang it around the cat's neck. Painting his ass green is a creative idea from a man who thinks his ass is special (Gellert). The first and second day everybody takes notice. By the third day, people take the green ass with the red legs for granted. "Der Brunnentiger" is a Tibetan variation of the "Panchatantra" story of the lion and the hare. "Bergauf and Bergab" shows one of two travellers having a happy face going up and a fearful face going down the respective ups and downs of a mountain path (Gellert). Asked why, he responds that he is always looking forward to what he knows must be coming. Besides "The Hares and the Frogs" from Aesop, there are two other stories: "Nicht jeder ist ein Held" (Jiddish) and "Das Blitzchen" from the author. Lively full-page colored art, especially for the title-story and "Der Brunnentiger." 

1989 Der Rabe: Fabeln von Jean de La Fontaine. Nacherzählt und gemalt von Eva Hülsmann. Hardbound. Munich: Meisinger Verlag. DEM 7,95 from Hassbecker's Buchhandlung, Heidelberg, July, '01.

I am delighted to see this second installment of Eva Hülsmann's work. See her first volume for Meisinger in 1987. It put "Der Hahn" before the title on the cover but not on the title-page. This one adds "Der Rabe" in both places. I bought the book thinking that it would make an inexpensive second copy of the 1987 volume; I am thus surprised now to see that it represents new work. The style is the same: contemporary, lavish, crayon-acrylic drawings for twelve La Fontaine fables. The fox's partner in FS is here not a stork but a heron. The mistress of the house comes in before the monkey can enjoy the chestnuts that the cat has pulled out of the fire. The picture here misrepresents the scene, I believe. OF may be the best of this batch of work.

1989 Der Rabe und der Fuchs: Nach einer Fabel von La Fontaine.  Illustrations by Thomas.  First edition.  Pamphlet.  Reinbek, Germany: Pixi-Buch Nr. 565:  Carlsen Verlag.  $4.77 from Medimops through AbeBooks, March, '23.

1989 Dial-A-Story Instant Guide to Aesop's Fables. Retold by Gina Phillips. Illustrated by F.S. Persico. First printing. Paperbound. NY: Dial-A-Story Instant Guides: Checkerboard Press: Macmillan. $0.95 from New Moon Emporium, Scotts Valley, CA, through ebay, Sept., '05.

This booklet is identical with the 1992 publication of the same name by Fantail: Puffin. In fact, this is the earlier version. Let me select from my comments there. This eight-inch-square book seems to be internally identical with 3 Minute Aesop's Fables, edited by Gina Phillips and illustrated by F.S. Persico. That booklet was published by Smithmark Publishers in 1992. This booklet's unusual addition is the cover inviting a young reader to dial a story. The open window on the dial shows a picture of the central characters of each fable and the page it is on. Let me include some of my comments from 3 Minute Aesop's Fables. This is a simple book of eleven fables without an index or T of C. The illustrations tend to be simple. The tortoise wears glasses, a scarf, and a derby (13). All the stories except the last get two pages. Some of the morals are cautious, like "For some a safe, simple life is better than a rich life full of danger" (7) and "Slow and steady can win the race" (12). Other morals are perceptive: "Before accepting advice, it is wise to consider the source" (9) and "It is easier to talk about doing great deeds than it is to accomplish them" (20). The dialing mechanism on this copy has become separated.

1989 Don't Count Your Chickens and Other Fabulous Fables. Mark Cohen. Illustrated by Mark Southgate. Hardbound. Printed in Great Britain. London: Penguin Group: Viking Kestrel. $10.96 from Little Owl Books, Grimsby, Lincolnshire, through ABE, Jan., '04.

Forty-one fables with an introduction. The fables come from many sources including Aesop, Anderson, Thurber, Grimm, Potter, Harris, Kipling, Leonardo, and various national traditions. Ted Hughes is new to me; he writes "How the Polar Bear Became" (81). The introduction is Hans Christian Andersen's "What's a Fable?" It makes the case for fables well and shows a good sense of fable I would not have expected from Andersen. The very first fable then is "Don't Count Your Chickens," and I am glad to find confirmed my suspicion that that proverb is tied to this fable; it remains to establish when the connection was first made. The goose in GGE seems to have laid a whole pile of eggs already (15). Should one ask whether these two stories qualify as fables: "The Ugly Duckling" (16) and "The Three Little Pigs" (62)? I like this short fable (29) from Idries Shah: "A man being followed by a hungry tiger turned in desperation to face it, and cried: 'Why don't you leave me alone?' The tiger answered: 'Why don't you stop being so appetizing?'" Also new to me is "The Faithful Tiger" (30). The black-and-white illustrations, one to a story, are adequate. The book was discarded by the North East Lincolnshire Libraries. If it appeared in this country, I seem to have missed it. I am surprised that a book like this can appear without credits for its versions. Might that fact have something to do with its non-availability in this country?

1989 El concierto de los animales y otras fábulas. Ramón de Campoamor. First edition. Printed in Mexico. Colonia del Valle, México: Editorial Origen. $3.50 at Allá, Santa Fe, May, '93.

A very nice little booklet of five Aesopic fables by a fabulist of whom I had not known. Campoamor died in 1901. He wrote fables in his teens and early twenties. In "The Concert of the Animals," the presence of a director (the lion) turns the animals' noise into music. "Carambola" seems to be about a chain reaction: a child pulls the tail of a cat, whose claws dig into a mule, whose hooves kick the child. "The Sparrows" describes a standoff between one bird inside and another outside a cage. The question concerns opening the door and supplying food from inside the cage. "Children and Parents" shows a victory of insight over force. Instead of dragging a mother goat and thus leaving her child behind, carry the child. The mother will follow. In "Parents and Children," parent birds feed their caged children, but freed children forget their caged parents.

1989 El muchacho que gritó ¡el lobo!/The boy who cried wolf. Eugenia De Hoogh. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. See 1977/87/89.

1989 Enchanting Fairy Tales. Retold by Jim Lawrence. (c)1988 Nuova Edibimbi, Gruppo EdiCART, Legnano, Italy. Printed in Mexico. Honey Bear Books. NY: (c)1989 Modern Publishing: Unisystems. $4 on Broadway in NY, May, '91. Extra copy for $5 at Bluestem, Lincoln, Dec., '94.

Among the fourteen "Fairy Tales" is "The Country Mouse" (65). This version features a long description of country life before the city mouse initiates action with an invitation. Country life includes a home made of a hat, a hammock, hard work, and nuts and potatoes for food. The city mouse's room is cold and bare. The adventure in the city includes sleep, the cat, the trap, and the dog. The illustrations are cheap.

1989 English Fables and Fairy Stories. Retold by James Reeves. Illustrated by Joan Kiddell-Monroe. Paperbound. Oxford: Oxford University Press. $3.98 from Better World Books, Feb., '10.

Here is a paperback version of the hardbound book first published in 1954. I also have a copy of the third impression from 1956. As I wrote of those two hardbound versions, I can find none of these nineteen stories that is a fable. This paperback version drops the eight full-page three-tone illustrations but keeps the many black-and-white designs along the way.

1989 Esopo: Fábulas. Prólogo y versión de Carmen Bravo-Villasante. Colored illustrations from Caxton's English edition of 1484. Printed in Spain. Los Jóvenes Bibliófilos. Palma de Mallorca: José J. de Olañeta. Gift of Gert-Jan van Dijk, Jan., '96.

A lovely little edition of thirty-five fables, extensively illustrated with Caxton's work now done in color. He is rarely thus chosen for his art, I believe. The text is a modernization of the 1489 edition here described as "Isopete historiado," which I believe is the same text reproduced in my 1489/1929 work. The text frequently takes one figure out of a fable's illustration and uses it as a little symbol after the fable-text; the effect is very pleasing. There is a T of C at the end. What a wonderful gift!

1989 Fabelhaft, sagte das Küken: 80 Fabeln nicht nur ans dem Leben der Hühner. Fritz Winterling. Vignetten Christian Mehrtens. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Mainz: Dr. Gisela Lermann Verlag. €5 from Buchhandlung Hans Mende, Karlsruhe, August, '06.

I have read the first ten pages of this surprising little book, and it is hard to stop. The book is building a full narrative out of a series of fables. And the subject, at least so far, is: fables. A young chick is challenging her mother about the wisdom of fables. The chick even tells a good one of her own: "Die Mäuse" (8) on collective bargaining of tax-paying mice against a tax-collecting cat. My sense is that the chick means this fable as a counter-fable against the received wisdom of fables that she finds boring. I hope I can find the occasion to read further. I will be curious to see how the argument comes out. Fritz Winterling seems to have been, among other things, a writer of school textbooks. The vignettes seem to be more printer's devices than anything connected with the overall story or the individual fables that make it up. 

1989 Fabeln: Textband. Günter Lachawitz & Kurt Smolak. Erste Auflage. Paperbound. Vienna: Orbis Latinus, Band 9: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky. Gift of Franz Kuhn, August, '95. 

Here is a classroom text prepared to the best standards of the German-speaking world. It has two companion volumes, a "Lehrer-Begleitband" and a "Kommentar." An introduction offers material on the history of fable, Phaedrus, the impact of ancient fable on later literature, and metrics. The following section presents seventeen fables of Phaedrus. This section is the heart of this 32-page pamphlet. A further section offers further helpful texts in two segments. The first contains four Latin texts of the Middle Ages, from Romulus Anglicus and Odo of Cherington. The final segment offers fifteen further texts, especially parallels. These German translations include material from Greek, German, French, and English. Even Thurber is represented here! This helpful pamphlet is meant for the fifth class at the gymnasium. There are a few black-and-white illustrations along the way, generally photographs of important illustrations of the text.

1989 Fabeln: Kommentarband. Günter Lachawitz & Kurt Smolak. Erste Auflage. Paperbound. Vienna: Orbis Latinus, Band 9: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky. Gift of Franz Kuhn, August, '95. 

Here is a commentary pamphlet prepared to the best standards of the German-speaking world. It has two companion volumes, a "Textband" and a "Lehrer-Begleitband." This volume offers commentary on the main section of the "Textband," that is, the fables of Phaedrus, and on the first segment of the subsequent section, namely on four Latin fables of the Middle Ages. There is nothing here dealing with the second segment of that section, which presents helpful comparative texts from other literatures. As the back of the title-page indicates, the first part of each fable's commentary consists in tips for construction and translation; the second part deals with literary, historical, and cultural information. The third segment presents questions for interpretation and for student writing. At the end one finds first a list of books used and secondly a list of abbreviations. There are 24 pages in this booklet.

1989 Fabeln und Erzählungen. Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. Mit Illustrationen von Johann Wilhelm Meil. Nachbemerkung von Andreas Zecher. Hardbound. Dust-jacket. Rostock: Hinstorff Verlag. DM 8 from Loschwitzer Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '01. 

This hardbound volume is unusual among the Gellert materials I have assembled. It presents only the first two books of Gellert's fables. The flyleaf explains "In contrast with its historical exemplar, the present book contains only the texts of the first two collections, which appeared in 1746 and 1748. It seems that they present Gellert's narrative talent at its most impressive." This edition uses the illustrations by Meil, apparently from the Leipzig edition of 1763. If Meil illustrated all the fables there, as the flyleaf seems to indicate, not all of them are illustrated here. Among the best of these full-page illustrations are: "Der Tanzbär" (13); "Inkle und Yariko" (34); "Der Selbstmord" (43); "Der erhörte Liebhaber" (100); "Der gütige Besuch" (107); "Der grüne Esel" (129); and "Der Polyhistor" (299).

1989 Fabeln von Aesop: Eine Auswahl aus dem Griechischen.  Jakovos Papadopoulos.  Drawings by Epi Frankopoulou.  Paperbound.  Frankfurt: Edition Fischer: R.G. Fischer Verlag.  €3.20 from Der-Philo-Soph, Viersen, Germany, July, '18.

1989 Fables. Jean de la Fontaine. Préface et commentaires de Marie-Madeleine Fragonard. Lire et Voir les Classiques. Paris: Presses Pocket. 40 F at Geronimo Livres, Metz, through Wendy Wright, Oct., '92.

An excellent pocket edition of the complete fables, not including the posthumous fables or the stories usually attached to the fable collection. The main source is given under the title of each fable. There is a good inserted section of illustrations: political cartoons, personification engravings, photographic "genre scenes," tapestry, lithography, Chauveau, Doré, Tokyo, Persian, Rabier, Disney. The preface stresses that La Fontaine's fables are written for adults; La Fontaine insists on the natural innocence of animals and the fundamental culpability of humans. "Nos frères les animaux servent à deux fins: miroirs de nos défauts, dénonciateurs de notre liberté pervertie" (12). Fable is never sad in its pessimism (but what of Gay's "Hare's Friends"?). There is good help at the end of the book: AI, extensive lexicon and a list of proper names, dedications and contemporaries. A final "dossier historique et littéraire" offers wonderful material, especially the "Fable and Fabulists," "Filmography and Adaptations," and a bibliography. The first of these gives an excellent, if Gallocentric, sweep through history, including fables as plays and proofs for God's existence! After La Fontaine, fable moves toward "contes en vers" (452). The twentieth century sees a decline in the genre. A little treasurehouse!

1989 Fables. Classic fables from Aesop and La Fontaine. A fable written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel. Four fables by Mirra Ginsburg, illustrated by Anita Lobel. Further illustrators Sharron O'Neill, Dorothy Stott, and Nobu Kaji. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $1.78 at Half-Price, Des Moines, Oct., '94.

This large-format pamphlet includes nine fables from Aesop, two from La Fontaine, one from Lobel, and four from Ginsburg. All but the last four have full-page color illustrations. Ginsburg's four stories are apparently four traditional Russian tales; three are familiar to me. Two of the book's morals are particularly apt: "You only trick yourself by pretending to be greater or more clever than you really are" for DLS (15) and "Common sense is often worth more than a whole bunch of tricks" for "The Cat and the Fox" (19). There is a mistake on 41, which claims that Lobel "began his career by illustrating other author's books."

1989 Fables and Tales Papercrafts. Written and illustrated by Jerome C. Brown. Fearon Teacher Aids. Belmont, CA: David S. Lake Publishers. Gift of the publisher, Nov., '89. Extra copy for $3 at Moe's, June, '89.

A clever book for coloring and making sculptures, puppets, and masks. It contains four fables and five other stories. Pages 17-32 of the extra are missing. I wrote the publisher, who graciously sent an intact copy.

1989 Fables de la Fontaine. avec 320 illustrations de Gustave Doré. Texte intégral. Prosveta. Beograd: Prosveta. $15 at Odyssey, Montreal, Oct., '95.

A beautiful huge book found at one of my first stops in an all-day Montreal bookstore tour. The closest parallel is the Chartwell/Ebeling Fables of La Fontaine of 1982. See my comments there. The two books are the same in format, pagination, and illustration plates. There are here eighty-four full-page Doré engravings; because they are done on better paper, they are wonderful to behold! Just after the AI (475-8) there is a list of the full-page illustrations. The two books differ in price by two cents!

1989 Fables de La Fontaine en Argot.  Jean de La Fontaine/Jean Alexandre.  Paperbound.  Étoile-sur-Rhone: Nigel Gauvin.  €2.50 from Pele-Mele, Brussels, August, '19. 

1989 Fables for the Nuclear Age. Alan Neidle. Illustrations by Jeff Leedy. Inscribed by the author. Paperback. NY: Paragon House. $12.

Excellent political satire. Neidle's work here is far better than that of most people attempting this genre. He is provocative and fresh. He was both observer of and participant in the State Department scene. Sometimes his anti-human fangs show, particularly in the whole section "Learning and Mislearning," especially "The Serpent Who Enticed The Homo Sapiens" (78) and "The Rattlesnake Who Explained His Behavior" (86). Similar cases are "The Parrot Who Knew All The Axioms Of Statesmanship" (129) and "The Gorilla Who Instructed The Scholar" (146). Among the best: "The Pikes Who Hated Each Other" (3), "The Sharks Who Engaged In Espionage" (30 and this whole section "Providing For The National Insecurity" generally), "The Woolly Rhinoceros Who Was Determined To Reverse His Fortunes" (106), "The Howler Monkey Who Practiced Public Diplomacy" (118), "The Sloth Who Was A Master Diplomat" (123), "The Wild Asses Who Believed In Their Own Virtue" (142), "The Animals Of The Farm Who Were Attacked By The Bees" (174), and "The Lizard Who Played Fast And Loose With His Tail" (181).

1989 Fábulas de Iriarte. Illustrator not acknowledged, but BORT appears on cover illustration. (c)1965 Susaeta Ediciones, Madrid. (c)1989 Mexico City: Suromex. Gift of Linda Schlafer, Jan., '95.

See my comments on the earlier 1980? Susaeta edition. This paperback contrasts with that by eliminating the multi-colored end-papers and the life of Iriarte. The pagination subtracts four pages from the 1980? total in each of the 66 cases because of these early pages that have been eliminated. The colored illustrations here are better rendered than there. This edition is printed in Mexico.

1989 fábulas de La Fontaine 1. Illustrations appear to be signed by C. Jimenez. Primera edición de Editorial Diana, 1980. Primera edición en la collección Cuentos y Fábulas de Editorial Origen, 1989. Printed in Mexico. Col. del Valle, México: Editorial Origen. $4.90 in Caracas, May, '91.

About eighty of LaFontaine's stories in prose, with a good cover illustration (GA) and simple illustrations with the fables. The thin paper hurts the art. The best illustration is of the wolf as a shepherd (44). No notes. T of C at the beginning. A close look at the first fable, GA, suggests that there are changes from La Fontaine's version: the ant tells the cicada to keep singing, and the moral chides both.

1989 fábulas de La Fontaine 2. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. Primera edición de Editorial Diana, 1980. Primera edición en la collección Cuentos y Fábulas de Editorial Origen, 1989. Printed in Mexico. Col. del Valle, México: Editorial Origen. $4.90 in Caracas, May, '91.

About seventy-five of La Fontaine's stories in prose, with a good cover illustration ("The Stork and the Fish") and simple illustrations with the fables. The thin paper hurts the art. The best illustrations are for "The Bear and the Gardener" (62) and "The Pig, the Goat, and the Sheep" (69). No notes. T of C at the beginning. The moral of "La Viduita" (22) misses the point, I believe.

1989 Fabulas de Samaniego. No illustrator acknowledged (but the cover-picture is signed "Mordillo"). (c)1965 Susaeta Ediciones, Madrid. (c)1989 Mexico City: Suromex. Gift of Linda Schlafer, Jan., '95.

Compare this paperbound book with my 1965 Susaeta Aesop hardbound. This little volume presents 83 of Samaniego's 157 fables. There is at least one of Mordillo's lively illustrations with each of the fables here, and many add an extra design. I like these witty illustrations. I would include the book in my "funny" section for expositions. There are four parts, each with its own T of C at its beginning.

1989 Fabulas: Esopo. Nuevamente contadas por Francisco Sanz Franco. Cover by Jaume Grácia Albiol and seven colored interior illustrations by Jaume Gracia. (The parallel edition of Samaniego [1986/89] included art by Jaime Gracia Albiol.) Printed in Mexico. Aedo series. On cover: Noriega Editores. (c)1988 Verón/editores. Mexico City: Limusa. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Nov., '95.

See 1975 and then 1986/89 for Fabulas: Felix Maria Samaniego, the latter most closely paralleling this book with seven full-page colored illustrations, identified on the reverse. 257 fables after a short introduction and before a glossary and T of C. As in the 1986/89 edition, there are advertisements at the end for other Aedo publications. The illustrations are superior here, perhaps due in part to the better stock on which they are printed. I admit that I cannot make my way through either the variant spellings of the artist's name (that is the same person, is it not?) or the various indications of the publisher and series.

1989 Fábulas Españolas. Carmen Bravo-Villasante. Paperbound. Madrid: El Carnaval de las Letras: Montena. $25 from Waverley Books, UK, through abe, March, '04.

This is a fine introduction to Spanish fables. It chooses, I believe, the right classic fabulists. Samaniego has eight fables here, Iriarte eight, Hartzenbush ten, Miguel Agustín Príncipe twelve, Ramón de Campoamor nine, Concepción Aarenal eight, and Francisco Garcés de Marcilla six. The front and back covers have fold-back extensions that can serve as place-marks. There are occasional illustrations from the classic presentations of specific authors. They seem to belong particularly to Samaniego and to Miguel Agustín Príncipe. My prize goes to "El Mono Frenólogo" (132) of Francisco Garcés de Marcilla. 

1989 Fábulas: Félix María Samaniego. Introducción by Basilio Losada. Cubierta e ilustraciones interiores (7) de Jaime Gracia Albiol. Colleción Aedo. Printed in Mexico. (c)Verón/editor. Mexico City: Editorial Limusa. See 1986/89.

1989 Fabulas para Todos (Rafael Pombo y Otros). Compilación de Agustín Uhía Pinilla. Illustrations by various artists. Printed in Colombia. Bogotá: Educar Cultural Recreativa Ltda. $3.95 at Powell's, Portland, March, '96.

This large-format, paperbound booklet contains twenty fables, fourteen of them by Pombo, who seems to be praised here as the Colombian writer. Pombo's fables here are all in verse. The other fabulists included here are Acosta (Venezuela), Marroquín (Colombia), Lizardi (Mexico), Mera (Ecuador), Moreno (Mexico), and de la Barra (Chile). Most of the fables here are unfortunately one good step beyond my Spanish skills. I think I have a good sense of what is being said in one or two like "El Gato Guardian" (15). Is "La Paloma y la Abeja" (17) Aesopic? The illustrative styles vary greatly; all the illustrations inside are black-and-white.

1989 Fabulas Policromas. Francisco Reyes. Limited to 1000 copies. Paperbound. San Salvador, El Salvador: RHD Editorial. $3 from Book Ark, NY, perhaps in 1998.

There are twenty-seven fables here in rhyming Spanish verse. Two take up a double-page spread. All the others have one page apiece. There are seven Thurberesque drawings. Perhaps three of the best stories here are "La Respuesta" (25), "El Zopilote y la Luciérnaga" (27), and "Pequeño consejero" (34). "An old brayer asked his shadow: 'Why do you always persecute me?' The burro halted an instant and the shadow answered: 'Since you are still alive'" (25). A proud buzzard claimed that people took him for an aircraft, and a firefly promptly had no problem declaring that people thought her a star. A rabbit counseled a horse that mountain-climbing takes effort, but coming down costs only a smile. These are fun!

1989 Fairy Tales and Fables from Weimar Days. Edited and Translated by Jack Zipes. Dust jacket. Hanover: University Press of New England. $5 at Powell's, Chicago, August, '96.

I had decided many times not to pick up this $30 book but was tempted this time by the low price. The easy comment is that there are no real fables here. There is, however, a good section of "Animal Wisdom." The stories that are best and most fable-like in it are all except the first and last, both of which probably run too long to be considered fables at all. The stories tend to play on the antinomy of human and beast—to the disadvantage of the human.

1989 Favorite Children's Stories from China and Tibet. By Lotta Carswell Hume. Illustrations by Lo Koon-chiu. First paperback edition. Printed in Japan. Rutland, Vermont & Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company. See 1962/89.

1989 Favorite Fables in Our Lives: Aesop's Fables and Original Application Stories. Judy L. Paris and Sandra D. Tracy. Illustrations by Megan Higgins Graphic Design. First printing. Paperbound. San Diego: Dormac, Inc. $8.98 from Elsie's Books and More, Lombard, IL, Sept., '12.

This paperback book of some 98 pages builds off of a 1982 effort by the same authors, Fables by Aesop. That was a large-format (8½" x 11") classroom book of 65 pages that matched each of ten Aesopic fables with an application story. It offered vocabulary, study questions, and evaluation. Each of the fables had a substantial illustration. This book is smaller in format, has less complex material, and offers simpler, smaller illustrations. It matches each of thirty fables with an immediate application story. Both the fables and the application stories that are taken over from the earlier volume are further developed. The illustrations here seem often to be clip art objects brought together rather than illustrations created for this particular story. After each fable there is not only a moral but a section that begins "The moral means." Dormac moved in the meantime from Beaverton to San Diego. I am a little surprised that this book has eluded me until now. 

1989 Foolish Miss Crow. Text and illustrations by Peter Firmin. The Old Tree Stories. Apparently first edition. Manufactured in Hong Kong. NY: Delacorte Press: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. $5.95 at Bookdale's, Richfield, MN, July, '94.

Advertised on the back cover as containing "delightful twists of Æsop's Tales." Here the fox lures the crow not with flattery but with clothes, and the prize is not cheese but the crow herself. Firmin has fun away from the action with musical grasshoppers. Delightful contemporary art.

1989 Hungry Mr. Fox. Text and illustrations by Peter Firmin. The Old Tree Stories. Apparently first edition. Manufactured in Hong Kong. NY: Delacorte Press: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Christmas, '93. Extra copy for $5.98 at Bookdale's, Richfield, MN, July, '94.

Advertised on the back cover as containing "delightful twists of Æsop's Tales." The closest Aesopic fables I can remember are about the picky heron (but there the victims get smaller and do no pleading) and about a variety of victims who promise in vain that they will come back when they are bigger. The fox here releases a mouse, a rat, and a hare before he finally, foolishly bites into a bear's nose. Here Firmin has fun away from the action with cowboy ants that end up riding beetles like horses. Delightful contemporary art.

1989 Iani Novák Aesopia/Jan Novák: Aesopia. VI Phaedri fabellae cantatae et saltatae choro et symphoniacis paucis aut binis clauibus/Sechs Fabeln des Phaedrus, gesungen und getanzt für Chor und kleines Orchester oder zwei Klaviere. Herausgegeben mit deutscher Übersetzung und Vorrede von Wilfried Stroh. Zeichnungen von Ruth Vogt. Sodalitas Ludis Latinis. Institut für Klassische Philologie der Universität München. Gift of Viktor Pöschl, Jan., '92.

A delightful pamphlet featuring "Introitus," "Exitus," and six fables in between. Jan Novák had fled from Czechoslovakia, apparently after the putting down of the 1968 "Prague Spring." He wrote these fables in Neu-Ulm in 1981 three years before his death. WL has clear implications for him for the plight of his plundered country. "Introitus" and "Exitus" play nicely with the way Aesop presented men's faults in varying sizes: "magna, parva, media."

1989 It's Raining Cats and Dogs... and other Beastly Expressions. Christine Ammer. Illustrated by Cathy Bobak. Paperback. Second Printing. NY: Paragon House. $4.95 at Allen's, Baltimore, Nov., '91.

The larger-format original from which the 1989 Dell edition of the same title was made. The Dell edition omits the illustrations. See my comments on the text there. Note that page numbers for references change from one edition to the other. One illustration presents Aesop's wolf in sheep's clothing (137).

1989 It's Raining Cats and Dogs... and other Beastly Expressions. Christine Ammer. Paperback. A Laurel Book. NY: Dell Publishing. $5.95, Fall, '90.

Less scholarly than Animal Crackers (1983) but more extensive and colorful. There is one outrageous goof on 234, which mistakes Gregor Mendel for Gregor Samsa! There is lots of good Aesop here: BC (3); DM (22); MM (35); GGE (50); DLS (68); FC and FG (116); putting on a lion's skin, LS, LM, and AL (121-4); TH (139); the nurse throwing a baby to the wolf (identified as in thirty-six Aesopic fables), the wolf in sheep's clothing, crying "Wolf!" (155); the nightingale and the hawk (163); the jay in peacock feathers (196); FK, the frog and the rat, OF (differently told: the ox steps on the frog after it swells; there is no explosion, 207); nourishing a snake in one's bosom (215); and TH again (220).

1989 Jean de La Fontaine: Fables Choisies.  Illustrated by G. Raimon et C. Toutain.  Hardbound.  Fables et Chansons: Hemma.  €4 from a bouquinist in Paris, July, '23.

1989 Jump On Over! The Adventures of Brer Rabbit and His Family.  Joel Chandler Harris; Adapted by Van Dyke Parks and Malcolm Jones.  Illustrated by Barry Moser.  First edition, first printing.  Paperbound.  San Diego: Voyager Books: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.  $11.99 from 1410Janet, Franktown CO, through eBay, July, '14.  

1989 Kalila wa Dimna. An Animal Allegory of the Mongol Court. The Istanbul University Album. Jill Sanchia Cowen. First edition? Dust jacket. NY: Oxford University Press. $25 from the publisher, Feb., '92. Extra copy for $17.95 from Imagination Books, Silver Spring, March, '92.

A beautiful oversize art-history book featuring the IUL (Istanbul University Library) illustrations, which have been in Istanbul since 1576. A fine introduction traces the history of the text and the illustrations. The text here serves the illustrations. The latter were cropped and remounted out of order in the sixteenth century. Part of the purpose of this book is to establish the correct sequence. The structure of what is presented here includes a prologue and eleven chapters. Illustrating these are fifty-four illustrations, each with its chapter. Illustrations numbered with a b or c are comparison illustrations from a set other than IUL. Twenty-six of these illustrations are also presented in color (between 50 and 51). The most surprising story to me here is DS (50): I had not known that this story comes from this tradition.

1989 La cigarra y la hormiga.  F.M.a Samaniego; Adaptación Isidro Sanchez.  Illustrated by Isidre Monés.  Hardbound.  Barcelona: Fábulas y Leyendas: Multilibro SA.  $10 from Christian Tottino, Buenos Aires, through eBay, August, '18.

1989 La Fontaine: Cent Fables.  Présentée par Pierre Daninos, Commentées par Claude Esteban.  Illustrées par Pierre-Yves Trémois.  Boxed.  Hardbound.  Paris: Sélection du Reader's Digest.  €30 from a buchinist, Paris, July, '22.

1989 La Fontaine Fabeln.  Translated by Martin Remané.  Ten plates by Josef Prause.  #9 of 15; each illustration signed by Prause.  Hardbound.  Genthin, Germany.  €350 from Peter Bichsel, Zurich, July, '23.

1989 La Fontaine Fables I: Livres 1 à 6. Claude Dreyfus. Paperbound. Paris: Classiques Larousse: Librairie Larousse. See 1971/89.

1989 Le corbeau et le renard.  Paul Colinet and Robert Willems.  Illustrated by Robert Willems?  #272 of 300.  Pamphlet.  Morlanwelz, Belgium: Les Marées de la Nuit.  €10 from Wallonie Bruxelles, Paris, June, '22.

1989 Le Monde Magique des Fables de la Fontaine. Illustré par Antoni Rodowicz. Hardbound. Paris: Comptoir du Livre Crealivres. €5.50 from J.M. Hardouin through eBay, Dec., '05. 

There are 190 pages in this large-format (8" x 11") book, including a T of C at the end. Most fables receive one or two pages. The illustrations show up in a pleasing diversity. There are full-page illustrations both in black-and-white and in color; there are partial-page designs in both formats; and finally there are in both formats some small repeated designs and endpieces, sometimes with a subject unrelated to the fable at hand. Among the best of the illustrations are "Le Chat, la Belette, et le Petit Lapin" (24); "Le Corbeau Voulant Imiter l'Aigle" (36); "Le Singe et le Dauphin" (41), which pictures both animals underwater; DS (78); "La Grenouille et le Rat" (87, also on the cover); "Le Rat Qui s'Est Retiré du Monde" (117); and "Le Lion Abattu par l"Homme" (131). The colored illustrations are heavy on pastel colors and seem almost to be done with a colored pencil and not a brush.

1989 Le Songe d'un Habitant du Mogol & autres fables de la Fontaine illustrées par les miniatures d'Imam Bakhsh peintre à la cour de Lahore. Paperbound. Boxed. Printed in France. Paris: Réunion des Musées nationaux, Imprimerie nationale. 250 Francs from a Seine bookseller, Paris, August, '99.

This is a delightful large-format book of some 192 pages featuring the fifty-nine miniatures painted by Imam Bakhsh at the court of Lahore from 1837 on. As far as I can understand, these miniatures are now preserved at the Jean de la Fontaine Museum in Château-Thierry. They are exquisite! Let me list some of my favorites: "The Crow Wishing to Imitate an Eagle" (23); MSA (29); FWT (41); "The Horse and the Wolf" (42); FG (48, an absolute star!); "The Stag Seeing Himself in the Water" (53); "The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox" (71); "The Rat and the Elephant" (81); "The Wolf and the Hunter" (90); CW (103); "The Dream of the Citizen of the Mogul's Land" (137); and "The Sun and the Frogs" (169). The introduction and appendices give some of the history of this remarkable set of artifacts. As the opening "Avertissement de l'Éditeur" points out, the fables that happen to be illustrated here are in many cases not La Fontaine's most famous. T of C at the back. I consider this a very lucky find!

1989 Le Songe d'un Habitant du Mogol & autres fables de la Fontaine.  Illustrées par les miniatures d'Imam Bakhsh peintre à la cour de Lahore.  Boxed.  Paperbound.  Paris: Réunion des Musées nationaux, Imprimerie nationale.  €25 from Librairie de l'Avénue, August, '14.  

1989 Les Jatakas: Contes de l'Asie Bouddhiste: Les vies antérieures du Bouddha.  Teisen Perusat Stork.  Paperbound.  Paris: Contes Populaires du Monde: Éditions Publisud.  €8 from Librairie de l'Avenue, August, '17.

1989 Little People™ Big Book About Animals. Editors: Christopher Medina and Jane Stine. Illustrators: Yvette Banek, Paul Richer, and John Speirs. First printing. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books. $1.95 at Powell's, Portland, March, '96.

A wildly varied collection of stories, poems, games, and reports. TH gets five pages (20-24). The two live together and are the opposite in everything. Tortoise's constant retort is "Slow and steady" does this and that and the other thing. After arriving near the finish line, Hare enjoys carrotburgers and strawberry shakes at Badget Diner and loses track of the time. There is no sleep involved. The bet on the race involves making a pot of soup, and it turns out to be the best the two have ever had.

1989 MAD Fantasy, Fables, and Other Foolishness. Written and Illustrated by Biz-Artist Duck Edwing. First printing. Paperback. Printed in USA. NY: Warner Books: E.C. Publications, Inc. $1.49 from Edie Gunter, Crossville, TN, through Ebay, Oct., '00.  Extra copy for $2.25 from Jamie Swedberg, Union Point, GA, through eBay, March, '04.

This paperback is filled with typical zany MAD Magazine humor. Fables in anything like the Aesopic sense find, I think, just one representative here in a two-page, three-panel cartoon. In the first panel, the tortoise and hare stand poised at the starting line. In the second, there is only "Va Voom" and a lot of dust. In the third, a shell-less turtle at the finishing line is inspecting the putt-putt motor inside his little shell-mobile.

1989 Marc Chagall: Die 100 Radierungen zu den Fabeln von La Fontaine. Mit einer Einführung von Otto Breicha. Paperbound. Salzburg: Landessammlungen Rupertinum. Obtained in an exchange of publications for my catalogue, August, '97.

I first learned of this publication by seeing it in the Victoria and Albert Museum. I tried to purchase it subsequently through Schoenhof's in Cambridge. They came back with the answer that it was not for sale because of copyright considerations, so I asked if they could give me the name of someone at the Rupertinum. I wrote and asked about the possibility of an exchange. Six weeks later this lovely edition appeared in my mail! It is hard to reproduce the liveliness of Chagall's originals, I think. I was much more stunned by the vivacity of the originals in the V & A than I am by these reproductions. But until I can find and finance an original set, this is a wonderful second-best! Some of my favorites on this trip through have been FG (XXXV), 2P (LIII), "Die Alte und die beiden Mägde" (LVI), "Der Löwe und der Jäger" (LXV), and "Die junge Witwe" (LXXII). I can find no indication whose German translation of La Fontaine is used here. This book represents a real catch for the collection!

1989. Marie de France: Fabulas Medievales (Ysopet). Edición de Joëlle Eyheramonno. Illustratión de Jason Carter. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Madrid. Grupo Anaya. See 1988/89.

1989 Martin Luthers Fabeln und Sprichwörter. Mit Einleitung und Kommentar, herausgegeben von Reinhard Dithmar. Mit zahlreichen Abbildungen. Apparently first printing. Paperbound. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Taschenbuch 1094: Insel Verlag. €3.33 from Daniela Birreck, Germany, through eBay, Dec., '05. 

This is a fine Insel paperback. Dithmar lays out important texts in careful fashion, starting from Luther's thirteen fables of 1530 and their antecedents in Steinhöwel's Liber Primus. I take Dithmar's thesis to be that many commentators pounce on these thirteen fables as though they were Luther's word on the subject. Dithmar says rather that fable was important to Luther's thinking at a very basic level throughout his life. Dithmar goes on to present Luther's old-testament fables and then a set of fables labeled simply "Luthers Fabeln." These seem to be individual stories for individual purposes; that is, Luther created them for individual literary creations. Such is, e.g., "Vom Reichstag der Dohlen und Krähen," which Dithmar subtitles "Luthers Brief an die Wittenberger Tischgesellen." New to me here, among Steinhöwel's woodcuts, is the image of "Papstesel" (87), an ass that incorporates in a rather voluptuous body the features of many different animals. There follow sections "Aus Luthers Tischreden" (119) and "Luthers Theorie und Urteile über die Fabel" (155). Next we find the collection of Luther's proverbs; these are of course all over whatever of his writings I have seen, including the fables. Dithmar does very good work, as far as I have checked, in the fifty-page section on sources and commentary. What a rich little volume!

1989 Mon Grand Livre de Fables d'Ésope. Editor and illustrator not acknowledged. Hardbound. Printed in Spain. Mantes-la-Jolie, France: Éditions Ronde du Tournesol: Tournesol S.A.R.L. $15 from T.W. & Barbara Clemmer, Booksellers, Richboro, PA, through ABE, May, '00.

The original copyright on this book (1989) belongs to Susaeta in Madrid, who also printed the book. This is a large (slightly under 8½" x 11") hardbound book with delightful colored illustrations for each of its eighty fables. Each fable gets one page. T of C at the end. The two endpapers at each end on the court of the lion are nice mirror images of each other. The four parts have twenty fables each. Do not miss the larger illustrations just before Parts II, III, and IV. Each fable ends in a conversational moral, like this for DLS (9): "C'est ainsi que les gens sans culture, qui se déguisent en savants, finissent toujours par se faire démasquer." Of course it is unusual to find a French book presenting Aesop rather than La Fontaine, and so it is instructive to see how this text understands fables generally interpreted through La Fontaine. When the man complains about God's justice but kills many ants because one bit him, it is an angel that sets him straight (11). "Le Nègre" appears here (13), though it seldom does any more in American editions. The eagle drops the turtle when he can no longer put up with his vanity; the turtle has just said in mid-air that the people below ought to envy his destiny (20). I can understand, perhaps for the first time, "The Rabbit and the Fox" (22): When the former asks the latter why he is called "The Profiteer," the latter invites the former home to dinner to find out. There is no dinner at home, and the rabbit understands just before his death that the fox gets his name not from profits but from schemes. In CW, a fairy makes the two transformations (23). "Le Chien invité" (40) wants to hide the fact that he was deceived and so lies to those who ask him how the party was; the moral is that we should not trust those who promise us the possessions of others. The fox swept away by the current tells the other foxes that he has a message to give to heaven and will show them the best drinking place when he returns (45); the moral is that we should not endanger ourselves by showing off in front of others. "Le Chat et les Rats" (55) shows the cat hanging not from a peg but from a beam. The parrot points out to the cat that his voice is pleasant while the cat's is not, and so the master has forbidden the cat to speak but will not forbid him (57). SS is told with two asses making one trip (59); the copycat carrying the sponges dies. The illustration that extends over both covers is signed "Ariza."

1989 More of Brer Rabbit's Tricks.  Ennis Rees.  Drawings by Edward Gorey.  First Hopscotch Books Edition.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Birmingham, AL: Hopscotch Books.  $7.50 from Bluestem Books, Lincoln, NE, Dec., '14.  

1989 My Book of Animal Stories. No general editor acknowledged. Artists include Roger Langton, Richard Hook, Rowan Clifford, Ken Stott, and Malcolm Livingstone. Printed in Spain. (c)1988 Marshall Cavendish. NY: Gallery Books. $3 at Powell's on Wabash, June, '94.

Identical with Cavendish's 1988 book with the same title. See my comments there. The bar code and the price in pounds have been removed from the back cover.

1989 Nonsense Literature for Children: Aesop to Seuss.  Celia Catlett Anderson & Marilyn Fain Apseloff.  Various artists.  Foreword by William Cole. Afterword by Nancy Willard.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Hamden, CT: Library Professional Publications.  $15.72 from Amazon, March, '19.

1989 Oriental Stories for Young and Old. Leon Comber. Illustrated by Teo Kim Heng and Lo Koon-Chiu. Singapore: Graham Brash. See 1979/88/89.

1989 Overhead Transparencies for Creative Dramatics: Fables I. Concept and stories retold by Cheryl McGlocklin. Illustrated by Terra Muzick. For Grades 2-5. Cypress, CA: Creative Teaching Press. $10.95 at Stephenson's, Omaha, May, '91.

A very nice approach to teaching fables, of which eight are given here in good versions. The special appeal here is twofold: excellent overhead-projection transparencies for settings and masks/headbands for characters. In the most quaint of the transparencies, a cat looks in at the mouse-hole (T4). The town mouse arrives in a car; the country mouse jumps into a taxi headed back to the country.

1989 Phaedrus: Der Wolf und das Lamm. Fabeln. Lateinisch und deutsch. Herausgegeben von Volker Riedel. Übersetzung von Eduard Saenger (with some by Siebelis and some by Irmscher). 15 Illustrationen von Gisela Kohl. Leipzig: Verlag Philipp Reclam jun. $5.95 at Schoenhof, June, '91.

Just what a German book should be! The verse translation seems to render Phaedrus in lapidary fashion. The Latin and the German are sometimes side by side, sometimes one over the other. Saenger's 1929 translation is complemented by the simple but attractive illustrations. Helpful essay, notes, bibliography, thematic and motif indices, and T of C. A special feature of the book is the seven fables done, with translations, in six original versions--including Luther, LaFontaine, and Krylov.

1989 Phèdre: Fables. Texte Établi et Traduit par Alice Brenot. Collection des Universités de France publiée sous le patronage de l' Association Guillaume Budé. Quatrième tirage. Paris: Societé d'édition "Les Belles Lettres." See 1923/89.

1989 Poniendo el cascabel al gato/Belling the cat. Eugenia De Hoogh. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. See 1977/89/90.

1989 sapere e paradosso nell' antichita: esopo e la favola.  Stefano Jedrikiewicz.  Paperbound.  Roma: edizioni dell' ateneo.  Gift of Gert-Jan Van Dyck, August, '17.

1989 Stories of the Buddha: Being Selections from the Jataka. Translated and edited by Caroline A.F. Rhys Davids. Paperback. Originally published by F.A. Stokes Co. in 1929. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. $6.95 from Dundee Book, Nov., '93.

I believe this is the most scholarly of the Jatakas texts I have. Davids describes on xvii the "full jataka garb," much in evidence here. For Davids, the theme of these stories is "man willing the better becomes the better" (xix). This story collection is a "treasury of teaching for the many." Much as I want to agree with her, I read the first thirty of the forty-seven (out of 550 total Jataka) tales here, and I just cannot go further. Of all the forms and translations in which I have read these tales, this is the most confusing. Perhaps it supposes so much that I do not know. I used a xerox of the T of C to take notes on those thirty, but sadly I found that the stories had become a chore.

1989 Strekoza i Muravei. I.A. Krylov. Drawings by S. Yaravago. Moscow: Children's Literature. $.95 at Schoenhof's, Dec., '89. One extra copy.

Seven delightfully illustrated fables. The GA illustration on both covers and with the first fable may be the best, but all the illustrations are good.

1989 Tales from Kalila wa Dimna: An Arabic Reader. Munther A. Younes. First edition? Yale Language Series. New Haven: Yale University Press. $5 at A Collector's Bookshop, St. Louis, March, '95.

A real treat waiting for anyone who takes some Arabic! This is of course a curious book because the title-pages are in the right places for both cultures. Younes groups and works with forty-six of the tales. A very nice, sturdy textbook. I wish I could read it!

1989 Tales of a Long Afternoon. Five fables and one other retold by Max Bolliger. Paintings by Jindra Capek. Translated by Joel Agee from the 1988 German. Dust jacket. Printed in Hong Kong. NY: E.P. Dutton. $13.95 at Ketterson's, Omaha, May, '90. Extra copy for $6.50 at Wessex, Menlo Park, Aug., '94.

I really like this book. It gathers its five fables into one story. Four "one-upmanship" fables break up the storytelling group as animals proclaim "it served him right." The peacocks picked out even the crow's crow-feathers! The lion restores harmony by telling LM. The excellent paintings are tapestry-like. Is that Gheeraerts' influence behind the LM painting?

1989 The Ant and the Dove: An Aesop Tale Retold. By Mary Lewis Wang. Illustrated by Ching. Prepared under the direction of Robert Hillerich. First edition. Start-Off Stories. Chicago: Childrens Press. $3.95 at The Children's Bookstore, Chicago, Sept., '91.

A very nicely executed book. The colored art is crisp and lively; the designs move nicely beyond the borders of the picture. The net-preparing man wears Oshkosh coveralls. The big bite is wonderfully pictured on 25. In the same series as The Lion and the Mouse (1986).

1989 The Collected Writings of Ambrose Bierce. Introduction by Clifton Fadiman. Paperbound. Printed in USA. NY: A Citadel Press Book: Carol Publishing Group. $12 from Zane W. Gray, Bookseller, Fairfield, PA, Jan., '98.

I am delighted to have found this book. It brings several things to my growing collection of Bierce materials. First there are, in the "Fantastic Fables" section of the book (543-660), fifteen short prose fables (632-6) from the London "Fun" from 1872-73. They are new to me. The best of them may be "The Man with the Goose" on 633. There are then forty-five fables in an "Aesopus Emendatus" section and seventeen in "Old Saws with New Teeth," none of them new to me. There follow seven fables in rhyme, all new to me. My first reading of these inclines me to believe that prose was Bierce's medium! A final help is Fadiman's essay from 1946. It sets a very good tone for understanding Bierce as bitterly brutal. Fadiman writes of the "Fantastic Fables" that one should read no more than a dozen of them at a time. "Their quality lies in their ferocious concentration of extra-double-distilled essential oil of misanthropy. They are so condensed that they take your breath away. The theme is always the same: mankind is a scoundrel; but the changes rung upon the theme demonstrate an almost abnormal inventiveness" (xviii). The book was first published in 1946 by the Citadel Press.

1989 The Dream of an Inhabitant of Mogul & other fables translated into English verse by Walter Thornbury.  Jean de La Fontaine.  Boxed.  Paperbound.  Paris: Réunion des Musées nationaux, Imprimerie nationale.  €5 from Librairie de l'Avénue, August, '14.  

1989 The Emperor's New Clothes.  H.C. Andersen.  Illustrated by Michael Adams.  First printing.  Hardbound.  Morris Plains, NJ: Through the Magic Window: The Unicorn Publishing House.  $2.50 from Armadillo's Pillow, Chicago, July, '15.

1989 The Fables of Aesop. Selected and Illustrated by David Levine. Translated by Patrick and Justina Gregory. Hardbound. NY: Dorset Press. See 1975/89.

1989 The Hare and the Tortoise. A Read Along With Me Book. Retold by Kit Schorsch. Illustrated by Erasmo Hernandez. Cover by Darcy May. NY: Checkerboard Press. Gift of Linda Schlafer, Nov., '92. Extra copy for $1 with slightly different bibliographical information format, a price printed on the cover, and a price written inside, at the Sebastopol flea market, Aug., '93.

Another cute rebus story from Checkerboard in the series that includes The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse (1989). Each picture is given with its word in the margin. Hernandez' pastels are appealing. The best illustration might be the last, with its angry and frustrated bunny. Animal cheerleaders urge the tortoise along his way. Other animals hold ribbons at the start and the finish.

1989 The Hare and the Tortoise. Helen Arnold. Illustrated by Val Biro and Tony Kenyon. First printing. Paperbound. London: A Piccolo Original; Level 3 Read Together: Pan Books and Macmillan Education Publishers. $3.95 from Awesome Books, Wallingford, UK, April, '12.

This 32-page pamphlet is for readers of age 4 to 5+. Biro's art on the cover and in the fable itself is unmistakeable. The frame-story pictures of a father and his two children I guess to be the work of Kenyon. Everything in the family portion of this booklet is dialogue, and so every statement appears both in prose at the bottom of the page and in "balloons" emanating from characters in the illustrations. In this version of the fable, Hare provokes the bet by asking Tortoise if he would like some cabbages. The race will end there. On the way, Hare finds himself thirsty in the hot sun, and so goes off to refresh himself with a drink from a pond. Then he feels tired in that hot sun and decides on a "little sleep" (20). At sundown, when Hare finally arrives at the cabbage patch, he asks Tortoise where all the cabbages are. "Inside me!" answers Tortoise (26). Biro's best picture may be right there. After the story, there are "Things to talk about with your children"; "Looking at pictures and words with your children"; and "Things for your child to do." This seems to be the only fable among the twenty-four books at six levels that make up the "Read Together" series. The front cover is creased.

1989 The Medici Aesop. Edited by Adele Westbrook. Translated from the Greek by Bernard McTigue. Color photographs of both sides of the seventy-five folios of the 1488(?) manuscript, including the miniatures of Gherardo di Giovanni. Printed and bound in Japan. NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. See 1488?/1989.

1989 The Ready Readers Theater presents Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Jo Anna Poehlmann. Paperbound. Racine, WI: Ready Readers Theater: Copycat Press. $1.99 from Georgeanne Keslner, Divernon, IL, through eBay, April, '04. 

This is a book or reproducible pages for teachers to use with primary classes. Each of seven fables is given six or seven pages. The pages regularly include cut-outs for faces. The booklet's suggestion is that the teacher enlarge the pages to poster size using an overhead projector. One would then trace them on posterboard. The book exemplifies how teaching is geared to the technology of a given time. I am particularly glad to see a favorite fable, "The Bug and the Bull," included here. The other fables presented include FG, BC, FC, DS, LM, and GA.

1989 The Secret of Happiness and Other Fantastic Fables. Ambrose Bierce. Photographs by Tom Collicott. Gift book. Printed in Italy. NY: Belles Lettres: Stewart, Tabori & Chang. $.59 from Gale Barkus at Last Stop Book Outlet, Nelsonville, NY, Sept., '98. One extra copy for the same price at the same time.

This is a "gift book" complete with its own envelope, ready to send. Inside are nine fables from Bierce's Fantastic Fables, each presented in a two-page spread including a photographic collage. Among the best are "Moral Principle and Material Interest," "Two Poets" (my favorite here), "Fortune and Fabulist," and "The Dutiful Son." The booklet is indeed beautifully made, complete with its own slip-jacket.

1989 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. A Read Along With Me Book. Retold by Kit Schorsch. Illustrated by Pat Schories. NY: Checkerboard Press. Bought in a boxed set of six books for $4.99 at Target, Omaha, Dec., '89.

A cute rebus story with the maid and cat intruding. Each picture is given with its word in the margin. The best illustration has the cat's nose and paws inside the mice's hole. The mice are cute. The country Mouse reiterates his desire for peace several times.

1989 The Watercolours and Drawings of Thomas Bewick and His Workshop Apprentices, Volume One.  Iain Bain.  Work of Thomas Bewick.  Hardbound.  Mickley, Northumberland: Thomas Bewick Birthplace Trust.  $7.80 from Structure, Verses, Agency Books, Spray, OR, through ABE, March, '23.

1989 The Watercolours and Drawings of Thomas Bewick and His Workshop Apprentices, Volume Two.  Iain Bain.  Thomas Bewick.  Hardbound.  Mickley, Northumberland: Thomas Bewick Birthplace Trust.  $7.80 from Structure, Verses, Agency Books, Spray, OR,  through ABE, March, '23.

1989 Walt Disney's American Classics: Brer Rabbit in the Briar Patch.  Hardbound.  Greenwich, CT: Walt Disney's American Classics:  Twin Books: Mallard Press.  $35 from Second Story, Dupont Circle, May, '19.

1989 World's Greatest Collection of Fairy Tales. Cover by Mike Denman. Paperbound. Printed in USA. Southeastern, PA: Stoneway Books. $10.00 from Antique Interiors, Bismarck, ND, May, '98.

This book is telephone-book size! About three-fourths of the way into its over 1000 pages, it presents TH in a twenty-page section. There is some coloring, much of it well done! The course here goes through a carrot field. After the story, there are some dots to connect. And the tortoise reappears on the book's second-to-last page. The book's last page presents a T of C as clues for a "Word Find" puzzle.

1989 21 Fabeln.  Christine Gansen-Hainze.  Paperbound.  Bonn.  €6.30 from Antiquariat B. Hoffmann, Kall, Nov., '22.

1989 100 Ancient Chinese Fables. Chinese-English. K.L. Kiu. Published and printed in Hong Kong. See 1985/89.

1989 [Korean]. (Aesop's Fables). Volume 2 of two Aesop volumes boxed with a tape. TH on cover. Edited by Jae Chon Song. Illustrator not acknowledged. Volume 12 of an overall series of twenty. Seoul: Mun Gong Sa. $2.10 on street near Eastgate in Seoul, June, '90.

Typical of recent Korean work: one design echoes the facing full page. The art is bright, sometimes strong and lively, sometimes only cute. There are five fables here: "The Fox, the Rooster, and the Dog"; TH; "The Cat and the Dog over the Steak with the Fox" (the best); "Borrowed Feathers"; and DS. Volume I is listed under 1990 with the same title.

1989/90 Fabeln: Lehrerbegleitband. Günter Lachawitz & Kurt Smolak. Reprinting of the 1989 first edition. Paperbound. Vienna: Orbis Latinus: Verlag Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky. Gift of Franz Kuhn, August '95. 

Here is a teacher's-companion-pamphlet prepared to the high standards of the German-speaking world. It has two companion volumes, a "Textband" and a "Kommentarband." This volume comments on the classic texts in the first chapter of the text and the medieval texts in the early part of the second chapter. My impression is that the numbered remarks for each text here provide good pedagogical background material, especially historical and literary-critical. There is no commentary on poems in the final section of the Textband. There are 16 pages in this booklet.

1989/91 Anno's Aesop. A Book of Fables by Aesop and Mr. Fox. Retold and illustrated by Mitsumasa Anno. Paperbound. First edition. Printed in Italy. London: Picture Puffins: Penguin Books. $11.40 at Ibis in Glasglow, July, '92.

See my comments on the hardbound version in 1989. I note almost no changes from the hardbound, except that in the last page's credits the 1912 edition used is now referred to in terms of both its publisher (Heinemann) and its translator (V.S. Vernon Jones), not just the former. The illustrations are very well reproduced.

1989/91 Fábulas de Iriarte. 2a. Impresión. Paperbound. Colonia del Valle, México: Cuentos y Fábulas de Editorial Origen: Editorial Origen. $20 from Christian723 through eBay, July, '12.

This paperback booklet of 136 pages is in a series with several others I have from Origen, notably one volume of Samaniego and two volumes of La Fontaine. The special value of this book lies, I believe, in its illustrations of Iriarte. Perhaps because he wrote literary satires and not children's literature, he is seldom illustrated. Here sixty-seven fables are presented, with some seventeen of them illustrated with full-page black-and-white illustrations. Illustrated are "The Lion and the Eagle" (10); "The Donkey and the Flute" (21); "The Ox and the Grasshopper" (29); "Two Parrots and a Magpie" (36); "The Frog and the Tadpole" (43); "The Bee and the Cuckoo" (51); "The Monkey" (53); "The Crow and the Turkey" (63); "The Macaw and the Marmot" (67); "The Tea-Plant and the Sage" (73); "The Concert of the Beasts" (81); "The Four Unfortunates" (87); "The Nightingale and the Sparrow" (93); "The Hunter and His Ferret" (99); "The Lizards" (106); "The Mole and the Other Animals" (113); and "The Connoisseurs" (121). I had not noticed "The Concert of the Beasts" before. It is vintage Iriarte! There is a T of C on 5-7. The front cover pictures "Los Dos Conejos" (40): two rabbits in a garden argue about the quality of the dogs pursuing them until the dogs devour them. More vintage Iriarte!

1989/91 Oi Mythoi Tou Aisopou Se Komiks. Volume 1. Tasos Apostolides and Kostas Boutsas. Illustrated by Bana Lagopoulou. Second edition. Thessalonike: ASÉ. $15.30 from Zeno, London, Jan., '92.

Nine fables rendered well in comics. Each fable gets between two and four pages and is clearly marked "telos" at its end. There are the usual comic renditions of sounds like "bam, zit, clap," for example in the race of the turtle and hare. The only fable told differently is GB: the gnat first tries to bite the bull's horn. The tortoise passing the hare wishes him "Sweet dreams!" The last page has a nice "Make haste slowly!" comment from a reclining bunny. The stories feature nice little additions like the sniffling bunny in the first fable. Included: "The Rabbits and the Frogs," FG, "The Two Roosters," "The Frightened Hunter," TH, GB, "The Woodsman" (the ax-finding helper seems to be unidentified), "The Bat and the Nightingale," and "The Horse and the Mule." Fun!

1989/92 La storia della Lepre et la Tartaruga e tante altre. Liberamente tratte da La Fontaine. Illustrazioni di Tony Wolf. Testi di Peter Holeinone. Enciclopedia della fiabe d'oro. Milan: Dami Editore. Gift of the publisher, Oct., '92.

Delightful pictures illustrate this kids' book. The best of them include the title page of the cat-grandma reading to the mice children, the fattened weasel getting caught in the narrow passage through which he entered (23), the GA illustrations (30-31), and the obstinate goats meeting on a narrow bridge (43). See the English version of this book under The story of the Hare and the Tortoise and other tales (1990).

1989/93 Aesop: 12 Fabeln. Illustriert von Lisbeth Zwerger. Neuerzählt von Hans Gärtner. Dritte Auflage. Hardbound. Printed in Italy. Zurich: Michael Neugebauer Verlag. DEM 22,80 from Antiquariat Richart Kulbach, Heidelberg, June, '98.

This book is almost identical with the English version I have from 1989 as put out by Picture Book Studio. They share the same size and format. This book has the same cover picture of the dancing camel but lacks the dust jacket of TMCM. I had long presumed that I had the German edition. I still find Zwerger's artistry enchanting. The laughing monkey is still on the back cover.

1989/94 Das Schaf im Wolfspelz. Rafik Schami. 4. Auflage. Paperbound. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. DM 9.90 from Hassbecker's Galerie & Buchhandlung, Heidelberg, July, '02.

Rafik Schami was born in Damaskus in 1946. He comes from a Christian-Aramaic family and lived in a Jesuit boarding school in Lebanon. He has lived since 1971 in West Germany and since 1977 has been writing in German as well as Arabic. His works give a sense of the Arabic world of thought, but often also reveal the peculiarities of Germans. The book contains fairy tales ("Maerchen") and fabulous stories. Often the stories point to bitter conditions in society. There are nine stories here. Four of these stories come closest to being fables: "Das Schaf im Wolfspelz" (33-47); "Das Schwarze Schaf" (77-82); "Und die Grille Singt Weiter" (83-90); and "Die Aufseher" (91-103). "Und die Grille Singt Weiter" refers to La Fontaine's fable. I myself read far enough into the story to know that it is not a fable, though it builds wonderfully from La Fontaine's text.

1989/95 Aesop's Tales 30. Published by Mitsuo Tabei. Printed in Japan. Tokyo: Shogakukan. ¥980 at Sanseido, Kanda, July, '96.

This softbound book offers thirty fables with lively colored illustrations. A second dust jacket partly covers the first! Many illustrations look as though they are celluloid stills taken from moving pictures. At times the colors are at best curious (as in the orange-dominated inside view of the ant-house on 35), and at other times they are great. Then again there is a strange mix of monochrome along with polychrome. The Japanese back-cover shows the ass with a statue, but I cannot find that story inside the book! Among the best images are those for "The Doctor and the Eye-Sick Woman" (36); the bandages set the occasion for theft perfectly. Might some pictures be out of sequence within their stories? Among the best illustrations are the defeathered crow (57), the toothless and clawless lion (60), and the close-up of the ant on the foot of the hunter who is about to shoot the dove (133). The image helps stress the irony in GGE (69): for this hen, giving its owners a golden egg means making them into aggressive enemies! On 73, the grand-mother shoots a gun at the wolf who thought she would throw out the child! On 94, the boar whets his teeth by taking them out of his mouth!

1989/96 Aesop’s Fables. A Ladder edition at the 1,000-Word Level. Adapted by David Olivier. Illustrated by Mayumi Abe (cover) and Taro Horie. Paperback. Fifth printing. Tokyo: Yohan Publications, Inc. 699 yen at Sanseido, Tokyo, July, ’96.

A book for learning English. There are thirty-one fables with ten simple black-and-white illustrations. At the back is a list of the twenty-two extra words, marked in the text, which the texts absolutely needed but which were not in the basic 1000 word vocabulary. There is also a page of pictures of those animals not illustrated with their texts. FM (38) becomes a better fable, I believe, when as here the story has only one phase. The text thus starts with the mouse wanting to get across the river. I do not remember seeing "The Three Wishes" (72) presented as a fable. There is a good presentation of "The Kite, the Frog and the Mouse" (76)—a different fable from FM—using just one frog and one mouse. There is an enjoyable illustration for TMCM (12). I enjoy the ingenious wrapping-paper-cover that Sanseido uses for a book like this.

1989/96 Les Fables de La Fontaine.  Illustrations by Monique Gorde; Evalisa Agathon; Ilieana Ceausu Pandele; Violayne Hulné.  Hardbound.  Champigny-sur-Marne, France:  Lito.  $13.45 from World of Books, through Ebay, Oct., ‘20.  

1989/2000 Aesop's Fables (Chinese). Paperback. Printed in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Sunbeam Publications. Gift of Andreas Gommermann, May, '01.

There are several curious features about this lovely paperback gift that Andreas brought back from Hong Kong. The first, of course, is that there are about ten words of English in the whole book! The second is that there is a picture of Aesop a few pages into the book, if of course one starts from what we would know as the back of the book. I have not seen this image of Aesop before. This picture seems to be followed by a T of C, which indicates 79 items with their page numbers. There is then at least one black-and-white illustration on almost every pair of pages. Among my favorites is that of the sorrowing trees on 36; presumably they regret giving up the wood for the hatchet-handle. The illustration for SW on 60 is different from what one sees in Western books. The final curiosity for me is: Why are we looking at the rear ends of two animals on the beach on the cover? Are they hippos? The child hippo seems to carry a little purse….

1989? Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. NY: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division. Gift of Mary Pat Ryan, Sept., '97.

This book is identical with the Picture Book Studio edition of 1989. It changes only a few elements of design of the dust jacket, covers, and title-page. See my comments there.

1989? Fabeln aus alter und neuer Zeit: Malbuch für Kinder von 7 Jahren an. Entwurf: Eberhard Ernst. Paperbound. Planet-Verlag. €4.95 from Bücherarena-Wittenberg, Wittenberg, Germany, Oct., '06.

It is hard to date and place this comic book. It is old enough to have cost one Deutsch Mark. There are sixteen pages, and both interior covers are used, too. The outer covers present FC. The texts are all written out in longhand. Fables take up one or two pages and are enhanced with simple, large drawings suitable for coloring with crayons. A good variety of fabulists appear here. We have LM from Aesop; "Bewaffneter Friede" in verse by Wilhelm Busch; "Der Hund und das Pferd" by Krylov; FS by La Fontaine; "Zwei Ziegenböcke" by K.D. Uschinskij; "Der Schwan, der Hecht, und der Krebs" by Krylov; "Schönheit Allein Tut's Nicht" (about the peacock wanting to be king) by Aesop; CJ by Krylov; "Eule und Star" by Busch; and DS by Phaedrus. The two by Busch are excellent. I look forward to enjoying more fables by Busch.

1989? Jumbo Fairy Tales. Text: Peter Holeinone. Illustrations: Tony Wolf and Piero Cattaneo. Large format pamphlet. Printed in Canada. ©Dami Editore, Italy. Toronto: Madison Marketing Limited in conjunction with Tormont Publications in Montreal. $1 from Seven Mile Fair, Milwaukee, June, '99.

See The Great Fairy Tales Treasure Chest, Book 2 (1989?). This very large pamphlet seems to be a repeat of that. Like it, this is among the largest-format books I have. T of C on the back cover indicates that there are three stories here, the last of which is DS (16). At least the illustrations here are really large! This edition gives more bibliographical information on the bottom of the last page than that one had done.

1989? Jumbo Fairy Tales. Text: Peter Holeinone. Illustrations by Tony Wolf, Piero Cattaneo, and S. Baraldi. Paperbound. Toronto: Madison Marketing Limited in conjunction with Tormont Publications in Montreal. $2 from Great Northwestern Bookstore, Portland, May, '03.

I have one other volume in this series of oversized (about 11" x 17") pamphlets, including DS. Here there are also three stories: "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," and "The Conceited Stag." Like it, this is among the largest-format books I have. As the T of C on the back cover indicates, the third story here is "The Conceited Stag." At least the illustrations here are really large! There is rather plentiful bibliographical information on the bottom of the last page This copy is creased half way down from the top. cDami Editore, Italy.

1989? Le Chat Botte et autres histoires. Text: Peter Holeinone; Adaptation Française de M. Bonoli-Béguin. Illustrations: Tony Wolf. Hardbound. Contes et Fables du Monde Entier. Printed in Italy. Montreal: Les Éditions Tormont Inc./Québec Agenda Inc. $5 from Pierre Cantin, Feb., '02.

This book is in the same series as my Le Lievre et la Tortue et autres histoires by the same author and illustrator, but with a different French translator. The one fable here is "Le Renard, le Serpent et le Paysan." It is illustrated very well. The old man is almost gnomish. The story's end surprises me. The peasant invites the fox to come by in the evening to receive his reward. His reward is to face the peasant's two dogs. The fox realizes, too late, that the serpent was right. Good deeds are always rewarded with bad ones! ©Dami Editore.

1989? Le Coffret Magique des Contes et Légendes, Livre 1 (LM et al). Texte original: Peter Holeinone. Adaptation: Martin Des Rochers. Conception graphique: Zapp. Illustrations: Tony Wolf and Piero Cattaneo. Oversize pamphlet. Printed in Canada. Toronto: Madison Marketing Limited conjointement avec Les Éditions Tormont, Montreal. $3.25 from Vincent Nadeau, Roanoke, VA, through Ebay, March, '01.

This very large-format pamphlet reproduces "Wielka Skarbnica Bajek, Ksiazka 1" and a pamphlet with the same title as this except that it has "Monde" for "Coffret" and is done by Tormont (both "1989?"). "PML Editions" is not noted anywhere, though there is a logo for "Irving" on the back cover. See my comments on the "Monde" version. The T of C on the title page, repeated on the back cover, indicates that there are six stories here, five of which are fables. LM, BC, OF, and GA get two pages, and BF gets three. As always, the Tormont illustrations are big and bold. ©Dami Editore, Italie.

1989? Le Coffret Magique des Contes et Légendes, II, Livre 1. Conception graphique: Zapp. Illustrations: T. Wolf, P. Cattaneo, S. Baraldi. Texte: Peter Holeinone. Adaptation: Martin Des Rochers. (c)Dami Editore, Italie. Publié par Madison Marketing Limited, Toronto, conjointement avec Les Éditions Tormont Inc., Montreal. $1 Canadian at Dollarama, Montreal, Oct., '95.

Among the largest-format books I have. T of C on the title page, repeated on the back cover, indicates that there are four stories here, three of which are fables. There are very cute characters illustrated in "Le lièvre et le porc-épic." The woman, then the man of the house, and then the cat intrude in TMCM. The stork in FS claims a headache during the fox's meal. This book seems to be related to the English-language volumes titled The Great Fairy Tales Treasure Chest by Tormont, which I have listed under the same year.

1989? Le Coffret Magique des Contes et Légendes, II, Livre 5. Conception graphique: Zapp. Illustrations: T. Wolf, P. Cattaneo, S. Baraldi. Texte: Peter Holeinone. Adaptation: Martin Des Rochers. (c)Dami Editore, Italie. Publié par Madison Marketing Limited, Toronto, conjointement avec Les Éditions Tormont Inc., Montreal. $1 Canadian at Dollarama, Montreal, Oct., '95.

Among the largest-format books I have. T of C on the back cover indicates that there are four stories here, two of which are fables: "Le lion s'en va-t-en guerre" and "Le cheval et l'âne." This book seems to be related to the English-language volumes titled The Great Fairy Tales Treasure Chest by Tormont, which I have listed under the same year. This book has no title-page.

1989? Le Lievre et la Tortue et autres histoires. Text: Peter Holeinone; Adaptation Française de G. Sopranzi et H. Beauverd. Illustrations: Tony Wolf. Hardbound. Printed in Italy. Contes et Fables du Monde Entier. Montreal: Éditions Tormont Inc. $5 from Pierre Cantin, Nov., '00.

The T of C adds "Librement adaptés de La Fontaine," as had the Italian version. This book marks the fifth country heard from with the same book, after Italy (1988/92), England (1988), Canada (1990?), and the United States (1990). The format remains very consistent. Delightful pictures illustrate this kids' book. See the other four versions for comments. ©Dami Editore.

1989? Le Monde Magique des Contes et Légendes, Livre 1. Texte: Peter Holeinone. Adaptation: Martin Des Rochers. Conception graphique: Zapp. Illustrations: T. Wolf, P. Cattaneo, S. Baraldi. Oversize pamphlet. Printed in Canada. Montreal: Les Éditions Tormont Inc. 10 Francs from Poitiers, August, '99.

This very large-format pamphlet reproduces Le Coffret Magique des Contes et Légendes, II, Livre 1 (also "1989?") but changes "Coffret" to "Monde" and drops "II." It drops mention of Madison Marketing as a co-publisher and now claims only Les Éditions Tormont. "PML Editions" is added on both covers and on the title-page but is not mentioned in the title-page account of the publisher. The publication information is given both on the title-page and on the page facing the blank inside back cover. The T of C on the title page, repeated on the back cover, indicates that there are four stories here, three of which are fables. There are very cute characters illustrated in "Le lièvre et le porc-épic." The woman, then the man of the house, and then the cat intrude in TMCM. The stork in FS claims a headache during the fox's meal. This book seems to be related to the English-language volumes titled The Great Fairy Tales Treasure Chest by Tormont, which I have listed under the same year. ©Dami Editore, Italie.

1989? Le Monde Magique des Contes et Légendes (Livre 2). Texte original: Peter Holeinone. Adaptation: Martin Des Rochers. Conception graphique: Zapp. Illustrations: Tony Wolf, Piero Cattaneo, Severino Baraldi. Oversize pamphlet. Printed in Canada. Montreal: Les Éditions Tormont Inc. 10 Francs from Poitiers, August, '99.

This very large-format pamphlet is referred to in "Livre 1" of the same series (containing TMCM and FS) as "Livre 2," but there is no indication here that this is Book Two or even that there is a series. "PML Editions" is added on both covers and on the title-page but is not mentioned in Page 16's account of the publisher. The T of C on the back cover indicates that there are three stories here, the last one of which is a fable. "Le Cerf Vaniteux" is told on 16 and nicely illustrated with two strong colored illustrations. ©Dami Editore, Italie.

1989? Le Monde Magique des Contes et Légendes, Livre 1. (LM et al). Texte original: Peter Holeinone. Adaptation: Martin Des Rochers.  Conception graphique: Zapp.  Illustrations: Tony Wolf and Piero Cattaneo. Oversize pamphlet. Printed in Canada. Montreal: Les Éditions Tormont Inc. 10 Francs from Poitiers, August, '99.

This very large-format pamphlet reproduces "Wielka Skarbnica Bajek, Ksiazka 1" (also "1989?"). "PML Editions" is added on both covers and on the title-page but is not mentioned in the title-page account of the publisher. There is something of a mystery in the fact that the booklet's title is exactly the same as another; perhaps someone forgot to insert a "Volume I" and a "Volume II." The title-page in each describes a set of five books, and the sets are different. The publication information is given both on the title-page and on the page facing the blank inside back cover. The T of C on the title page, repeated on the back cover, indicates that there are six stories here, five of which are fables. LM, BC, OF, and GA get two pages, and BF gets three. As always, the Tormont illustrations are big and bold. ©Dami Editore, Italie.

1989? O Lagos kai H Chelona kai Alla Paramythia. Text: Pote Stratike. Illustrations: Tony Wolf. Hardbound. Egkyklopaideia ton Paramythion, Biblio 3. Athens: Ekdoseis Stratike. $6.50 from The Book Eddy, Knoxville, TN, April, '00.

Now I have found this book from six different countries! Other versions come from England (1988), France (1989?), Italy (1989/92), the United States (1990), and Canada (1990?). The format remains very consistent. For example, there is a banner over the cover illustration and over the T of C. Here it proclaims "Egkyklopaideia ton Paramythion, Biblio 3." And this T of C occurs again before the title-page. There is no mention here, as there is in the French and Italian versions, of La Fontaine. Nor is there mention here of the original editor, Peter Holeinone, or of Dami, who seems to hold the original copyright. The back cover adds a design of motifs from children's literature around the usual listing of titles in the series. Otherwise the book seems exactly like the five from other countries, right down to the page-numbering. The best of the delightful illustrations include the title page of the cat-grandma reading to the mice children, the fattened weasel getting caught in the narrow passage through which he entered (notice the burst trouser-button, 23), the GA illustrations (30-31), and the obstinate goats meeting on a narrow bridge (43).

1989? The Great Fairy Tales Treasure Chest, Book 2. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. Tormont. $2 at Shakespeare, Aug., '94.

Among the largest-format books I have. T of C on the back cover indicates that there are three stories here, the last of which is DS (16). At least the illustrations here are really large!

1989? The Great Fairy Tales Treasure Chest, Book 2, IV. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. Tormont. $2 at Shakespeare, Aug., '94.

Among the largest-format books I have. T of C on the back cover indicates that there are six stories here, four of which are fables. In "The Lion and the Mosquito," the spider, who has a great visual personality, makes a surprising response to the mosquito's landing: "I certainly won't bother with anything so unimportant as that!" There are some nice borders around the huge illustrations. At least this volume has an ISBN number to provide some information!

1989? Wielka Skarbnica Bajek, Ksiazka 1. Text by Peter Holeinone. Illustrations by Tony Wolf and Piero Cattaneo. Printed in Canada. (c)Dami Editore. Montreal: Tormont Publications, Inc. $4.28 at Szwede Slavic Books, Palo Alto, March, '97.

This is not only one of the first two fable books I have found in Polish; it is the third language in which I have found similar books from Tormont. In fact, this one has more fables than the other four books I had already found (Le Coffret Magique des Contes et Légendes and The Great Fairy Tales Treasure Chest, also listed under "1989?"). LM, BC, OF, and GA get two pages, and BF gets three. As always, the Tormont illustrations are big and bold. What a great find, especially since I found this on my own in a store where I had been shown many things.

1989?/91 A Crow in Borrowed Feathers/The Boy Who Cried 'Wolf!'  Shogo Hirata.  Hardbound.  Place not acknowledged: Haddock Hirata: Peter Haddock.  $3 from Second Story Books, Bethesda, MD, Jan., '96.

end

To top