Aesop's Fables (Illustrated Classics)

K-Gr 3—This uneven collection includes 141 retellings. The morals—so integral to the fables of Aesop—have been omitted. While some fables (e.g., "The Lion and the Mouse") clearly teach a lesson, there are others in which the message is unclear ("The Cat and the Cockerel" and "The Kite and the Snake"). Many of the selections end with one animal admonishing another or itself. Some of the tales are marred by poor sentence construction (in "The Great Race," the Tortoise states: "Think of how long we live for." In "The Pact," Wolf tells the dogs: "We...feel that you are not living your lives to the full."). Shirley's elaboration in several fables does little to improve upon the succinct tellings of the originals. Some exceptionally nice color-washed paintings are outlined and detailed with bold, loose black strokes that delineate curves, shapes of hooves, and thickness and detail of a coat. A great scaly green crocodile fills nearly two pages; a stately cheetah sits tall on another. A finely detailed hawk, a glorious speckled hen, a giant snake with scales and patterned body are beautiful and artistic. Many other illustrations appear to be hastily painted—cicadas that resemble grasshoppers; frogs that look like green squid; a scrawny apparition of a fox with a large sunken black eye. A "fat bunch of golden, juicy grapes" is purple in the illustration. Both Jerry Pinkney's Aesop's Fables (Sea Star, 2000) and Brad Sneed's humorous Aesop's Fables (Dial, 2003) are well written and beautifully illustrated.—Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH