The Primary English Encyclopedia: The Heart of the Curriculum, Third Edition
See also under history of children’s literature and parable
A fable is a story with a moral which becomes explicit at its end. The characters are often animals showing unattractive human traits like pride, selfishness and greed. One of the best known collections is Aesop’s Fables, often enjoyed by both children and adults.
Aspects of the natures of the animal characters, for example the cunning of the fox, have become absorbed into our culture. Sayings like ‘sour grapes’ also originate from these tales, thought to have been written about the sixth century BC by a Greek slave.
Fables are still well-liked forms of children’s literature and there are many retellings of single fables in picture book format, for example Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse, Brian Wildsmith’s The Lion and the Rat (La Fontaine version) and Geoff Patterson’s The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg. Mary Steel provides a useful annotated booklist in the Signal bookguide entitled Traditional Tales. There is also an interesting history of fables and an account of their link with illustrations in Watson’s guide (Watson, 2001). Some of the features of fables are found in both print cartoons and film versions (for example in Beryl the Peril, Sunday Times) and in animated cartoons (Wallace and Gromit; Tom and Jerry).
Steele, Mary (compiler, 1989) Traditional Tales Stroud: Signal Bookguide edited by Nancy Chambers.
Watson, V. (2001) The Cambridge Guide for Children’s Books in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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