Reviews

It really matters when reading these fables which translation or version you are using. When written in totally modern English I found that they lose a significant bit of their spark and charm. Most of them have moral lessons which every human being throughout time should learn. Others are a little too cynical or Machiavellian to be taken too seriously, and some are rather cruel in nature. No matter which ones you read, however, they are all fascinating and illustrative of the time in which they were written. Other cultures have near-exact versions of these fables as well, which I was surprised to learn. If you're interested in writing a short story or illustrating a children's book, I would highly recommend flipping through these because there are many which are just as good as or better than the famous "tortoise and the hare". I love that each animal is representative of a particular personality trait or social class and yet you never know how the fable is going to end up. The powerful always have room to get tricked! Ultimately though I found it to be a bit of a slog reading one after the other after the other and I don't think you're meant to read the book from cover to cover. It's far better to read one or two every night or flip through and read a random one occasionally. They're supposed to be fun!

friendofhayley's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

The publisher or whoever wrote the little meanings for each story, definitely had an agenda. So many were based on "don't be a runaway slave, respect your master" or "you can not grow from what you were born as". When the stories weren't always about that? Sus.

rosekk's review against another edition

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3.0

I know I read some of these as a child (or, more likely, had them read to me), but they're strange to return to as an adult. Some of the stories are interesting, but others are just strange - the morals they claim to teach bear little resemblance on the story, and there are some conflicts. I understand why some, on reading this, might insist morality can't be successfully taught or discussed with literature, because the moral prescription at the end of each story is often baffling rather than instructive. Half the time the stories seem more suggestive of completely different morals than the one claimed for it. It doesn't help that while the stories are all ascribed to 'Aesop' some of them clearly can't originate with the same person, or even within the same era and civilization, and that variation in something that seeks to be treated as a whole makes it hard to reconcile (collections of stories that are openly from different places don't have this issue: you expect variation when you know stories have been produced in different contexts). This edition is lovely though.

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