Mr Aesop's Story Shop

August 22, 2011
In this British import, Hartman frames Aesop’s tales by having him set up shop in a busy Greek marketplace: “My name is Aesop! Once I was a slave. Now I am a free man. I have refreshments to sell and stories to tell.” “I know what worries you,” he tells a group of children. “School!” Aesop follows this quip with the story of “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse,” drawing connections between worries about school or money with the fable’s moral. Hartman’s decision to have Aesop deliver the stories firsthand, while interacting with the crowds at the agora, adds dimension to these 10 familiar tales while emphasizing the oral storytelling tradition. Nodding toward Greek frescoes, Jago’s warm and expressive collages are a strong complement to these inviting retellings. Ages 7–9.

June 15, 2011

"My name is Aesop! Once I was a slave. Now I am a free man. I have refreshments to sell and stories to tell."

This fresh approach to the classic collection makes a character of Aesop himself, talking to a fictional audience and directing questions to them, and is an effective context for the fables. In "The Crow and the Jar," the crow can't get his head far enough into the jar to reach the water, so he drops in pebble after pebble until it rises high enough for him to drink. Aesop has the children who are gathered around his storytelling stall in the marketplace collect pebbles and drop them in a jar to demonstrate. Moral: "Brains are sometimes better than brute strength." An introduction explains what little is known about Aesop, an ugly man with a bald head and bandy legs who was a slave, and defines the form. The textured illustrations appear as if painted on handmade paper, varying in size and placement from a full page to a double-spread banner. Not every page has artwork, leaving all-text pages off-puttingly dense. Greek motifs are used throughout, and the morals appear as letters chiseled in stone at the end of each tale. Fable collections are plentiful (Jerry Pinkney's Aesop's Fables, 2000, and The McElderry Book of Aesop's Fables, by Michael Morpurgo, 2005, for instance), but the storytelling device here works well as an engaging read-aloud.

"Sticking to your goals may bring more success than being lazy with your talents." (Fables. 5-9)

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August 1, 2011
Grades K-3 Collections of Aesop's fables abound, and there are even more retellings of individual tales in picture-book format. This title reframes 10 familiar fables (The Mouse and the Lion, The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, and more) to add new context and setting to the stories. Each entry is narrated in first person, as if Aesop himself were speaking in an agora (Greek for marketplace), where he sells his tales. The introduction informs young readers about what is known, and what is not, about Aesop and defines what makes a story a fable (the presence of a moral or lesson). The painterly illustrations look as if they are done on textured paper and incorporate Greek architectural details. The opening piece shows Aesop at his story stall; subsequent spot illustrations and full-page bleeds portray the action in the stories themselves. A worthwhile addition to collections that don't already have numerous Aesop anthologies on the shelves.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)