Aesop's Fables

Aesop's Fables
Jerry Pinkney

2000

There are many collections of Aesop's Fables out there--some of them truly marvelously illustrated. I happen to really enjoy Jerry Pinkney's illustrations, so I was delighted to find this collection at our local library. If you're looking for a good Aesop's Fables collection to add to your personal home library, check this out!!

Pinkney has retold and illustrated 60 of Aesop's Fables for this one volume; many fables are a few paragraphs long with a facing page of illustrations. Some are shorter with smaller illustrations. Pinkney has a gift for capturing movement in one still shot. I also think his use of color is second to none. In this collection, one of my favorite illustrations is that for "King Log and King Stork." The frogs leaping off the log, the stork with its golden crown sucking a frog down, and the contrast of the green frogs with the stork's orange legs--breathtaking. You can see strong hints of his Caldecott winning Lion and the Mouse in his short version of that fable here. There is a nice spectrum of ethnicities present as well: an African American (or African) milkmaid, an Asian fisherman, a Caucasian shepherd boy. Engagingly retold and stunningly illustrated--this blows most other Aesop's Fables collections away.