This book had many central messages, one for each fable.

I thought this was a great book. Some of the tales, such as "The Shepherd's Boy and the Wolf" are very common, while others such as "The Monkey and The Camel" are unfamiliar to me. The writing was simple and direct. The reteller did not draw out the fables, but kept them brief. For example, in "The Shepherd's Boy and the Wolf," the reteller simply states "And so the Wolf enjoyed a hearty meal." In that one brief statement, readers know what happened to the boy and can learn that lying comes with consequences.
I also liked the illustrations that went with each fable. They were simple, yet detailed. For example, for "The Hare and the Tortoise", the scene is a basic field of snow with a little bit of grass in the background. Although snow can be just white, the illustrator added shadowing to create more texture. ( )

I thought this book was a nice collection of classic fables. The purpose of Aesop’s fables is to relay a life lesson through fictional stories. I liked that each page had a different story and illustration and that they were each only a paragraph long. The book was able to fit several of the stories in because of how short they were. Children can easily understand the stories and quickly get the message of the story. I also liked the selection of fables in this book. A lot of them were the famous fables with lessons like “Don’t count your eggs before they hatch” and “Slow and steady wins the race.” Some of them I recognized the moral but did not know the story behind it. The illustrations matched the stories well, but were very outdated and did not convey any type of meaning. Overall, I thought the book was nicely done and contained a nice selection of fables. ( )

This book is a somewhat unique take on Aesop's fables. The watercolor illustrations are gorgeous! Her fables do not include as much text as some of Pinkney's. There's a certain poignance and thoughtfulness in her interpretation of the fables.

A dozen of Aesop's fables are collected next to elegant artwork. This book could be used to teach elementary school students life lessons such as "slow and steady wins the race". However, many of the fables in this book seem to give morals that make little sense, and as such only a few of them are truly useful. ( )