Animal Fables

Animal Fables are also sometimes (when illustrating a moral point or offering a moral) didactic works; they are UNLIKE fairy tales in this, but let's not oversimpliy them--especially modern ones like the Hoban. What sorts of ideas and values (if any) do these seek to instill in their readers? Consider at least three fables from different times.

Samuel Croxall's The Fox Without a Tail has a strong and useful moral. The fix, having lost his tail to a hunter's trap tries to talk his fellow foxes into ridding themselves of their own tails. This fox is vain and thinks by having the others conform to his new appearance that he'll feel less silly. After the first fox tells them of all the advantages and how nice it is to be without his tail, another who knew it was not the first fox's choice to lose the tail called out that maybe he did like not having a tail and were the others to get stuck, then maybe they'd like it too. The moral here in about vanity and conforming. Croxall disagrees with vanity when it gets to extravagant and silly proportions, specifically making mention of women with enormous petticoats. That message would probably be useful to young men and women who find themselves within the age to go out and socialize. Peer pressure has always been quite a real thing!

Walter Crane's version of The Crow & the Pitcher was another good one. The crow cannot drink the water because it's too low in the pitcher. He took a smart way about things and dropped pebbles into the water to make the level rise so he could reach it. Like the fox, the crow had a problem but he did not try to solve it in a selfish way, like spilling the water. Instead he was careful and still got his drink. This story shows us that thinking and not just doing the first thing that comes to mind is the way to go about things. This sort of story would be good for the younger children learning how to think things out for themselves. Really, these are useful to any age and a good reminder as many people often act to quickly and foul things up. The thing to notice about Crane's is how the illustration is the fable. The actual story and short and simple, with a line at the end expressing the moral to reinforce it. This method screams younger learners to me.

Russel Hoban's The Sea-Thing Child is greatly different from the other two fables I've written on. For one it had no illustrations in the text, though I did look up the cover and found the image of the Sea-Thing Child different from what I had been imagining. The Sea-Thing is tossed out of the water during a nasty storm and fears to return, though he never really states that he fears it, we learn this through his interactions with the eel and albatross when he asks these creatures if they fear the sea and no, they don't because it's where they belong. After much thinking and his friend, the fiddler crab's own decision to actually try to make a bow and play his fiddle as he's been meaning to, the Sea-Thing child opens his wings and is swept up into the great sky where he finds what he's been missing before he returns to his home, the sea. This is a case of fearing to attempt something, perhaps similar to learning to ride a bicycle or walk to school. it could also be something far greater as actually attending school where the child will then be a small fish in a great big ocean with others. Here, the reader is learning about independence. I especially like how his fears are not voiced by the Sea-Thing Child, but by the Fiddler Crab who fears losing his friend.