Lessons Learned: What Is A Fable? by Robyn Hardyman

A FABLE IS A SHORT STORY THAT TEACHES A MORAL--NOT TO BE GREEDY OR TO THINK THAT WE ARE SMARTER THAN WE REALLY ARE.

Storytelling is probably as old as human speech, and one of the oldest genres in literature is the fable.

Parents and leaders have long sought to teach good behaviors, and fables are one way our ancestors tried to pass on wisdom. The characters in fables are often, but not always, animals, and the urge to pass on that wisdom means that there are often fables which teach the same wisdom in different languages and different settings and with varied animal characters from different parts of the world.

Typically, fabular characters are assigned certain human traits. In fables, foxes are often clever, but also sneaky and dishonest. Rabbits can be timid or clever, or both, and lions can be dangerous, or wise kings of the beasts. Fables can sometimes seem cruel, but more often they use gentle humor to teach their lessons, which are usually stated in pithy closing aphorisms that echo down through the ages, such as the oft-quoted moral of "The Tortoise and the Hare"--Slow and steady wins the race! or the catchword from "The Fox and the Grapes," "Sour grapes."

Robyn Hardyman's What Is A Fable? (The Britannica Common Core Library) (Brittanica/Rosen Books) offers a succinct description of the fable, mentioning the two most ancient written collections of fables, the Jataka Tales of India and Aesop's Fables from Greece, and what makes it a unique literary form.

Hardyman follows up with the inclusion of the four pairs of fables from different cultures which share that same lesson, one of which is "The Tortoise and the Hare" paired with the Native American tale of "The Race Between Turtle and Frog," in which both Hare and Frog are so certain of their superior speed that they end up being outdone in a race with the slow-moving turtle, a storyline which also teaches another well-known moral, "Pride goeth before a fall," with the congruent warning not to be overconfident in your own superiority! The use of these pairs of similar fables is used to teach the useful analytical skill of "compare and contrast," "alike and different."

Hardyman's final chapter encourages readers to try writing their own fables with a schematic outline for the task: 1. Choose your moral. 2. Pick a setting 3. Pick characters. 4. Plot out what happens. 5. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite! Hardyman's book also appends a glossary, bibliograpy of books and websites, and thorough index for corollated study by middle grade elementary students.

A handy book to keep in the classroom library and a solid purchase for school libraries as well.