Customer Reviews

Aesop's Fables (Junior Classics)

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Aesop lived in the 500s BC. His name was known to Aristotle, Plato, and Aristophanes, but we don't have anything actually written by Aesop. His fables have survived in retellings by others, so that the term Aesop's Fables is really a generic designation. No doubt many stories told as Aesop's Fables were created by others. Many seem to be traditional wisdom stories.

As another reviewer remarked, the fables are short. Those expecting longish stories like cartoons of the race between the hare and the tortoise may be disappointed with these versions. Having said that, however, I find this collection charming, thought provoking, and often amusing.

Anton Lesser is a well known stage actor who has read classics like Homer's Iliad and Milton's Paradise Lost for Naxos recordings. His way with these fables is subtle and elegant. The fables themselves in this version are well told, and Lesser uses distinctive voices for each of the animals, gruff for the lion, sophisticated for the fox, innocent for the lamb, and so forth. The stories run from about 30 seconds to 90 seconds, and each ends with a pithy moral that generalizes the lesson of the story. In collections of Aesop's Fables, these morals are sometimes off the mark, or windy, or preachy. Not here.

The music is from Vivaldi's Four Seasons and flute concertos, and is well played, though the music is really filler intended to vary the fare and remind listeners that Aesop might well have told his stories to the accompaniment of a harp or lyre, as bards did in Ancient Greece. The performances are quite good, but they are snippets that fade in and out at the endings and beginnings of the fable narrations. Occasionally the music is louder than it should be and you have to listen carefully for a few words.

Overall, I recommend this to children and adults (I'm an AARP member and listened to this recording several times while walking on a treadmill). These retellings of the fables are sophisticated and use fairly simple language. Children capable of learning words in Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket will quickly learn any new words in these stories, particularly if they listen to them several times, as children often do.

The fables attributed to Aesop are widely known throughout the Western World, and some of them are similar to stories told in India and Asia. My guess is that many people would find this collection of fables entertaining, instructive, and worth their while.

We are listening to this while driving around town. The brief stories are perfect for those "running errand days" when we are in and out of the van.

I absolutely love the language, and so does my 8 year old son. My 7 year old son likes some of them, but is disinterested in others. I love the narrator's voice, and the music between stories is beautiful!

The annunciation of the individual fable titles could be better, though. Perhaps the music is too loud at that point.

I bought this on cassette to entertain my 4-year-old during our 30-minute ride to school in the mornings. It was a complete failure, but to be fair the fault is probably my own ignorance of Aesop's Fables. The stories are VERY brief-- just enough to set up the moral at the end, not enough to set up any drama or catch my 4-year-old's interest. The morals themselves are worded in old-fashioned and/or very sophisticated language and are pretty much incomprehensible to this age child. I could perhaps see having this in book format and reading one or two stories at bed time, but for my needs the cassette at least is pretty useless. We'll be going back to the Jim Weiss stories on tape (which we've quite enjoyed).