"The race is to steady turtles!" --
Even if the race has hurdles?
Even with its great longevity
it'll never have lift or levity
to finish before life runs out.
Hold off with race applications.
Is racer your ideal vocation?
I don't mean to be Sower of doubt,
but think speed isn't what you're about,
and that you'd make a fine doorstop.
The Dolphins, the Whales and the Gudgeon by Aesop
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This tiny book is part of a series put out by Penguin called Little Black Classics. This one collects about 55 of Aesop’s fables together. These are all short fables, few longer than a page and many of only a few lines.
The title is an interesting choice in that that fable isn’t among the most well-known of those assembled. However, some oft the most famous have rather banal titles like: “The Fox and the Goat” or “The Wolf and the Lamb.” [Though “The Frogs Who Demanded a King” is also among the most well-known of the included stories.]
I found the collected fables to be thought-provoking, as well as being a broad sample (not a lot of the same moral repeating.) My favorites, for their cleverness, were: “The Stag at the Spring and the Lion,” “The Field Mouse and the Town Mouse,” “The Woodcutter and Hermes,” and “The Ass Carrying Salt.” Your results may vary.
I like that they’ve embraced the short format with these books. It often used to be the case that they would pad out a 50- or 60-page book like this to 120 pages, using filler, forwards, needless illustrations, and useless epilogues. This book is just the fables. (Most, but not all the fables, include a single line summation of the fable’s moral. While I don’t think this is necessary for adult readers, it might be helpful in explaining the story to children.)
Tiger Riding for Beginners 