Reading Notes: The Aesop for Children, Part A

My ideas and notes from Reading Part A:


The Wolf and the Kid & The Tortoise and the Ducks:

Instead of ducks, I would make them eagles, and instead of a tortoise, I would make it a sloth. The story would take place from a zoo, and the sloth would be in the zoo and unable to visit places, including his best friend’s wedding that he so wanted to go to, he was just too slow, and honestly, too lazy. So he gets help from the eagles, but just as he passes the lions cage, the lions say out loud that the sloth must be the Chosen One! Just as the sloth agrees, the eagles drop him in the cage. This would be part 1 of the story teaching the lesson that you must not live in vain, especially when someone is helping you. The second part of the story would be based on The Wolf and the Kid, where the lions are going to eat the sloth, but the sloth convinces the lions to wait because the sloth can entertain them by doing magic tricks. The lions have never seen magic tricks, and so they agree. The sloth makes a deal that if the lions are impressed, they cannot eat him. But if they are not impressed, they can proceed. The sloth does several tricks that last into the night. The lions are somewhat pleased, but as they near the sloth to eat him after his last trick, the sloth disappears. This is the sloth’s famous and last trick: disappearance.


The Boy and the Filberts:
Once there was a poor, poor village just outside the kingdom’s reach, and every morning the baker would put out a basket of burnt bread for the children to get on their way to school. One day, the prince, just 7 years old, had found himself escaped from his palace keeper, and ventured by this bread basket and the children who seemed so delighted in it. The boy wanted to join these kids, for he never got play with children his age, he was always stuck in the palace, bored as ever. So he ventured over to the bread basket and the children, and the poorer children looked at him and told him to go away. They could tell by the prince’s clothing that they weren’t like him. But the children grabbed as much as their hands could hold, and then the prince put his hand in the basket and grabbed as much as he could, but his hand would not come out of the basket. The longer he kept his hand in the basket, the more his hand kept bending.

Baskets of bread. Source: Wikimedia Commons

He started to cry out, and the children who hadn’t made it very far, turned around to look. Some came back to him, and told him to let go of some of the bread and take only what he could eat. The prince immediately let go of the majority of the bread, and only picked up what he could eat. His hand was free and his belly was full. The lesson? Those who are fortunate should only take what they need and leave the rest for those who are not as fortunate.


These stories are part of the Aesop (Winter) unit. Story source: The Aesop for Children, with illustrations by Milo Winter (1919).