The Lion and the Aardvark: Aesop's Modern Fables

by Jim Demonakos

Other authorsRobin D. Laws (Editor), Rachel Kahn (Illustrator)
Hardcover, 2013

Status

Available

Call number

813.010806

Genres

Collection

Publication

Stone Skin Press (2013), 248 pages

Description

Seventy writers from across the creative spectrum bring their modern sensibilities to the classic format of Aesop's 2,500-year-old fables. Zombies, dog-men, and robot wasps mingle with cats, coyotes, and cockroaches. Parables ranging from the punchy to the evocative and the wry to the disturbing explore eternal human foibles, as displaced onto lemmings, trout, and race cars. But beware: in these terse explorations of desire, envy, and power, certitude isn't always as clear as it looks. Contributors include a variety of award-winning and bestselling authors, such as Ed Greenwood and Richard Scarsbrook, with artwork from hot comics artist Jim Zubkavich and beautiful, eye-catching interior line drawing by Rachel Kahn Market. Additional authors include Robert Jackson Bennett, Jason L. Blair, Jesse Bullington, Ray Fawkes, Matt Forbeck, Dave Gross, Taniah Hershman, Jonathan L. Howard, Stephen Graham Jones, John Kovalic, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Adam Marek, Sandy Petersen, JT Petty, Wena Poon, Ekaterina Sedia, Greg Stafford, and Chuck Wendig.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member jdavidhacker
Another solid anthology product from Stoneskin Press. If you haven't been reading of their collections, I strongly recommend you do so.
This particular collection consists of modern retellings of a variety of myth/folk/fairy tales and fables. I admit, I was not as engaged as I expected to be, in
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part because I expected something maybe a little more along the lines that Yolen, McKinley, and others have done in retelling fairy tales as short stories or even novellas/novels. This is not that. These are much more in the vein of fables, being only one to five pages in length each, often with explicitly stated morals. It is very clear which fables or stories some of these are drawn from, some are more mysterious in their origins. We also get a nice mixture of retellings of non-european fables, with some Native American, African, Asian, and Pacific Islander fables getting equal treatment here.
As in any collection, I felt some entries were stronger than others. Particular personal favourites were: The Wolf and Death, The Very Rude Salmon, The Loquacious Cadaver, The Fox & the Quantum Physicist, The Scientist and the Zen Master, Three Zombies & the Crypt Keeper, The Squirrel and the Pigeons, The Muskrat & the Deadline, The Clan of the Crzy Babies, and The Coyote & the High Density Feed Lot.
While some of these may be a little 'mature' in theme, I think their overall morals and length make them, like their forebears, well suited to be read and discussed with children. I would consider reading a lot of these to my own god-children who are quite young, but can also see using these with my high school English classes as well.
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Language

Original language

English

Physical description

7.75 inches

ISBN

1908983027 / 9781908983022

Local notes

SS Greg Stafford is one of the contributors.
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