AESOP’S FABLES

A wordless rendition of “The Tortoise and the Hare” on covers, endpapers, and title spread surrounds 15 more retold fables, with morals appended. Sneed mixes such usual suspects as “Town Mouse and the Country Mouse,” “Ant and the Grasshopper,” and “Belling the Cat” with less-familiar tales of creatures canny or otherwise, such as “The Tortoise and the Eagle” and “The Caged Bird and the Bat.” He renders each in a breezy vernacular—“Listen up, everyone, this is Jupiter, Supreme Being, Head Honcho, Ruler of All Things. I have an important announcement for my fine feathered citizens”—that just suits his spread-filling close-ups of dismayed or triumphant-looking crows, foxes, mice, insects, and roosters. Aesops abound, but few present the Lessons with such pervasive lightheartedness—and Sneed keeps any violence in the tales far-offstage. (Folktales. 6-8)