FAIR SHARES

Animals learn about true fairness.

A tree sports bountiful pears, and Hare wants to partake. Surely Hare can jump high enough to reach them? Alas, no—Hare leaps but comes down with nothing to show for it. Along comes Bear, but she can’t reach them either. Chairs are proposed, opening up the key philosophical question: Bear says it’s unfair if she herself gets only one chair while Hare gets two, but Bear only needs one chair to reach the fruit while Hare really does need two. Giving each animal one chair while leaving one spare (unused) is mathematically equal—thus satisfying Bear—but Hare, alone in not being able to reach pears, objects: “This doesn’t FEEL fair.” Goodhart’s distinction between equality and equity is politically essential in myriad areas of life: “Giving everybody the same thing isn’t always fair” (spoken by a beetle). The repetition of a small set of rhymes—“bear,” “hare,” “pear,” “chair,” “fair,” “spare,” “share”—begs for textual rhythm, which is largely missing. The text sometimes has a forced quality (“I see lots of pears for me”) or an off-kilter casualness (“PICK went Bear”). The art highlights red, dark yellow, and olive green, making the setting autumnal. Bear’s and Hare’s bodies are filled in with nonspecific lines and shadings that are too vertical and horizontal to read as organic fur.

A crucial message awkwardly executed.