Æsop in Rhyme, with Some Originals

Taylor's 1820 collection does something delightful with the oldest stories in the Western canon: he translates them into verse, giving ancient morals a new music and accessibility. Fifty-eight Aesop classics - the fox and the grapes, the boy who cried wolf, the tortoise and the hare - receive fresh rhythmic life here, but the real treasure lies in the thirteen original fables Taylor adds to the tradition. These lesser-known tales possess their own charm, animals with pointed lessons wrapped in neat couplets. The book reflects its era's conviction that verse was the proper vessel for moral instruction, that children should learn through beauty as well as story. Each fable is accompanied by an engraving that lends an intimate, hand-crafted quality. This is not the sanitized fable collection of modern publishers but something with teeth - the originals with their sometimes stark moral conclusions, delivered in language a child could actually absorb and savor.