1971/91 Aesop's Fables. With Bill Cosby as Aesop. About 26 minutes. Fairlawn, NJ: Alpha Video Distributors Inc. Gift of Greg and Kathy Grant, Summer, '92.
Seems to be exactly identical with the Lorimar tape listed under 1971/86. Thus it contains "The Tortoise and the Eagle" and TH. Explicitly declared as public domain work not authorized by the original copyright owners. There is a crazy "Chipmunks Christmas" advertisement at the end.
1971/86 Aesop's Fables. Starring Bill Cosby. About 30 minutes. #127. Irvine, CA: Karl-Lorimar Home Video. One extra.
The best of the tapes I have. A delightful composition of animation and photography. Wonderland (where you have to take your shoes off!), songs, the personality of "Mr. Aesop," two main fables, and a little wisdom about life (especially about having a dream) work together to make a good film. In fact, the integration of the two fables with each other and with the other elements is superb. "The Turtle Who Wanted To Fly" (8:30 long) begins with springtime in the pond. Romantic interest leads the tortoise, on the advice of the hare, to want to impress a female tortoise with his flying. The eagle will give the tortoise only a start. Stealing feathers becomes a major portion of the story. The tortoise has good wings and actually flies for a bit before he loses the feathers, slides into the pond, and learns to be just a slow tortoise. Proud to be himself, the tortoise promptly challenges the hare to a race. The hare stops just short of the finishline in order to get the victory celebration, including dinner, going. Dinner includes many kinds of carrots. The hare: "The tortoise is as good a runner as a flier." Bad weather, spans without bridges, rivers, and overnight make the race an ordeal for the tortoise. An over-filled belly gives the hare his own ordeal. Good antics along the way. The tortoise gets the girl; in fact we soon see a whole tortoise family. The second fable takes 9:30. The box lists the copyright as 1986, the tape as 1971.
1985 Aesop's Fables. Magic Window. Produced by Simon Nuchtern and Carmen Ventura. Edited by Arshes Anasal. Burbank, CA: RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video. Turner Program Services. 60 minute animated video cassette. $4.99 from Galaxy of Games II, Hamden CT, through Ebay, March, '99. One extra copy in a slightly larger clamshell for $5 from Barry Rieger, Buffalo Grove, IL, through Ebay, April, '99. Two extra copies in more usual cardboard slipcases dated with an 1989 copyright, one of them for $3.25 from Dr. Rob Tingle, Easton, MD, through Ebay, Feb., '00, and the other for $1.40 from Charles Evans, Bogalusa, Louisiana, Sept., '00.
Little Aesop, perhaps ten years old, likes mischief, like tying together dogs' tails. He himself tries the "Wolf!" trick when he starts his first job as a shepherd. The wolf chases him into a dark woods, where he falls through a hole into a new world. There he meets Skitter the Country Mouse, Silkwing the Flower Elf, and Hayhee the ass. Their adventures include an invitation to a City Mouse meal, where the master of the house is a cat. As the three travel, they run into a tortoise and hare arguing. The three soon get work along the way delivering salt; Hayhee's second load is cotton. They meet a fiddling grasshopper who entertains the whole pondside, all of whom join in ridiculing the ants who keep chanting "No time, no time!" Hayhee finds a lion's skin and plays dead when a bear approaches the foursome. In winter, the ants accept an apology and give the travelers food and warm clothing and send them on their way across Terror Mountain, where Winter becomes the North Wind and Spring becomes the Sun to play out a bet. Spring gives Aesop storytelling power and brings him home. As Silkwing reminds Aesop on arriving back home, the animals back here cannot talk. She has lost her wings and will live with him forever. There is a clever attempt here to weave a number of fables into a continuous narrative. Part of the price is to make Aesop into a small boy who, with friends, needs to learn lessons before he can return to his mother. I enjoy the attempt, though I am sorry to see fables turned into a fairy tale. The prose on the slipcases of the extra copies has little Aesop meeting not a Flower Elf but a Flower Elk. That kind of mistake makes me wonder about the claim "Duplicated, Packaged and Printed in USA."
1965? Aesop's Fables. Narrated by Burgess Meredith. Arranged and Conducted by Reg Owen and Wally Stott. NY: Golden Records LP 152. $5 from Robin Chaney, Schoolcraft, MI, through Ebay, Oct., '99.
Side One is devoted to TH, and Side Two to FC. This record originally cost only $1.98.
2001 Aesop's Fables. Editor: Yu-A Vision. Seoul, Korea: EntersKorea. 7000 Won from Kyobo Books, Seoul, July, '04.
This tape accompanies Story Books Step 1: Aesop's Fables. They sold together for 7000 Won. There are two stories: TMCM and GGE. The country meal in TMCM features, according to the text, "only potatoes and corns" (6). The city meal is interrupted by a woman with a broom, who is flanked by a cat. "The Hen that lays Golden Eggs" starts "There are old man and woman" (18). They pray "Please make this hen lays a golden egg only once!" I have never seen this prayer before as part of the story. After the two stories are told and illustrated, there is a bilingual script for TMCM, including wives for the two mice, two kids, and a landlady. For a book produced by "native speakers" there are far too many mistakes here, like "Vegetable are put on the table" and "with a disappointment" (34). The script is followed by a chant (44) and a song (45). Finally, after a bilingual presentation of the text of the two stories, there are words (49-endpaper) and stickers (inserted) for key vocabulary in the two stories. The tape begins with the song by the two mice. The tape then follows the texts of the two stories exactly as they appear on 6-17 and 18-29, respectively. The tape offers the words on 49 through the endpaper for listeners to repeat with the children's voices on the tape. Next, a reader reads through the stories, and listeners are invited to repeat it with the children's voices on the tape. Listening to these repetitions almost drove me crazy! The tape ends with the chant (44).
1986 Aesop's Fables. Look Listen 'N Play audio and visual set. Playtime. Usborne Publishing. (Text of Carol Watson from Aesop's Fables and Animal Stories, 1982, unacknowledged.) For use with filmstrip. About 15 minutes. $.77 at Kay-Bee, Council Bluffs, March, '91. One extra.
Six fables of the ten in the printed version (TH, "The Crow and the Jug," AD, TMCM, LM, GA). Good voices and sound effects, satisfactory background music. Some small changes in the versions, including interchanging the sexes of the ant and the grasshopper. The two sides of the tape seem identical.
1984? Aesop's Fables. Dramatized on cassette with actors, music and sound effects. Waldentapes: Stanford, CT.
Thirty minutes of well done stories. Good varied sound effects. Well read. Maybe twenty stories. The translation seems to be that of Joseph Jacobs. I like these!
1983 Aesop's Fables. Made for use with Ten Best-Loved Aesop's Fables and My Big FunThinker Book of Fun with Fables. Speaker not acknowledged. Made in Hong Kong. FunThinkers. Compton, CA: Educational Insights. Gift of Kathryn Thomas.
Excellent voices. Clever interviews and discussions before and after the ten fables. Very well integrated with the print material. Artistically alert; for example, finger-snapping music introduces the story in which the fox's tail gets snapped off. The fox has a French accent with crow but a British accent when he loses his tail. The crow comes back and pecks at the fox after the story of the lost cheese. The tortoise is slow in speech, too. Ms. Hare says "Watch me next time!"
2003 Aesop's Fables. CD. Searchable e-book format. George Fyler Townsend from about 1880. Michael Poll Publishing. Charlottesville, VA: Cornerstone Book Publishers, apparent distributors. Distributed by lostWord. £5.50 to McElligott, March, '06.
This disc represents perhaps a spate of helpful texts digitally reproduced soon after the technology fostered that work. I suspect that they have been eclipsed by more recent developments. This text is described as "about 1880." I would have hoped for more specific information. Tip: open this disc and get to "Data" and then click on the pdf "Aesop's Fables." 121 pages. As I catalogue this CD fifteen years later, I cannot explain how I paid British Pounds for a CD produced in Virginia!
2002 Aesop's Fables. Text CD. George Fyler Townsend. Colan McRae Enterprises. $1.99 online, Dec., '02.
I found this CD with some old materials in May of 2023 -- 21 years later! A note read "does not play on either computer." I decided to give it one more try. It turns out that this CD contains one long txt file. A quick look online showed that one could open it with Microsoft Word, and voila! There is George Fyler Townsend's translation.
1996? Aesop's Fables. CD. PDFs of editions in English, German, Latin, and Spanish. Jewel case cover of Steinhoewel's title-page. Purchased online.
This CD contains Aesop in four languages. The key to the English edition may be that the publisher is listed as "Cassell, Petter, Galpin, & Co." The company took that specific name in 1878. Note also the comment after the introduction by JBR(undell) that about 130 fables not in the first and second editions have been added by another editor. A guess says that this is the edition in our collection for which I have guessed a date of 1890. The break before the added 132 fables comes at the top of 219 here, as in that edition. 1869 and 1874 may have been the dates of the first and second editions, both published, as I believe, without clear indication of a date of publication. The German editionlisted as published in 1479, seems to be an authentic Steinhoewel, part of the Rosenwald collection given to the Library of Congress. The Latin, likewise from Rosenwald and LC, is the Sebastian Brant edition of 1501, printed by Jacob of Pfortzheim . The illustrations are hand-colored. There seems to be another book bound together with Brant's "Esopus." The Spanish version is from Jacob Cronberger in 1521. This disc is a richer resource than I had thought! To get a menu, click on "CD-Start."
2010? Aesop's Fables. 20 fables in five groups of four each, with the title-story of each group featured on the clamshell cover. Pegasus Audio Book. Pegasus: B. Jain Publishers Ltd.
A female British voice tells the stories, listed in their groups on the back cover of the clamshell. The format of the clamshell front cover suggested that Jain had actually published a five-book series in 2010. A bit of snooping online and I found and ordered the set, along with an enclosed CD. Now let us see if this is the CD that comes.
2001 Aesop's Fables. Unabridged. 4 CDs. "Tracks every 3 minutes." Read by Mary Woods. Ashland, OR: Blackstone Audiobooks. Unknown source.
Good readings without further accompaniment. The cover illustration of TH is taken from Arthur Rackham.
2000 Aesop's Fables. Read by Anton Lesser. With music from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" and other concertos. Naxos Audiobooks: Junior Classics. Made in Germany. Unknown source
As in the promotional CD done by the Sunday Telegraph, the Vivaldi background contributes, as do sound effects, and voice transformations from Lesser. Naxos had used this same recording on an audio cassette in our collection from 2000 and for the Telegraph promotion. Again there are 66 tracks. The stories are kept brief, and they are both well fashioned and well narrated. Of course there is a British accent. Lesser creates contrasting voices well for the lamb and the crane in the first stories, which I enjoyed. This may be the best simple CD recording of Aesop to recommend to listeners.
1999 Aesop's Fables. CD. Imagination Station. Imagelot Entertainment. Almost 23 minutes.
Eight fables are performed quite exquisitely here, if the two that I enjoyed are any indication. LM is well performed, with good voices and sound effects. The lion seeks a nap in several places and finally finds the right one. The chatty female mouse gets off a great appeal, concluding with the appeal to become a friend. A week later she hears his roar and saves him. FG is also well told. Clearly articulated morals.
1997? Aesop's Fables. Animated cartoon CD in Chinese. Vol. 14. Jade Animation: Asia Video Publishing Company. Unknown source, cost, and date of acquisition.
Crude animation for three stories: "The Prophet"; "The Fox and the Woodcutter"; and "The Mouse and the Frog." The stories, each about 10 minutes long, expand their fables. For the first, I lose contact with the fable. The second and third are clear versions of traditional fables, though extended in Disneyesque fashion to include more exciting episodes. The second fable goes for two-thirds before arriving at the fable. How does the third make sense of the frog's ugly action? Three monkeys appear between stories; I believe I have seen them exercise that function before. This approach to cartoon presentation seems to love panning countryside in repetitive fashion.
1995 Aesop's Fables. Performed by Eddie Albert, Gregory Hines, Cathy Moriarty, Rod Steiger, and Michael York. 45 minutes. Beverly Hills, CA: Dove Kids: Dove Audio.
Very high quality performance by the readers. After each of the fables, the reader offers a personal remark climaxed by verse written for this disk by Judith Cummings. There is nice musical background to support the readings. If one wanted one English-language disk performance of fables, this would be a good disk to start with.
1986 Aesop's Fables. Look Listen 'N Play audio and visual set. Rectangular film strip cassette for use with a specific audio/visual machine. Playtime. Usborne Publishing. (Illustrations of Nick Price from Aesop's Fables and Animal Stories, 1982, unacknowledged.) For use with audio cassette. About 15 minutes.
Six fables of the ten in the printed version (TH, "The Crow and the Jug," AD, TMCM, LM, GA).
1974 Aesop's Fables. Group I. Six captioned filmstrips with six cassettes. Distributed by Encyclopaedia Britannica Educational Corporation. Pomfret Center, CT: Pomfret House. Previously in the Omaha Public Library.
The two sides of the tapes are for manual and automatic slide forwarding. Good sound effects and music. Generally a bit scratched up from wear. The stories tend to be elaborated.
FC: 4:30. 27 illustrations. Well told.
BW: 4:42. 29 illustrations. The first time, the men did not realize that the boy had been fooling them. The second time they did. In the end, all the sheep were killed. "Don't ask for help when you don't need it."
LM: 4:43. 27 illustrations. The mouse is climbing the biggest stone he has ever seen; it turns out to be the lion's nose. The mouse later just happens to come to where the lion is trapped. "No one is too small to be able to help a friend."
DS: 3:36. 22 illustrations. This dog has no name or home. He has to find his own food. He finds a piece of meat behind a meat market and takes it to a pond, at the shores of which he has his problems. One extra copy for $3 from R. Korenich, North Port, FL, through Ebay, May, '00.
TH: 4:17. 28 illustrations. Bad art work on the hare here.
TMCM: 3:32. 26 illustrations. In the city, they go through a door with a key. A dog and a cat intrude. The mouse leaves without a word of farewell. "It is better to have a few things and be happy than to have many things and be unhappy."
et of seven CD-Roms, six offering audio versions of V.S. Vernon Jones' texts of Aesop's Fables and one offering 247 images by Arthur Rackham. CoopAudioBooks.org.
Tell Tale Theater Pop-Up Book and Audiocassette. Six classic tales narrated by Carl Reiner. Music by Marc Phillips. Made in Singapore. 22 minutes. Produced by Designimation, Philadelphia. Phladelphia: Running Press.
