1986 Fables and Legends: Aesop's Fables, Volume Two. 30 minutes. VHS 80463. Milliken Publishing Company. Universal City, CA: MCA Home Video. $3 from Theresa Thomas, Lakeland, FL, through Ebay, Feb., '00.
Seven stories are offered here: MM, BC, WSC, GGE, DM, MSA, and "The Hare with Many Friends." The same group is around the campfire, but in different positions from those of the first video. They still give the setting before and between the fables. Once a campfire character starts to tell a fable, we switch to watching stills of that fable, done by various visual artists. The voice of the narrator sounds vaguely like that of Leslie Nielson. MM involves a splashing sound-effect decidedly too long for the spilling of a simple pail of milk.
1986 Fables and Legends: Aesop's Fables, Volume One. 30 minutes. VHS 80462. Milliken Publishing Company. Universal City, CA: MCA Home Video.
Six stories are offered here: "The Lion and the Statue," LM, TH, DS, BW, and "The Fox and the Goat." A videographed group around a campfire gives the setting before and between the fables. Once a campfire character starts to tell a fable, we switch to watching stills of that fable, done by various visual artists. The voice of the narrator sounds vaguely like that of Leslie Nielson.
1977 Fables and Fun, Vol. 2. Paperbound. Minneapolis: Marketing Ventures.
Here is one of two volumes in one of three sets. This landscape volume 9" x 8¼" has the same cover picture featuring a monkey, a lion, a mouse, and a boy removing a thorn. The pamphlet contains nineteen fables with a T of C on the back cover. The following are illustrated: "The Eagle and the Arrow"; WSC; The Fox and the Lion"; 2P; "The Old Hound"; "The Viper and the File"; DS; "The Snake and the Crab"; "The Monkey and the Camel"; and "The Fowler and the Ringdove." The narrations tend to the colloquial. Several morals are either catchy or unusual. Thus WSC moralizes "The advantage gained by lying only lasts until the truth is found out." DS has this rather strange moral: "All that glitters is not meat in the water." "The Monkey and the Camel" is followed by "Wanting applause and winning it are two different things." "The Fowler and the Ringdove" is particularly pithy: "If you make trouble you will get into trouble." The book is accompanied by a flexible 33 rpm record containing all nineteen fables. The line drawings would be suitable for crayoning. WSC and DS have full-page drawings that may be the best of this lot. The two volumes are enclosed in a sleeve. I will leave the records with their volumes. It would be a miracle to find those other two sets!
2010? Fables (4 book Collection). CD offering pdf files of Francis Barlow (1687), Thomas Bewick (1878), Ernest Griset (c. 1869), and Guy Wetmore Carroll's Fables for the Frivolous (1900). Planet-E-Tech. Purchased online.
This CD comes from a time when computer afficionados were eager to employ their skills in translating old books into digital form. As they appear on the computer screen, these files were, to me, offputting. Once they are reduced to about 70% of their original size, they take on more of the sharpness of their originals. The Peter Newell illustrations for "Fables for the Frivolous" remain, I believe, overly dark. Griset seems to me always to be overly dark. Why someone would digitize a later edition of Bewick from 1878 and not a first edition is unclear to me. Viewing Barlow will always be a pleasure!
