2001 Anthologie des Fables de La Fontaine. Choisies et lues par Michel Leeb. Illustrées par Philippe de Kemmeter. Hardbound. Paris: Éditions du Layeur.
This is a curious book, with a fine CD. The unusualness starts with the book's thin, tall format: 5¾" x 9½". The unusualness continues with the twelve full-page colored illustrations. Their style is lively, primitive, spirited, creative. The French keep using their imaginations on La Fontaine, and the results are delightful for the rest of us! There is a strange thing here: many of the illustrations are separated from their texts. Since there is no table of the illustrations, I will list them here with their pages and, if they are separate, the pages of their texts. They are "The Weasel in the Granary" (17, 15); "The Stag Admiring Himself" (21, 18); UP (33, 35); "The Bulls and the Frogs" (41); TH (49, 51); "The Old Lion" (53); "The Lion and the Mosquito" (57); WC (69, 66); "The Wounded Eagle" (77); "The Angler and the Small Fish" (81, 78); and "The Fox and the Goat" (85). Let me suggest something engaging about each of three of the best among these. The weasel in the granary has eaten books, not grain! In the illustration for "The Bulls and the Frogs," one can see the frogs underwater as well as the bovine love triangle that caused their problems. In "The Wounded Eagle," colors help make clear that it is eagle feathers that have mortally wounded this eagle. FC shows up three times: on the cover, on the verso of the title-page, and on 37. The disc has little or no music but very good voices. I will keep the disc in its holder inside the end-paper at the back of the book.
1905? La Fourmi et la Cigale. 5 photographic postcards. Nancy: Rover. $35 for the set of five cards from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne-Ricouart, France, Sept., '20.
The narrative here deviates from La Fontaine, just as the title is reversed. Here the ant provides all that the grasshopper needs, but admonishes her to start working. I have not been able to find the sense of "Vous avez faites maigre chère."
1934 Aesop's Fables. E.& W. Anstie, Ltd. Devizes. Series of 25. $76 at Murray Cards International, Cecil Court, London, July, '92.
This set redoes the Gallaher 1931 colored set using the same illustrations and texts but changing the print color of the verso from brown to black. The set also changes the design and content of the bottom portion on each verso. Here there is a simple rectangle with a black line border enclosing "E. & W. Anstie, Ltd., No. 1, Devizes." The numbering runs of course through the cards from "1" to "25." This same set was also done in black-and-white by Woods in 1937.
This pair of dust-jackets is unusual for not involving advertising. It also seems not to be signed by an artist. The quality of the images' color is, I believe, strong. The white surrounding the aging laborer is stark! The slight pink of his face only strengthens the effect. €8 each from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, June, '23.
1900? Ten (of 12) photographic postcard presentations of "La Cigale et la Fourmi." $120 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18.
Various series of photographic postcard presentations of GA have flirted with the presentation of the grasshopper as a human pinup girl. This series may go furthest in the direction of conflating a set of fable cards with notorious French picture postcards of nude women. This series, rare and larger than the usual series of five or six cards, has an unusual feature of using a one-noun description of each of the phases of the story. Wanting to give a sense of the cards we have without giving scandal, I have slightly censored some of the cards. A trademark in the lower left corner of each photograph offers a clue – but a hard one to decipher – about the publisher of the cards. I show images of the two missing cards to help visitors to see the complete series, including the dire ending.
Native communities marched throughout Sioux City in honor of children lost to the foster care system. Photo by Kendall Crawford
Crawford, K. (2022, November 24). Iowa tribes reflect on progress at march for children lost to foster care. Iowa Public Radio. https://www.iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2022-11-24/iowa-tribes-reflect-on-progress-at-march-for-children-lost-to-foster-care
1995? Animated publicity still from Aesop's Fables: A Whodunit Musical: An Animated Special from the "Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child" Series. HBO. July 18, 7:30-8 p.m., ET.
I presume from the information that I can find that this particular episode was in 1995, since that it when the show debuted. Angie Dickenson and Diahann Carroll were among the voices in the special. I think I can make out a tortoise and a fox on the left of this black-and-white still. If Aesop could only know all the things that are laid at his doorstep!
1980? Animated badge of FS. Canadian $6.50 from uasticker through Ebay, May, '23
The "animation" element of this badge seems like the feature of some images offering different angles or moments of the same scene. That feature does not seem operative here. In fact, the image is quite blurred.
