Creighton University Archives and Special Collections

Carlson Fable Collection

Item Set

Items

• The Hare and the Tortoise
  1981 The Hare and the Tortoise. By Aesop. Illustrated by Arthur Friedman. Paperbound. Mahwah, NJ: Troll Associates. $4.49 from Cathy Jefferson, Mobile, AL, through eBay, Sept., '08. I have had this book for twenty-three years, but there was a new addition in this eBay advertisement: story cards for a literary center. I was curious. The book remains the same, and I will include my earlier remarks on it below. In addition to the book, I received eight laminated pictures. They include a tortoise, hare, start arrow, finish arrow, sun, tree, bush, and a collection of four smaller animals, the latter presumably as spectators. I will list this item both here as a book and under audio-visual materials. I suppose that these very light pictures might stick to a felt background. Unfortunately, these illustrations are not particularly adapted to this booklet. Aesop keeps provoking new things! As I wrote then, this is a lively book. The two animals live together. The tortoise has great facial expressions. A great deal of time is spent before we ever get to the idea of a race. Perhaps the best illustration is the centerfold of the angry tortoise.
• The Boy Who Cried Wolf
  1962 "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." #16. Kenner-Color Slides for use with Kenner's Give-A-Show Projector. Made and printed in U.S.A. Kenner Products Co. $3 from John Anway, Redford, MI, Feb., '00. 7 four-colored panels. There is less text here. Panels 2, 4, and 6 have none, each showing the blowing of the boy's horn. In the first panel he had been told to blow it if he saw a wolf. The final image shows the wolf licking his chops and saying "Even bad boys taste good!"
• Aesop's Fable of the Lion and the Mouse
  1961 "Aesop's Fable of the Lion and the Mouse." #22. Kenner-Color Slides for use with Kenner's Give-A-Show Projector. Made and printed in U.S.A. Kenner Products Co. $5 from James Smith, Cocoa, FL, through Ebay, August, '99. 7 four-colored panels, each with two lines of text underneath. I now know the source of the set of pictures that I had found years ago at a flea market. Bob Engel had then put these little treasures into a beautiful glass-and-copper frame for me. Since seeing it frontwards shows the sequence in reverse, I offer two views here.
• Aesop's Fables
  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. $.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).
• Aesop's Fables
  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. $6.90 at Antiquarium, May, '94. Extra copy of the filmstrip and cassette of DS for $3 from R. Korenich, North Port, FL, through Ebay, May, '00. 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."
• 1985 Filmation TH
  1985? 6 hand-painted animation cells from Filmation for “The Tortoise and the Hare.” $30 from beachparking through Ebay, July, ’21. I have searched but not yet found the Filmation cartoon in which these cells were included. There is a researcher’s project for the future! It is sometimes hard to picture how this single “cell” picture would be included in a motion-picture cartoon. If you look closely, you can see the movable overlay on the colored background. There is very nice work with color here!
• 1971 Running Hare for TH
  1971? Background and three cells for an animation of TH. $15 from 1vegaseller through Ebay, March, '21. The seller identified this scene with Bill Cosby's Aesop, but I am unsure of that identification. As someone unacquainted with animation techniques, I find the working together of the various cell layers fascinating! The background here is so similar to that in my other group of cells that I wonder if they may not have come from the same film.
• Edison Blue Amberol Cylinder: " Fables Roberts" #1632 G-324
  1913 An Edison Blue Amberol " cylindrical record, "Fables Roberts" (#1632 G-324). Lyrics by Jeff Branen. Music by J. Fred Helf. Sung by Bob Roberts. With the lower part of its cylindrical cardboard storage chamber. $9.99 from YSI Antiques & Collectibles, Youngwood, PA, through Ebay, Oct., '18. Now here is a surprising find! One might expect, as I did, a telling of some fables. What is actually here is a song just short of four minutes in length that makes fun of "stories meant to deceive," the kinds of things husbands and wives tell each other. The repeated refrain is "In the olden days they called them fables, but they're nothing but doggone lies." This Youtube video presents the full lyrics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEiBPWIS7LU&feature=youtu.be. This theme is of course not original. It goes all the way back to the most curious element in the description of a fable by the Sophist Theon: a fable is a "lying story that images the truth." Bob Roberts had a long career of making recordings for various companies. This was apparently his last recording for Edison. I appreciate the research work of Susan Carlson in finding helpful information about this specific cylinder, and I appreciate Sonja Carlson's good advice about handling this extremely fragile object. Click on any image to see it enlarged.
• Les Fables de la Fontaine transcribed in music by Nicolas Clérambault
  2015 Les Fables de la Fontaine transcribed in music by Nicolas Clérambault. CD. Performed by Ensemble Almazis with harpsichordist Iakovos Pappas. Magnetone. Duplitechnologies. $20 from Fishpond, Commerce, CA. Here is something new. Clérambault in the eighteenth century created children's music out of fables, set to vaudeville tunes and simple arias. The texts by an unknown author are simpler than La Fontaine's. They match well the catchy tunes to which they are put. The result is delightful, not least when OF ends with a vocal sound like a balloon bursting. The disc has twenty such fables and then six instrumental-only tracks for family karaoke. With the disc is a 20-page leaflet including English translations of the prose descriptions and eight strong illustrations of fables by Thomas Carrere.
• Les Fables de La Fontaine
  2012 Les Fables de La Fontaine. Interpretées par Michel Galabru et Jean Topart. Frémeaux & Associés. Coffret 2 CDs. $22 from classmusicsuperstore through Ebay, April, '18. The two CD's here offer 22 and 16 fables, respectively. These CD's may be the best representation of a great reading of these best known fables. Notice by the cover how many prizes these recordings have won! The booklet offers insightful critique but not texts of the fables presented. There are also plentiful Doré illustrations.
• Les Fables de La Fontaine
  2011 Les Fables de La Fontaine. Raconté par Gérard Philipe et ses Amis. CD. MVS. €3.50 from "Aux Arts Majeures," Paris. This disc largely repeats the 2010 disc of La Fontaine fables "Lue par Gérard Philipe et ses compères." That disc accompanied a book with illustrations by Bruno Vacaro, published by Le Chant Du Monde. Our listing of it is on this same webpage. The back cover of the present jewel case recognizes this earlier publication. Three selections from that earlier disc are here dropped out – UP, LS, and "The Bat and the Two Weasels" – and two are added at the end: MM and "The Lapdog and the Ass."
• Fables de Jean de La Fontaine Lues par Gérard Philipe et ses Compères
  2010 Fables de Jean de La Fontaine Lues par Gérard Philipe et ses Compères. Illustrations by Bruno Vacaro. Hardbound. Vandrezanne: Le Chant du Monde. €19.90 from L'Écume des Pages, Paris, July, '12. This is a fine book with an excellent compact disc. Twenty fables appear, with at least one fine, detailed, full-page colored illustration per fable. The best among these illustrations may be for "The Coach and the Fly" (5), as the mosquito stands sweating after the coach can start downhill; for "The Small Fish and the Angler" (11); for GA (21); for "The Wolves and the Sheep" (32), where wolf and sheep bump fists to clinch their deal; and for OF (34). The illustrations are lively. There is a T of C on the back cover. The actors on the disc come from Le Théâtre Français. The tracks feature only voices, but they are excellent and nicely varied voices. The French keep on presenting their La Fontaine with distinction!
• Fables de La Fontaine
  2009 Fables de La Fontaine. Composition, direction musicale et réalization: Pierre-Gérard Verny. For use with the book Fables de La Fontaine sur des airs de jazz. Paris: Flammarion: Père Castor. €19.81 for the book, including the CD, from Amazon.fr, Oct., '11. Of the twenty-eight fables in the book, twelve are selected for presentation in a jazz mode here. The titles for the music are clever, e.g., "Le blues de la Cigale," "La fugue du Renard," and "La marche de la Tortue." The disc runs some 79 minutes. The final piece puts together two stories of the "smaller," LM and AD, in "Le medley des plus petits." The musical score for "La marche de la Tortue" is at the end of the book.
• Fables de La Fontaine
  2006 Fables de La Fontaine. CD. Louis de Funès, Gérard Philipe, François Perier, Fernandel, and others. GoHit, Ltd. €7. This is a disappointing CD. Although it offers a variety of reciters, each of whom uses a variety of voices supported by orchestral music and sound effects, there are two serious drawbacks. First, the sound quality is not the highest. Secondly, while the jewel case advertises 24 fables, there are 17 tracks, and the last fable and a half are cut off at the end. A good example of the various voices provided by one reciter is WL. Similarly a peculiar voice for the fox in FC includes in his final putdown a good deal of laughing. Louis de Funès recites the first ten fables. There is an accompanying12-page booklet with photos of de Funès and Fernandel, but only some of the fable texts are provided.
• Les Fables de La Fontaine pour les petits, Volume 1
  2005 Les Fables de La Fontaine pour les petits, Volume 1. CD. Avec la partcipation [sic] de Jean-Pierre Darras. MCSA Entertainment. Vente exclusivement réservé à la Belgique. $.01 from music-n-dvds through Ebay, Dec., '06. Several things are remarkable about this disc. First is the price for which I was able to obtain it. It could not be lower! Next is that a goodly portion of the disc seems to repeat, from Puzzle Productions, readings of four fables by Jean-Pierre Darras from a disc we have, produced in 1999. The third remarkable thing is that the other five presentations are as different as could be from Darras' readings. They are a kind of "children's radio theater" presentation of the fables, complete with giggles, sirens, the sound of pouring lemonade, and church bells. These are dramatizations of La Fontaine, sometimes – only sometimes, as far as I can perceive – using La Fontaine's words. I suspect the voices of, for example, the town and country mice are sped up human voices. TMCM seems to include several broken glasses or dishes and also a phone call to the town mouse. I find the grouping of these presentations with Darras' readings jarring. For the price, I guess I cannot complain. We do not have the second volume, and I will not be seeking it zealously.
• La Fontaine and Le Gaucher
  2005 La Fontaine and Le Gaucher. La Fontaine and Le Gaucher. Pierrejean Gaucher. Paris: Nocturne. £2.45 from ianscdstore, Liverpool, through eBay, August, '11. Here is a 50-minute compact disc featuring sixteen fables musically rendered. Fourteen are in French, with one Italian version of OF and one English version of GA. Guitars, pianos, accordion, trombone, saxophone, flute, counterbass, and percussion all contribute. Pierrejean Gaucher did the composition and arrangements of the music. A few bars of taps for the exploded frog in the Italian version of OF is a nice touch! FC and WC have multiple parts. TMCM is wonderfully frantic music, well matched to the lively colored cartoon work! Overall, the disc shows a strong integration of poetry and music.
• Les Fables de La Fontaine
  2004 Les Fables de La Fontaine. Isabelle Aboulker. Paris: Gallimard Jeunesse Musique. €18.01 from amazon.fr, Sept., '11 "1 Livre + 1 CD Audio." This high-class CD comes inside the front-cover of a large-format book of the same name published by Gallimard Jeunesse in 2008. The book offers at its back a musical passage from each of the fifteen fables. The fables are rendered in highly complex music involving a number of instruments and several voices. This book and CD bring together a significant collection of songs, texts, facts, and art objects! The CD has imprinted on i
• Les Fables de La Fontaine, Vol. 2
  2004 Les Fables de La Fontaine, Vol. 2. Racontées par Michel Galabru et Jean Topart. CD. Frémeaux & Associés. Unknown source.. This is the latter of two CD's that are apparently identical in content with the two-CD set from the same firm in 2012, which one can find elsewhere on this page. This second disc has 17 fables, listed on the back of the packaging. As I mention there, these CD's may be the best representation of a great reading of these, some of the best known fables of La Fontaine. The outer cellophane packaging here displayed many of the same notices of prizes these recordings have won! The booklet offers the very same critique texts by Jean-Pierre Collinet as the booklet nine years later, now newly formatted, as is the packaging of the discs. As there, one finds in the booklet plentiful Doré illustrations. Did the first disc do so well that they made a second disc a year later? The first disc curiously shows no "Volume 1" to correspond to the "Volume 2" here.
• Les Fables de La Fontaine
  2003 Les Fables de La Fontaine. Racontées par Michel Galabru et Jean Topart. CD. Frémeaux & Associés. Unknown source.. This is the former of two CD's that are apparently identical in content with the two-CD set from the same firm in 2012, which one can find elsewhere on this page. This first disc has 22 fables, listed on the back of the packaging. As I mention there, these CD's may be the best representation of a great reading of these, some of the best known fables of La Fontaine. The packaging here displays many of the same notices of prizes these recordings have won! The booklet offers the very same critique texts by Jean-Pierre Collinet as the booklet nine years later, now newly formatted, as is the packaging of the discs. As there, one finds in the booklet plentiful Doré illustrations.
• Anthologie des Fables de La Fontaine
  2001 Anthologie des Fables de La Fontaine. Choisies et lues par Michel Leeb. Illustrées par Philippe de Kemmeter. Hardbound. Paris: Éditions du Layeur. €10 from an unknown source, August, '12. 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.
• Jean de La Fontaine: Fables
  2000 Jean de La Fontaine: Fables. Tome 2. CD. Narrator: Albert Millaire. Illustrations: Anne Coté. Musique: Alexandre Stanké. Collection Coffragants: Alexandre Stanké. From Patrice Julien, Quebec. Lively and articulate narrations of seventeen fables, separated by brief musical interludes. This and a 1993 CD, also from Millaire and Stanké, may be the only CDs in our collection narrated by a Canadian, though I am sure I cannot tell the different in accent. The disc is accompanied by a 48-page booklet offering the French texts of the fables with one colored and several black-and-white drawings of Anne Coté. Our collection also includes a 1993 audio cassette of Albert Millaire reading, again for Alexandre Alexandre Stanké. I could not establish any clear relationship between this CD and that cassette and could also not compare this CD and booklet with the CD and publication from 1993.
• Fables Jazz: Jean de la Fontaine
  2000 Fables Jazz: Jean de la Fontaine. CD. 15 fables embedded in jazz arrangements. Chemin Faisant. Sergent Major Company. Unknown source. Here is another highly creative development of La Fontaine's fables. I listened to and enjoyed the first three: "La Montagne Qui Accouche"; OR; and "The Coach and the Fly." The last of these was, for me, the most clearly articulated. Because the marriage of jazz and fable is somewhat breathtaking as an endeavor, I think the producer had to make some choices. In that third fable, "The Coach and the Fly," I believe the choice was for articulate rendering of the words of the fable. I believe that that effort succeeded. In a fable like "La Montagne Qui Accouche," I believe his choice was more for the mood set by the jazz. I believe that that effort also succeeded. At the end of OR, there is a clever repetition of "Morts." That word sums up wonderfully the end of the arrogant oak.
• Les Fables de La Fontaine
  1999 Les Fables de La Fontaine. CD. Racontées par Jean-Pierre Darras. Twenty fables and one "Le Thème des Contes." Sony Music Entertainment (France). ©1994 Puzzle Productions. $1.50 from jeff-9009 through Ebay, August, '03. This is a lovely CD, perhaps the one I would most recommend for articulate presentation of the original French fables. I listened to the first four of the twenty fables – FC, GA, TH, and WL – and enjoyed them thoroughly. WL is read, for example, with a strong sense of pace that fits the fable. There is an appropriately understated musical background and a few sound effects. The final "Theme of the Contes" is a rather haunting instrumental piece.
• Chansons de la Fontaine
  1997 Chansons de la Fontaine. Monomotapa. CD. Nineteen fables rendered as songs. Composition and arrangements of almost all: Jean Chavot. Auvidis Jeunesse. Studio du Palais. Liège, Belgium: Studio S.O.S. €3.49 from Ansali Multimedia Vertriebs GmbH through Ebay, Dec., '05. This disc is a very pleasant surprise. The texts of La Fontaine are presented verbatim, if not always at the same level of intensity or audibility. But each text is encased in a true chanson, with its own rhythm and persuasion. These chansons move! I enjoyed the first four immensely, not least the conjunction of the third and fourth: "The Rat and the Elephant" and "The Frog Who Wanted to Be as Big as An Ox." They are very much about the same pretentiousness. The voices here work together wonderfully! An accompanying little booklet with clever illustrations offers a key refrain from each song.
• Jean de La Fontaine: Oh! les belles fables!
  1993 Jean de La Fontaine: Oh! les belles fables! Albert Millaire. Musique de Alexandre Stanké. Illustrations et conception visuelle: Anne Côte. Productions: Les Éditions Stanké. Fabriqué au Québec. Participation Sodec. COF-12-CD. Coffragants. $5 from Ross Coleman, Days Creek, OR, through Ebay, August, '00. A very nice rendition of sixteen La Fontaine fables, complete with well integrated orchestral support. Millaire has a lovely voice. See the book and cassette that were all apparently done together.