Starred Review for Publishers Weekly

Beautifully designed, this lush, oversize volume showcases Pinkney's (The Ugly Duckling) artistry in grand style. There's a king's ransom worth of material here, as Pinkney serves up more than 60 of the ancient Greek slave-philosopher's fables. Aesop's wisdom spills across the pages as freely as Pinkney's glorious watercolors, alight with the many creatures who people the tales, from fiddling grasshoppers and diligent ants to wily foxes, clever crows, brave mice and grateful lions. Each of the vigorous retellings concludes with the kind of succinct moral that centuries of readers have come to expect (e.g., """"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched""""; """"You are judged by the company you keep""""). And whether the homilies concern a wolf in sheep's clothing or sour grapes, the timeless virtues resonate as freshly as the day they were minted. Pinkney brings his considerable talent to bear on everything from thumbnail animal portraits to sweeping full-page vistas of hearth and woodlands, and his detail, delicacy of line and subtle palette create an elegant foil for the simple parables. If there's room on the shelf for only one picture book version of Aesop, this could be it. All ages. (Oct.)

ALA Booklist (Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 CST 2000)

An acclaimed illustrator has set himself an ambitious task: retelling and visually reinterpreting 60 of Aesop's traditional tales. And he has succeeded brilliantly, bringing vivid new life to these ancient fables by creating pencil, colored pencil, and watercolor illustrations that are subtle and delicate in color but dynamic and dramatic in composition and in size. Pinkney is particularly successful at investing his animal characters with personality and panache, but his human characters also come alive on the page. Beginning with the illustrated endpapers, every page of this beautifully designed, lavish book is a delight for the eye and an invitation to the imagination. Happily, Pinkney's text proves equal to his art. His language, though formal, is subtly witty and begs to be read aloud, a fitting tribute to the oral tradition of the tales themselves. This first-rate edition is as artful, witty, and wise as old Aesop himself, and it will also stand the test of time.

Horn Book (Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2000)

Four stories span three seasons, feature two sheep, and illuminate one great friendship. Blanche and Otis rake leaves in the fall, and after a storm topples Otis's tree, Blanche gives him a baby pine tree for Christmas and presents him with lawn chairs made from his old tree. Caple's soft illustrations depict the changing seasons and emphasize the quiet mood of the episodic plot.

Kirkus Reviews

<p>Gracing 61 fables from Aesop, or at least in the Aesopian tradition, Pinkney's watercolors display both masterful draftsmanship and an uncommonly keen eye for natural detail. In these oversized portraits, every tuft, feather, and whisker on his animals look right and reala"as do the hats and scarves that many of them sport, their expressive body language, and the clever or foolish looks on the faces of his human characters. Though some of the morals are moot ("Notoriety is not fame") or may need explaining to younger readers ("Pride goes before a fall"), the stories themselves are timelessly clear and pithy, retold in formal, but never stiff, prose. Pinkney has added plenty of less familiar episodes to the usual chestnuts, making this not only at least as handsome as Doris Orgel's The Lion and the Mouse, and Other Aesop's Fables, illustrated by Bert Kitchen (p. 1361), but far more extensive. Whether Aesop is a complete stranger to them or an old friend, young readers will be enthralled by this eye-opening, and jaw-dropping, achievement. A masterpiece. (Fables. 5-10)</p>

School Library Journal

K-Gr 4-A visually appealing selection of 61 fables that mixes the well known ("The Fox and the Grapes," "The Tortoise and the Hare") with some that have been nearly forgotten ("The Mermaid and the Woodcutter"). In tone and format, this book is reminiscent of early 20th-century Aesop collections for children. Like Arthur Rackham and Milo Winter before him, Pinkney accompanies the stories with a blend of full-page paintings and smaller illustrations. As in those earlier collections, his text uses ele-vated language and an extremely formal sentence structure. While such loftiness is appropriate for a "classic" Aesop collection, with this edition it becomes a bit of a stum-bling block. Unfortunately, Pinkney's intro-duction doesn't give a reason for the text choices or supply sources. Morals are at-tached to each fable and for the most part they are the time-honored ones. Using a mix of watercolor and colored pencil, Pinkney's illustrations of animal characters are fairly realistic while his depictions of humans lean toward the stylized. The artist's masterful use of watercolor is most evident in his pictures of the animals. Highlights include the dou-ble-page spread that accompanies "The Lion and the Mouse" and the full-page illustration for "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse." While the narrative style occasion-ally gets in the way of sharing aloud and its tone is sometimes at odds with the more re-laxed tone of the art, this handsome title is still one of the best of the current crop.-Denise Anton Wright, Alliance Library System, Bloomington, IL Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.