Les Fables de La Fontaine

Abstract

1 Livre + 1 CD Audio. A high-class CD comes inside the front-cover of this large-format book, which has a see-through musical note cut through its thick cover. The music is by Isabelle Aboulker. The book offers at its back a musical passage from each of the fifteen fables. The paintings for the fifteen fables are impressionistic and quite creative. The animals are dressed in aristocratic costume of the time of La Fontaine. OF (6-7) is one of the few illustrations of this fable that I have seen that does not present the ox; it does present a mirror, and that tells the story! FC (8-9) is pictured in a funny way that has the crow perched on stilts. See the front cover for a different rendition of the same story. Both present the cheese as moon-faced. The exaggeration of the horns of the stag admiring their reflection (12-13) is telling. The friendly geese in TT (16-17) are coated figures on the ground pulling a light-winted biplane along a sandy shore! Creative! The grasshopper in GA is a young woman with a harp (22-23). Perhaps the most chilling illustration of the book has the wolf exchanging hostage young with the sheep (30-31). This exchange will not end well! Two pages present something on La Fontaine's life, on Aesop, and on illustrations of La Fontaine's fables (34-35). The melodies follow (38-45). A final feature of this book is that there is a small traditional illustration within each two-page complex of text and illustration. WL features, for example, the anti-Hitler cartoon of J.Y. Moss from 1939. The credits for these illustrations are on 47. This book brings together a significant collection of texts, facts, and art objects!