Ladybird Tuesday: A First Book of Aesop's Fables

I love Ladybird books, and I've been meaning to take part in Ladybird Tuesday at Being Mrs C for ages. Recently I cleared out Harry's bookshelves and shifted all the baby and toddler books into Mia's room. This left a huge space that was looking a bit sad, so I raided my own bookshelves and filled the gaps with the few Ladybird books that I have. I realised at this point that I need more in my life, so I'm going to start hunting them down in charity shops, and I decided to start writing about one that I purchased fairly recently - A First Book of Aesop's Fables.

Like most Ladybird books, this one particularly stood out to me in the charity shop where I found it because of the illustrations. This book was published in 1974 and is part of series 740 - Classics. Aesop's Fables are a collection of tales attributed to Aesop, a slave and story teller who is believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. You can read more about Aesop and his fables here, they are basically a collection of short stories, each teaching a moral lesson.

I was quite familiar with some of the fables, for example "The shepherd boy and the wolf" and "The goose that laid the golden eggs". Each story is very short, only a couple of pages long, with several illustrations and the moral clearly signposted at the end.

The stories are very simply written, and would be a good starting point for discussion with a child about different moral issues. I'll definitely be reading them through with Harry, and it would also be a good book for us to look at when he is learning to read as the stories are so short and manageable.

If you love Ladybird books, do pop over and visit Ladybird Tuesday, where Being Mrs C is assembling a really comprehensive catalogue of Ladybird books and reviews.

Below you can find links to all my Ladybird Tuesday book posts.

Snow White and Rose Red
Hansel and Gretel
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
The Three Little Pigs
The Old Woman and her Pig
Little Red Riding Hood
The Ugly Duckling
The Railway Children
A Little Princess
A First book of Aesop's Fables

A Ladybird Book about Knitting
More Things to Make - For Special Occasions
Easy to Make Puppets
Learning to Sew
Stamp Collecting
Tricks and Magic

Prehistoric Animals and Fossils
Dinosaurs
Stone Age Man in Britain
Great Civilisations - Crete
Charles Dickens
Nelson
Lives of the Great Composers Book 1
Lives of the Great Composers Book 2
The Story of Music

Plants and How They Grow
The Ladybird Book of the Night Sky
Sea and Air Mammals
The Farm

The Story of Nuclear Power
The Motor Car
How it Works - The Computer
How it Works - The Rocket
The Story of Ships
The Postman and the Postal Service
People at Work - The Nurse

Understanding Numbers
Talkabout Clothes
Going to School
Teaching Reading

Stories of Special Days and Customs
Christmas Customs

Girls and Boys - A Ladybird Book of Childhood