My Lists
Featured Lists
REVIEWS
Library Journal
Reviewed on October 23, 2006
Taken individually, the 19 fables in this collection are tolerable retellings, but readers of a few will suffer acute rhyming-couplet overload. Bolt, a translator of Moli�re and Aristophanes, generally opens with a salutation ("You want a piece of good advice?/ There is no harm in being nice") and proceeds to a lesson in animal/human folly ("You shouldn't dish it out if you/ Aren't ready to receive it too," ends "The Fox and the Stork"). Alo...Log In or Sign Up to Read More
School Library Journal
Reviewed on December 1, 2006
Gr 3-6 Bolt translates and recasts La Fontaines work in rhyming, contemporary English. My tales for "you", you tricky folk/Be warned, before you trick a bloke./You shouldnt dish it out if you/Arent ready to receive it too. The Fox and the Stork, The Lion and the Rat, and other familiar tales appear among these 19 selections, along with a few that are less well k...Log In or Sign Up to Read More
Horn Book Magazine
Reviewed on January 1, 2007
A much-practiced translator for the British stage presents nineteen fables selected from the renowned French poet's more than two hundred. As another translator, Norman R. Shapiro, has observed, La Fontaine (1621-1695) wrote "irregular, seemingly...capricious vers libres"; Bolt takes a simpler path than La Fontaine's, using rhymed couplets and choosing to include some of the more accessible and familiar stories. Thoug...Log In or Sign Up to Read More