OCR Document


 

CONTENTS 

From the Editor ........................................................................... ...2 

Featured Article 

Arnold Lobel's Fables and Traditional Fable Features 
 Pack Carnes ....................................................................... 3 

CFS: 1992 Annual Meeting ......................................................... 21 

Aesop Prize Committee Report .................................................. 23 

Review 

Oxford Children's Encyclopedia, Ed. Mary Worrall 
 Ann Sullivan .................................................................... 27 

Alvin Schwartz (1927-1992) ........................................................ 29 
 Priscilla Ord 

Notes and Announcements ........................................................... 35 

Cover: Photo courtesy of HarperCollins. 

Artwork: This issue of CFR contains reproductions of original 
drawings prepared for this issue by Andy Sugg, a graduate student 
of English at East Carolina University. 



 

FROM THE EDITOR. . . 
This issue of the Children's Folklore Review has come together in a 
rather serendipitous fashion. Almost a year ago, Pack Carnes 
submitted an article on Arnold Lobel's Fables for consideration. 
Having decided to publish it this spring, I discovered the Aesop 
Prize Committee's report in the pile of things still sitting around after 
the AFS conference in Jacksonville. The theme of the volume 
clearly established, I then called HarperCollins, Lobel's publisher, 
for something to put on the cover. You have already seen the result. 
The minutes of the 1992 Children's Folklore Section, a review of 
Oxford Children's Encyclopedia, Priscilla Ord' s comments on Alvin 
Schwartz, and the usual notes and announcements complete this 
volume. 

Every new issue brings its own rewards and punishments. I 
have already noted (14.1) the inability of the editor of a camera- 
ready publication to blame type setters, but there are other agents of 
confusion lurking out there (or just down the hall). While I will 
certainly admit responsibility for the "Its/It" (page 49, line 25) and 
the "chid/child" (54, 23) errors, among others, I have discovered that 
the scanner which reads type onto a disk is not always trustworthy, 
nor is the author who complains about typos of his or hers that the 
scanner reproduced accurately but that I did not catch. It was a lot 
easier when there were typesetters to blame. Humbled, I will 
proceed more slowly and, I hope, more carefully. 

You may be receiving this a bit earlier than anticipated. I am 
off for Wales in April and May to do more of that Celtic mythology 
and legend research at the National Library in Aberystwyth. When I 
return, Laurie and I will set up CFR 16.1, a special issue of student 
papers from the most recent competition, before she takes her 
maternity leave. 

C.W. Sullivan III 

2 



 

Arnold Lobel's Fables and Traditional Fable Features 

Pack Carnes 

One of the most noticeable aspects of the modem study of folklore is 
its lack of clear and precise genre boundaries and definitions. It is 
not altogether certain that these are the necessity that some would 
have us believe. After all, a great deal of folkloristics is being done 
today in haughty disregard of this lack. Still, most of us agree that 
some such boundary markers would be a help.1 In no case—save 
perhaps that of "emerging legends"—is this lack more clearly 
demonstrated than in the fable and in the various forms that 
members of fable sets take. Arnold Lobel's fables present a specific 
case in point. This small collection of fables is clearly a literary 
collection, yet it owes much to traditional materials. This article will 
approach the traditional aspects of Lobel's Fables as an investigation 
into the nature of the intertextual relationships of highly personal 
literary creation and folklore. 

That the fable lays claim to being folklore can hardly be 
doubted. It exists as short oral narratives (jokes, proverbs, and songs, 
etc.), and fabular motifs are found in virtually every folk art form. 
But the fable is also literature.2 What's more, it is literature of a quite 
varied, yet interconnected sort. The telling and retelling of fables 
creates and demonstrates very close intertextual relationships among 
members of fable sets. Each set is defined as being a group of 
allomorphs of an identified fabular motif or narrative type. Thus the 
fable of the Fox and the Grapes (P15),3 known from classical times 
through hundreds, perhaps thousands, of literary fabular reworkings 
is also found in (predominately) oral versions as folktales in the 
complex delineated by the A- T Type 59 and has a further extended 
family covered by the Thompson Motif Index number J871. 
Moreover, the fable is clearly connected to, but not identical with, 
the proverbial phrase "sour grapes"4 and all the semantic areas 
involved in the resolution of that metaphor. The set is extendable 
through many dozens of cartoons, a very long list of "anti-fables," 
and other parodies.5 All these latter forms are connected 
theoretically through prior knowledge of the motif and prior 
introduction to the narrative type, often in the nursery. Prior 
knowledge of the "original" story line of the narrative allows satires 
and parodies of that narrative encountered later in life to be success-
fu1.6 

In the same way, a fable set is related to other fable sets by 
commonality of purpose, by form and structure, and by function, 

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Carnes 

among other features. Previous experience with the structure of the fable, 
narrative together with an epimythic "moral," for example, allows predictable 
responses to such structural features when used in another circumstance as, 
say, a joke narrative and punch line. This is a critical feature of the form and 
structure of any genre, although very often overlooked. The structure has 
meaning, of course, as the resolution of the metaphor of the narrative is in 
effect channeled and controlled to a certain extent by the secondary metaphor 
of the epimythium. 

All this needs to be measured against the background of the history of 
the fable and the position of the fable in modem society, on the one hand, and 
studied with regard to the world of children's literature and folklore on the 
other. This is especially important as the learning of fable motifs appears to 
take place primarily in the context of children's literature. Lobel, in particular, 
will take great advantage of the positioning of traditional materials in the 
nursery. 

With regard to the history of the form, generally speaking, we think of 
the fable as incredibly old, dating back to Aesop, a sixth-century B.C. 
Phrygian slave. But the fable is in fact much older than that, with beginnings 
that go back to the earliest known literature.7 The earliest known Sumerian 
fables would have been as old to Aesop as Aesop is to us. The modern fable 
is clearly different from the classical corpus, but equally clearly connected to 
it. All this makes the fable an excellent testing board for the multivalence of 
the motifs and other features of the fable, quite beyond the usual dichotomy 
of "folklore" and "literature." There are features that are to be found in the 
interstices of these categories, in the "harmonics" of the structure and content 
of the texts, such as fabular characterizations (the very specific characters of 
the lion or the fox, for example), the traditional "shape" or length or other 
structural considerations of fable texts which help us respond to a fable in a 
way unlike that of any other genre, its attempt to teach or to instruct, and the 
transparency of resolution of its metaphorical content. These considerations 
are found in classical fables, their folklore reflexes, and their modem 
(essentially literary) analogues.8 They are therefore to be found in both 
literary and orally transmitted forms.9 The fables under discussion here are at 
once firmly footed in that classical tradition and yet float free of it in their 
own way. Lobel's fables are a mixture of the traditional and the literary and 
lay claim to both heritages. The tales are his own literary creations, but the 
connective tissue is comprised of traditional features. 

As we examine Arnold Lobel's Fables we need to remind ourselves that 
the intertextual relationships among the members of any particular fabular 
motif set are important for an understanding of that set or any member of that 

4 



 

Arnold Lobel's Fables 

set, but that this is not the only important set of relationships. Indeed, the 
interrelationships to be found among sets, though of a different order, are 
easily shown to be equally important, as there are a number of elements that 
are cross-overs from one set to another. The very shape of fables is an 
important consideration here. Just as we are conditioned to anticipate a 
punch-line after an introductory line of a joke, so too the reader/listener's 
response to fables is very much conditioned by the expectations of the 
approaching "moral."10 Arnold Lobel shares in all of these features in a way 
that allows us to approach his texts a little more closely by identifying his 
reliance upon traditional fabular characters, motifs, and structure. 

Characterization is a prime example of all of these aspects. For example, 
the fabular lion is the King of Beasts, and the fox the Trickster par 
excellence, and those characterizations are fairly consistent. The 
characterization is suprasegmental, if the segments are the individual fabular 
motifs, for the lion is the king of beasts in virtually all fables, including the 
modem parodies, which question the viability of that very aspect of 
traditional fabular lions, just as twentieth-century democracy has taken its toll 
of kings on this planet. 11 

5 



 

Carnes 

Lobel's materials are not only in the tradition of previous fables; he has 
made extensive and interesting use of other folklore materials. His fables are 
not overtly traditional fables or anti-fables; that is, they are not refashioned 
tellings of traditional common fables, or parodies of such, but they carry 
much of fable tradition with them. Lobel then has not been dependent upon 
the traditional (that is the Aesopic fables) for much of his raw materials as 
have thousands of fabulists from long before Aesop through La Fontaine and 
beyond; yet part of their tremendous success is clearly due to the fables' 
appeal to tradition. 

This is not the usual fable tradition; in fact, Lobel sometimes ignores or 
"violates" folk tradition for his effects. This is a commonly enough observed 
process to be found in genres and types that exist so comfortably in both 
"literary" and folk tradition, from folk music to Schubert, from academic 
medicine to folk healers, from Märchen to Kunstmärchen, and other binary 
operating genres. 

Lobel does not even depend entirely upon general responses to the fable 
as his pieces are certainly enhanced, if not indeed completed, by the illustra-
tions.12 In all cases, it is clear that the illustrations are more than simply 
decorations; they freeze the action at certain critical points and also provide 
particularly effective reference points or points of recognition when rereading 
the fable. Thus, from a receptor's point of view, seeing the picture, the entire 
text is recalled and re-experienced. There is also the very important 
consideration of direction. This is a very complicated event, involving both 
the intention of the author (which can be approximated here because of two 
elements, pace the zealots for the "intentional fallacy"), and the reception of 
the reader. First of all, the author channels the reader's resolution of the 
metaphor by providing the epimythium or moral tag-line. And secondly, 
since it is this point in the action that is usually the moment of the illustration, 
the illustration supports and reinforces the interpretation intended by the 
author. 

There is in the specific case of Arnold Lobel another factor of signifi-
cance here. Lobel tells us that the fables came in part after the decision to 
draw the animal characters, although he does not say that the scene depicted 
preceded the fable text proper. Lobel describes his choice of animals as 
characters in part as beginning with a list of animals that he thought it would 
be fun to draw (Hood 34-35). 

And, partly as an artifact of the particular position of the modem fable (a 
relatively new feature of which is the de-emphasis of the moral orparaenetic, 
the purely didactic element, of the fable, usually in favor of the satirical or the 
humorous), Lobel's fables float free of the popular expectations of, say, the 

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Arnold Lobel's Fables 

P373 "Ant and the Grasshopper" in that his "morals" are less demanding. 
Lobel's fables are bound to a certain extent by the traditions of the literary 
fable, but they use various folklore traditions very effectively and resonate 
with various harmonics from traditional fables and other narratives. The 
characters too, though not always the traditional Aesopic characters, are often 
highly reminiscent of more familiar fable characters (the fox, lion, ant, wolf, 
mouse and so on) and the traditional "expectations" of characterization (see 
Carnes, "Traditional Expectations"). Lobel's fables seem almost studiously 
distinct from each other with regard to characters; that is to say, not a single 
character shows up as the main character in more than one. The characters are 
all animals, in a sense a somewhat recent "traditional expectation,"13 as the 
classical corpus of fables has more fables with humans as actors (as well as 
fables with plants and inanimate objects) than those with only animals. Lobel 
might have felt constrained to present only animals as these appear to be 
more in keeping what the new "traditional" expectation for a fable today, or it 
may simply have not occurred to him to use any actors other than animals, as 
he implies in an interview about his Fables (Hood 35). 

The animals he chooses, however, are only in part traditional. King Lion 
is, of course, as are the frogs, the bear, and even the crab and the camel, but 
many are not. The lobster occurs as a character in no "canonical" (Le., 
Aesopic) fable of which I am aware, nor does the rhinoceros or the kangaroo. 
The use of these characters proclaims Lobel's independence from some of the 
traditional constraints of the Aesopic fable as much as his title and the 
familiar structuring of his stories claim the advantages of it.14 Yet Lobel has 
taken from all along the fable tradition. 

To begin with, his characters are perhaps even more closely akin than 
the average Aesopic fable character is to what fabular characters truly are or 
are meant to be: costumed humans. It does us no real good to see only a lion 
in the fables about the King of Beasts; we need to recognize the metaphor and 
see in that creature something of ourselves. Lobel, with one significant 
exception, does not let us forget that, even though his creatures act well 
within the boundaries of their natural characteristics.15 In this Lobel is close 
to his contemporary fabulists: William March [Campbell], James Thurber, 
Wolfdietrich Schnurre, Gerhard Branstner, Helmut Arntzen, Jean Anouilh, 
and Hoshi Shin'ichi, among others. There is little pretext here. Thurber's 
version of the tortoise and the hare has the tortoise ironically remind us that 
there is a fable about a tortoise and a hare; he "read in an ancient book" a 
story in which a tortoise beat a hare in a race and never read anything about a 
hare that beat a tortoise in a race, and thinks therefore that he could beat a 
hare and sets out to find one, to challenge him to a race. The tortoise loses, 
naturally 

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Carnes 

(Thurber, Fables 83). Helmut Arntzen's lamb runs away from the stream 
when he sees the wolf. The wolf protests that he would not harm the lamb, but 
the lamb runs away, saying "thank you very much, but I've read my Aesop" 
(64). These are not animals at all, simply humans in sheep's clothing, so to 
speak. Much of Lobel's appeal comes from this sort of thing. His characters 
are not much in the way of allegorical frogs and camels; they are people that 
we all recognize, and that is naturally, precisely the point. 

Lobel's opening fable demonstrates this clearly. "A Crocodile in the 
Bedroom" (2) begins with a Kafka-like (not Kafkaesque, but Kafka-like) 
opening: "A Crocodile became increasingly fond of the wallpaper in his 
bedrooin."16 That situation is the problem. The crocodile stared at the ordered 
patterns of flowers and leaves (well-illustrated in the accompanying drawing 
which catches this aspect of the fable and not its moral or the "action"). The 
crocodile becomes so accustomed to the order that the comparative disarray 
of even the "ordered" growth of Mrs. Crocodile's garden is abhorrent to him. 
Overcome with distaste for the untidiness everywhere around him, he returns 
to his room, takes to his bed, and (we assume) slowly slips from life. Without 
making too much of the similarity, the moral is as much like Kafka as 
anything else: "Without a doubt there is such a thing as too much order." 

There is of course nothing crocodilian about this character at all. Any 
other creature would have done as well, but Lobel has chosen a character that 
seems, to judge by its natural appearance, to be about as far as could be from 
a sentient creature capable of even the limited aesthetic responses needed for 
the narrative, his own statement about choosing characters that were "fun to 
draw," notwithstanding. We are set up for this by the title which serves in the 
office of a promythium, but one is still completely unprepared for the ill- 
fitting match of character and narrative. One would have expected in a 
traditional tale a more naturally orderly creature: a raccoon, a social insect, 
perhaps. The choice of the crocodile as an exponent of aesthetics makes this 
modem fable turn the traditional fable on its ear and outfits it with a finely 
tuned sense of humor that approaches the grand paradox of Disney's having a 
dragon friendly to children.17 

Characterization in ''The Ducks and the Fox" (5), on the other hand, is 
completely straightforward. The fox is sly and plans to catch and eat the 
ducks, a familiar response of foxes toward ducks both in the natural and the 
fabular worlds. The ducks are silly and only just barely recognize the fox as 
enemy, but they are beguiled by him in the traditional Aesopic and Märchen 
manner. The fox very nearly talks the two ducks into his sack, just as the fox 
talks the crow out of the cheese in the innumerable versions of their classical 

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Arnold Lobel's Fables 

fable. The ending is thoroughly modem and fits very well even with silly 
ducks. The fable has a traditional conflict between, incidentally, two clearly 
opposite forces (as is the usual case in fables). However, the ending appears 
contrived-perhaps for the sake of the moral tag line or epimythium. The 
epimythium does seem more typical of Lobel's (and our) own time: "At 
times, a change of routine can be most helpful." The irony generated by the 
distance between what sounds like a slogan of the jogging 70s and 80s, on the 
one hand, and the understatement of the moral, on the other, is highly 
effective, indeed much more so here than in many of his other morals. 

Lobel's use of traditional characterization is best seen in "King Lion and 
the Beetle" (7). This fable is far from an Aesopic one, but it is firmly 
dependent upon the reader/listener' s response to such fables, upon the reader/ 
listener's being responsive to fables in general and having heard Aesopic 
fables before. Although the fable itself is a new one, the incremental 
characterization of the Lion wherever he appears in fables is assumed. The 
Lion is the King of Beasts-from the two classical versions of the "Lion's 
Share" fable to the "Aged Lion and Fox," and a host of others through the 
modem Lion in the Ass's skin cycle of Helmut Arntzen and the Lion's Share 
fable by James Thurber. Here Lobel does not depend upon his audience's 
knowing any particular fable as much as knowing about the general fabular 
lion's characterization. The lion's role in society and his comical vain 
insistence upon his "kingliness" is the point of the fable and causes the lion's 
(literal) downfall. His vanity, expressed physically with robes, heavy jewels 
and a crown, causes the lion to fall into the mud, down to the level of the 
beetle from whom he demands acknowledgment. None of Lobel's other 
fables depends upon traditional characterization as much as this one does. 

There are, however, examples of unexpected behavior within what 
appears to be a number of more "natural" characterizations. This sometimes 
bizarre behavior is elusive and ill-defined, but highly effective. "The Bear 
and the Crow" (16) is a case in point. Behind the highly effective 
composition of the narrative as a fable, the characterization stands out as 
particularly vivid, in part because of the use of a traditional fabular actor in 
an uncommon role. The crow, the deceived in most fables, becomes the 
deceiver here. The bear, although not unknown as a gullible creature in 
fables, is more obvious in that role in the cyclical animal tale. Emphasis upon 
the characterization here, however, no matter how interesting, must not draw 
the reader away from the point of the fable, from the fact that we are all not 
just creatures in fables, but creatures of fashion in the literal sense. Those 
who allow themselves to be talked into the bear's situation have brought it 
upon themselves, even though the crow is not altogether blameless. The 
epimythium is weaker here than in 

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Carnes 

most of Lobel's fables and is indeed not really needed at all. A well-chosen 
epimythium can often add to even a well-told story, much as an emblem 
enhances the effect of a proverb or motto. In Lobel's case, the illustrations are 
equally effective and often surpass the epimythium in drawing the attention of 
the reader to the point of the fable. 

A particular striking example of that is to be found in "The Baboon's 
Umbrella" (12). There are two characters: the baboon, who complained that 
he was unable to close his umbrella, and his obliging friend the gibbon, who 
suggested the cutting of large gaping holes in it. The action is easily foreseen 
as the rain begins to fall. The baboon and the gibbon here are not disturbingly 
out of character at all. Although they are not drawn from standard fabular 
characters, they do function quite well as actors. This is a very well-
constructed fable, and a great deal of its strength and appeal comes from the 
moral tag line: "Advice from friends is like the weather. Some of it is good 
and some of it is bad." I rather suspect that Lobel purposely sidestepped the 
obvious line available to him in constructing his moral with "fair weather" 
and "friends," but he has certainly felt the need for a moral couched in a 
quasiproverbial phrase. 

The natural characteristics of animals is the third source of elements 
from which a fabulist can draw for his work. This is as old as the originator of 
the Tortoise and the Hare fable, in which the actual speed of the hare is 
matched to the actual slowness of the tortoise. Modem fabulists in general 
have made more use of this aspect than was the case in earlier literary fables, 
but Lobel uses it most effectively. In fact Lobel parodies the very process in 
his fourth fable: "The Crab and the Lobster" (8). We are so accustomed to 
looking for metaphors in fables (and allowing for the convention that animals 
speak), we are taken aback when the actors in a fable actuality are the 
creatures that they are and moreover are in fact in possession of their natural 
characteristics. As the two crustaceans set sail on the sea, they encounter a 
storm and the boat begins to sink. The lobster answers the crab's horrified 
cries with: 

Of course, we are sinking. This old boat is full of holes. 
Have courage, old friend. Remember, we are creatures of the sea. 

Of course they are. The marvel here is that we, too, as fable readers, are not 
accustomed to having fable creatures operate in their own natural elements, 
as natural creatures, or falling back upon natural abilities to save them-
selves.18 Even the crab seems to have forgotten that although he is playing a 
costumed human in the fable, he can still live under water. The epimythium, 
"Even the taking of small risks will add excitement to life," is effective again 
for its irony. There are, of course, no risks involved at all. 

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Arnold Lobel's Fables 

The natural crowing of roosters at dawn, and their folktale proclivity to 
do so, is well-exploited in Lobel's "The Young Rooster" (37). This is 
especially effective, for the conflict comes about precisely of the fact that the 
young rooster does not seem able to "crow up the sun," as his first day "on 
the job" is cloudy and overcast. This results in failure for the young rooster 
who is now discouraged. All the barnyard animals decry the disastrous lack 
of sun. The bull, in an attempt to help, provides the rooster with the 
marvelously incongruent fact that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, a 
statement that is not likely to have occurred in any Aesopic fable (and 
inserted, I rather suspect, for precisely that reason). 

The mouse in the "The Mouse at the Seashore" (10) is another character 
chosen for its natural qualities. Once the premise of the fable is accepted, 
then the dangers encountered are those that a mouse would be likely to run 
into: a cat, a bird, and dogs-all of which attack him. He loses his way and is 
bloodied time and again, but the sight of the sea is worth it all. The 
epimythium is an overstatement made redundant by the charming illustration 
of the mouse sitting on the sand dune watching the sun set over the sea. Here, 
then, the fact that the fable is not about mice at all is clear. The natural 
enemies pitted against the mouse misdirect the reader into thinking that 
indeed the story is about a mouse, but the final scene and the exquisite 
illustration bring us back to our world, resolve the metaphor, and remind us 
that we are talking about us, in a way that is completely consistent with the 
Aesopic tradition. 

In contrast to the fables discussed above, there are a number of instances 
in which Lobel has purposefully strayed from the natural characteristics of 
certain animals, but has stayed in sight of their roles in traditional folk 
literature and, in some instances, in children's literature. The resulting effect 
is mixed. The hippopotamus in "The Hippopotamus at Dinner" (38) is 
perhaps an obvious choice on the surface for gluttony, but the hippo is not in 
fact a glutton, just a bulky animal whose dimensions are translated into 
obesity when compared to a human scale of girth. It is the nature of the hippo 
to be overtly fat from the human point of view, but it does not follow that he 
would "over-order" in a restaurant. The situation takes advantage of some 
characteristics of hippos, real or imagined: hippos seem (to humans) to be fat, 
and that seems to imply overeating. This is one of Lobel’s "weakest" fables, 
and the epimythium: "Too much of anything often leaves one with a feeling 
of regret," does not save it from being relatively ineffective. The motif is a 
common one in folk literature: the hippo overeats and then cannot leave the 
table (cave, hollow tree, etc.), having grown too large. It is significant that 
this precise motif is found in children's literature in a number of instances, the 
chapter in Winnie the Pooh with Pooh and the honey pot being but one 
example.19 

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Carnes 

, 

Further, the wolf, in the somewhat misnamed ''The Hen and the Apple 
Tree" (11), plays an even more traditional folk-literature role, that of 
assuming a disguise in order to obtain his prey. Although this is not a 
behavior of wolves observable in nature, it is clearly one common 
characteristic of wolves in folk literature. The Märchen "Little Red Riding 
Hood" is only one example; there are fabular disguised wolves as well: "Wolf 
and the Kid" (P572), which has of course a much later Märchen reflex, in 
Grimm no. 5, for example. The innovative twist Lobel gives his wolf here is 
twofold: first, the wolf is disguised as an apple tree, and second, in an even 
more anti-traditional feature, the hen sees through the disguise. The wolf, 
quite uncharacteristically, "knew that he had been outsmarted," an unusual 
insight for the plastic characters of the fable; but that having been said, the 
fable ought to end there, rather than with the too obvious "It is always 
difficult to pose as something else." It is that line, one suspects, that Lobel 
was writing toward. It is clearly designed for the children for whom the 
"moral" is intended. 

There are also the somewhat abstracted natural characteristics of animals 
that are chosen for fables here. The ostrich is popularly believed to be afraid 
and thus the "Shy Lover" Ostrich is a natural secondary overtone (21). The 
camel is clearly one of the most unlikely animals to be chosen to play the part 
of a ballerina and, therefore, is an excellent choice for a fable in which the 
main actor is shown not being able to do what she wanted to do well, but "she 
will dance just for herself" (22). Actually, there is an Aesopic fable about a 

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Arnold Lobel's Fables 

camel dancing, P83 "Ape and Camel," known from the earliest Greek prose 
tradition, in which the camel tried to dance and was so ridiculed that he was 
forced to leave the gathering of the animals. 

Some of Lobel's fables have characters and situations that are not 
standard, not traditional, and not specie-specific. Lobel is not the first to use 
animals this way, but he is surely the first to write a fable about a vain 
rhinoceros (a capsule "Emperor's Clothes," A-T 1620; TMI K445) or a 
peculiar fable about an elephant and his son (32) that has nothing to do with 
elephants and does not show any general or specific characteristic of el-
ephants. "The Pelican and the Crane" (35) also owes nothing to the natural 
traits or physical attributes of pelicans and cranes, but succeeds extremely 
well. Lobel pays the price of his independence in this regard: he must 
characterize his actors to set up the moral. The grand advantage of using 
traditional characteristics and traditional traits of fabular characters is the 
shorthand and "instant characterization" afforded by that tradition. The fable 
is best when very short, and that is accomplished in the easiest fashion by 
letting traditional characterization supply those features for which the animal 
was selected. When using an animal that is not somehow characterized in 
traditional literature, the author has to create some of that characterization 
himself. That is difficult in the short space allowed a fable. In the "Pelican 
and the Crane," Lobel has to set the stage and establish the characters early 
on. In the first line, we read "The Crane invited the Pelican to tea." We know 
nothing about Lobel's general idea of cranes and pelicans, nor this specific 
fable crane and this specific fable pelican as yet. "No one invites me 
anywhere," says the pelican, and we ought to be on our guard for the reason 
for that statement. That is, naturally, the very point: 

 "Entirely my pleasure," said the Crane to the Pelican, passing 
him the sugar bowl. "Do you take sugar in your tea?" 
 "Yes, thank you," said the Pelican. He dumped half the sugar 
into his cup, while spilling the other half on the floor. 

That is the element of characterization we need. The pelican continues with: 
"I seem to have no friends at all." The crane then asks if he takes milk. Some 
of the milk goes in the tea, but most ends up on the floor-and our suspicions 
are confirmed. A third clumsy act is needed to make the point most 
effectively, and pelican does this by stuffing so large a pile of cookies into 
his mouth that his shirt is covered with cookie remnants. This is the point of 
the action shown us in the illustration. The moral tag-line: "When one is a 
social failure, the reasons are as clear as day," could easily be entered in 
pencil under William March [Campbell]'s fable no. 22, "Polecat and His 
Friends." The 

13 



 

Carnes 

polecat in this fable was indignant at the manner in which he was treated by 
the other animals, and he complained bitterly to an old tortoise about the 
"undemocratic snobs" and the fact that they never invited him to any of their 
parties. The old tortoise at the end is forced to point out: "well, after all, you 
do stink a little" (March [Campbell] 42-43). Campbell's polecat does stink, 
and this aspect of the animal actor results in the clever finale. But Lobel has to 
create the unsavory manners of the Pelican, as manners, good or bad, are not 
commonly attributed to pelicans. 

There are other features outside of characterization in this collection that 
tie these fables to traditional materials, such as the idea of gold (and diamonds 
and pearls) at the end of the rainbow as the central motif for "Frogs at the 
Rainbow's End" (14) or the Märchen tendency for "threes" in the Pelican and 
Crane fable and elsewhere throughout the collection. The collection depends 
to a great extent upon such traditional features, and that is as it should be. 
Such ties facilitate reception of the work for both children and adults (see 
Carnes, "Fable and Proverb" 56-61). But these fables are literature, and 
everywhere there is the distinctive hand of the craftsman using traditional 
materials to aid, not to dictate, the development of his materials. 

If today' s fable has any true "direction" at all, then it is to be found as a 
vector of the work of such fabulists as Thurber, Schnurre, and Lobel. Its 
function is close to the necessity to point out society's little faults, not the 
grand socio-economic schemes, and its responses are from us on a medium-
burner level, because these are all we have time for. They are successful, no 
longer quite on the rhetorical level of the traditional Aesopic fable, nor on the 
poetic-genre level of the seventeenth-century La Fontaine or his eighteenth-
century followers, nor even on the somewhat "higher" moral plane of the 
fable of the sixteenth century, but on the level of common knowledge and 
utility, and especially on the plane of traditional, familiar materials presented 
in a somewhat untraditional manner, mostly for fun. 

Lake Forest College 
Lake Forest, IL 

Notes 

1. The call for example issued a quarter of a century ago by Alan Dundes is as valid 
today as then, even though Dundes himself has sharpened a number of genre lines 
in many categories and has worked extraordinarily well with many areas and with 
many types of materials without such delimitations. The surprising lack of 
definitions and clear-cut categories--with the fable a specific case in point--is 

14 



 

Arnold Lobel's Fables 

best seen in the introduction to Dan Ben-Amos, ed., Folklore Genres, and the 
bibliography cited there. 

2. The fable in fact is generally defined as such. See, for example, Smith, which has 
not been much improved upon, save by increasingly allowing more freedom to the 
form in Perry, Aesopica, and Leibfried, all of which leave out the oral component, 
some aspects of the structure, or the essentials of context and the like. 

3. Fables here are identified by "Perry number," that is, the number of that fable as 
found in Ben Edwin Perry's monumental Aesopica. I use Perry numbers to 
indicate the set of fables, one element of which (and often the earliest known 
member) is to be found in Perry. Obviously that set could be designated by other 
schemes. Wherever possible, the set designate includes the tale type number, as 
well as the corresponding motif index numbers, from Aarne-Thompson, here 
designated A-T, and Thompson, here TMI, respectively. 

The sets extend far beyond the fable forms of course; clearly the proverbial 
phrase "sour grapes" belongs to the same set as the fable "Fox and Grapes (as in 
Perry, Aesopica, no. IS), and the folktale equivalents found under A-T 59 are also 
members of that set. See Carnes, ''The Fable and the Anti-Fable," for a more 
complete discussion of fable sets and their members, especially with regard to the 
fables and their "anti-fable," analogues. 

4. See Stahl, reprinted in Carnes, Proverbia in Fabula, and the introduction to that 
volume. For details of the relationship of the phrase to the fable, see Carnes, 
"Fable and Proverb." 

5. The term anti-fable is coined on analogy of Wolfgang Mieder's "Anti-Sprichwort" 
and refers to the burlesques or travesties constructed upon those Aesopic motifs 
that can be assumed to be part of the cultural baggage of the reader. Examples 
include James Thurber's "Turtle and the Hare" (P226, A-T275A; TMI Kl 1.3), in 
which the Rabbit wins (See Carnes, Fable Scholarship 5-9). In the version of this 
narrative type by the Japanese Science-Fiction writer Hoshi Shin'ichi, the rabbit 
does not win, as the turtle has the rabbit arrested for speeding, and the turtle wins 
by default. For Hoshi Shin'ichi and his concept of the anti-fable, see Carnes, "The 
Fable and the Anti-Fable." Jokes cast in fabular form, with narrative and "moral" 
are legion, for examples and discussion, see Gerth, and Carnes, "The Fable Joke." 

6. In contrast, however, this does not mean that prior knowledge of the fable is 
essential in order to understand the proverbial phrase associated with that fable. 
Rather stringent testing has revealed that knowledge of the fable was absent in the 
majority of those who recognized phrases such as "Lion's Share," "Out of the 
Frying Pan, Into the Fire," "Sour Grapes," and the like. Most receptors did not 
know the fable source, nor recognized it after being told. It is significant that 
virtually none of these understood the phrase in the so-called "standard" metaphor 
resolution. For details, see Carnes, "Introduction," Proverbia in Fabula, and 
"Fable and Proverb," 55-76. 

15 



 

Carnes 

7. See, for example, the materials in Lambert, and Jason and Kempinski. The Jason 
and Kempinski article attempts to date the earliest known narratives. Their dates 
are fairly firm, depending upon a conservative estimate of the earliest recorded 
written record. In some cases, the dates are easily extendible one or two thousand 
years, even assuming that there was no significant period of oral transmission, 
which there clearly was. Of the five they identified as the earliest narratives, all are 
or are potentially fables, and one or two of the earliest are known today as jokes 
and as fables. 

8. The modern forms are of three types, although the distinction ought not to be too 
finely drawn. There are essentially modern fables which are written more or less as 
classical fables are, and then there is another closely associated category which 
consist of parodies of classical forms, i.e., the above mentioned "anti-fables." Most 
modern fabulists write fables of both of these sorts. The third category is that into 
which all of Lobel's fables fall. They are essentially "new" fables in that they use 
for the most part "new" motifs and narratives (although there is borrowing all 
along the tradition). Most modern fabulists write some "new" fables, even those, 
like Thurber and Ambrose Bierce, who "specialize" in antifables. 

9. I do not wish to restrict myself to these two categories, but they will do if 
considered only provisionally. There are a number of other possibilities, such as 
printed commercials, advertisements, "xerox-lore" (now commonly "faxlore"), 
and quite a few other venues. 

10. This is actually fairly modern. The consolidation of the macro-structure of the 
fable into the "standard" form today was leveled out in the Middle Ages on 
analogy of examples from classical times (see Perry, "The Origin of the 
Epimythium"). There have been a number of attempts to change these formal 
structures throughout the ages, but the modern fable has been fairly consistent in 
favor of the moral tag line. Lobel suggests that he thought first of not having 
epimythia: "they simply seemed very much out of date." But in the end, he 
decided that fables seemed somehow not complete without them (Hood 35). 
There are in fact a few modern fabulists who use no epimythia (Wolfdietrich 
Schnurre, for example), and one very important modern fabulist who uses only 
promythia(usually in badly rhyming couplets), the (once East) Berliner, Gerhard 
Branstner. It is important to note that the use of the moral tag-line is so strongly 
ingrained in most modern fabulists, that some, such as Thurber add epymithia to 
other genres, such as re-cast Märchen, which of course never had them, and 
which were not told for the purpose of the moral as fables were. See Thurber's 
version of "Little Red Riding Hood," entitled ''The Little Girl and the Wolf' 
(Thurber, Fables 4-5), discussed in Carnes, Fable Scholarship 5-6. Evenjokes 
that are masquerading as fables (see Carnes, ''The Fable Joke") have pseudo-
epimythia "punchlines." 

16 



 

Arnold Lobel's Fables 

11. The point is easily made: Thurber's "Lion's Share" fable (Thurber, "Further 
Fables" 23-2) has King Lion lose all the booty in the form of taxes and hunting 
licenses. Helmut Arntzen's lion (6) does not fare any better: he is informed that, 
although he is still technically "King of the Beasts," he is now only a constitu-
tional monarch in a parliamentarian democracy. Modern jokes about the fall of 
King Lion are legion (see Carnes,"The Fable and the Anti-Fable" 26-27, for 
examples). 

12. Much work is needed on the reaction to folk elements when accompanied by 
illustrations. A number of modern fabulists illustrate their own work, and not 
only for children's books. In addition to Lobel, James Thurber, Wolfdiedrich 
Schnurre, James Kniss-who write fables especially for children-all illustrated 
their fables themselves. There is need for studies of the interaction of both 
"texts," i.e., the fable narrative and illustration. The history of fable illustration 
remains unwritten, but a marvelous start has been made for illustrations through 
the seventeenth century in Hodnett 57-72 and 168-222, although none of these 
ideas are discussed. 

13. This is an artifact of survival only. Very few fables from the Greek prose   
tradition have survived into the very limited corpus of Aesopica alive today. 

14. In a sense, this is necessary. In nothing more than this is an important ethos 
between literature and folklore clearly seen. The traditional, the folklore artifact 
claims unity with others of its kind and in that it finds its existence and its appeal. 
Literature, on the other hand, claims and insists upon its distinctiveness, away 
from the group, away from tradition. The virtue of the one is the anathema of the 
other. Modern fabulists are just as likely to use many non-traditional characters 
in non-traditional fabular motifs as to use the more familiar forms. 

15. Lobel says much the same thing in his interview with Susan Hood, an editor of 
the journal Instructor. There he describes his characters as representative of 
himself. 

16. A number of modern fabulists seem to be drawn to Franz Kafka (who wrote 
fables himself, or, perhaps more properly, he wrote one true fable, and a number 
of other pieces that are "fabular" in nature, but not Aesopic in type). One of the 
most striking examples of this Kafka connection is found in the seventeenth 
fable, "La Cucaracha Sonadora," in Augusto Monterroso' s fable collection. In 
this fable" ...a Cockroach named Gregor Samsa dreamed that he was a cockroach 
named Franz Kafka who dreamed that he was a writer who wrote about a clerk 
named Gregor Sarnsa, who dreamed that he was a Cockroach" (Monterroso 59). 

17. Many modern fables do this, in contrast to the classical corpus. Wolfdietrich 
 Schnurre uses a rabbit as an example for vainglorious behavior (9); a rooster is 

17 



 

Carnes 

made the vehicle for a moral about seeing "with the sun" and not against it, in 
Branstner (no. 16), and so on. 

18. The irony created by the distance we normally create as a response to the 
structure of a fable to its characters and content, keeps us from remembering that 
these characters, after all, live at the bottom of the sea. This is similar to the 
cartoon figure of Daffy Duck, who, falling from a tall mountain and plunging 
down to "certain death," suddenly remembers that he is a duck and, as such, can 
fly. 

19. This is P24 (TMI K1022.1), with the classic forms represented by Babrius 86, and 
it is A-T 41 (see, for example, no. 73 in the Grimm collection) usually with a fox 
or bear, instead of a hippo. 

Works Cited 

Anouilh, Jean. Fables. Paris: La Table Ronde, 1962. 
Arntzen, Helmut. Kurzer Prozefi Aphorismen und Fabeln. Munich: Nymphenberg, 

1966. 
Ben-Amos, Dan, ed. Folklore Genres. Austin: U of Texas P, 1976. 
Bierce, Ambrose. Fantastic Fables. New York: Putnam, 1898. Rpt: New York: 
 Dover, 1970. 
Branstner, Gerhard. Der Esel als Amtsmann oder Das Tier ist auch ein Mensch: 
 Fabeln. Berlin: Der Morgen, 1977. 
Carnes, Pack. ''The American Face of Aesop: Thurber's Fables and Tradition." 

Moderna Sprak 80 (1986): 3-17. Rpt. in Carnes, Pack. Proverbia in Fabula: 
Essays on the Relationship of the Proverb and the Fable. Bern: Lang: 1988. 

 311-31. 
_______. "Fable and Proverb: Intertexts and Reception." Proverbium 8 (1991): 55-76. 
_______. ''The Fable and the Anti-Fable: The Modem Faces of Aesop." Bestia: 

Yearbook of the International Beast Fable Society 4 (1992): 5-33. 
_______. "The Fable Joke." Southwest Folklore 5 (1981): 1-9. 
_______. Fable Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1985. 
_______. ed. Proverbia in Fabula: Essays on the Relationship of the Proverb 
  and the Fable. Bern: Lang, 1988. 
_______. "Traditional Expectations in the Modem Fable." Neohelikon 11 (1983): 
 203-16. 
Dundes, Alan. "Texture, Text and Context." Southern Folklore Quarterly 28 
 (1964): 251-65. Rpt.in Dundes, Alan. Interpreting Folklore. Bloomington: 
 Indiana UP, 1980. 20-32. 
Gerth, Klaus. "Fabeln und Witze." Praxis Deutsch: Zeitschrift für den 
 Deutschunterricht 11 (March 1984): 14-24. 
Hodnett, Edward. Francis Barlow: First Master of English Book Illustration. 
 Ilkley, Yorkshire: Scolar P and U of California P, 1978. 
Hood, Susan. "Crocodile's Terror and an Elephant's Error-That's What Arnold 
 Lobel's Fables are Made of." Instructor 90 (May 1981): 34-39. 

18 



 

Arnold Lobel's Fables 

Hoshi Shin'ichi. Mirai Issopu [The Future Aesop]. Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1971. Jason, 
Heda, and Aharon Kempinski. "How Old are Folktales?" Fabula 22 (1981): 

1-27. 
Krüss, James. Die Schiffbrüchigen oder die Fabelinsel. Berlin: Die Kinderbuch 

Verlag, 1985. 
Lambert, W. G. Babylonian Wisdom Literature. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1960. 
Leibfried, Erwin. Fabel. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967. 
Lobel, Arnold. "Ca1decott Meda1 Acceptance." Horn Book Magazine 57 [4] 

(1981): 400-4. 
_______. Fables. New York: Harper, 1980. 
March [Campbell], William. 99 fables by william march, edited and with an 
 introduction by william t. going. University, AL: U of Alabama P, 1960. 
Mieder, Wolfgang. Antisprichwörter. Wiesbaden: Verlag für deutsche 
 Sprache, 1982. 
Monterroso, Augusto. The Black Sheep and Other Fables. Trans. Walter I. 
 Bradbury. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Trans. of La oveja negra 
 y demás fabulas. Mexico: Joaquin Moritz, 1969. 
Perry, Ben Edwin. Aesopica: Greek and Latin Texts. Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 
 1952. 
______. "The Origin of the Epimythium." Transactions of the American 
 Philological Society 73 (1940): 391-419. 
Schnurre, Wolfdietrich. Der Spatz in der Hand: Fabeln und Verse. Munich: Albert 
 Langen, 1973. 
Smith, M. Ellwood. "The Fable and Kindred Forms." Journal of English and 
 Germanic Philology 14 (1915): 519-29. 
Stahl, Sandra. "Sour Grapes: Fable, Proverb, Unripe Fruit." Folklore on Two 

Continents: Essays in Honor of Linda Degh. Eds. Nikolai Burlakoff and Carl 
Lindahl. Bloomington: Trickster P, 1980.160-68. Rpt. in Carnes, Pack. 
Proverbia in Fabula: Essays on the Relationship of the Proverb and the Fable. 
Bern: Lang, 1988.295-309. 

Thurber, James. Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. New 
 York: Harper, 1939. 
______. Further Fables for Our Time. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956. 

19 



 

Children's Folklore Section 
1992 Annual Meeting 

The 1992 meeting of the AFS Children's Folklore Section convened at 7:00 
a.m., Friday, October 16th. A continental breakfast was served at a cost of 
$7.00 per person. The minutes of the 1991 meeting were approved. 

Secretary-Treasurer Danielle Roemer reported on Section finances. We have 
a total of $13,298.64 in the bank (as of August 1992). Of those funds, 
$2000.00 represents the endowment for the Opie Prize and $7945.69 repre-
sents the endowment for the Newell Prize. That leaves $3352.95 in the 
Section's general operating fund. 

Review editor Chip Sullivan reported that the Section now has a total of 170 
members (a significant increase since we started publishing the Review). Of 
that number, 130 members are domestic; 40 are foreign. East Carolina 
University continues to support the publication of the Review. The Section 
remains sincerely grateful for the University's generous support. Mailing 
costs for the Review are borne by the Section. Chip repeated his intention to 
continue contacting individuals and groups as possible future members. 

Archivist Simon Bronner announced that queries about the Section's archives 
can be made through Bit-Net #SJB2 @ PSUVM. 

President-Elect Joe Edgette announced the winner of the Section's annual 
Newell Prize: Michelle Branigan (Indiana University) for her paper "Blocks 
and Matchboxes: Negotiations of a Shared Reality." There were no 1992 
recipients of either the Opie Prize or the Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Aesop Prize Committee members Gary Alan Fine and Linda Morley an-
nounced the 1992 co-winners of that prize. They are: Eric A. Kimmel for 
Days of Awe: Stories for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, illustrated by 
Erika Weihs (Viking, 1991); and Barbara Bader for Aesop & Company, with 
Scenes from His Legendary Life, illustrated by Arthur Geisert (Houghton 
Mifflin, 1991). The Aesop Prize acknowledges the best book (in this year, 
two books) using children's folklore published in a given year. 

Under New Business, the floor was opened to nominations for offices. Carole 
Carpenter was nominated and approved as President-Elect. Danielle Roemer 
was re-elected Secretary-Treasurer. And Simon Bronner was re-confirmed as 
Archivist. 

21 



 

Children's Folklore Section 

Joe Edgette requested ideas and nominations for participants for a Children's 
Folklore panel at the 1993 AFS meeting (Eugene, Oregon). The Review's 
proposed policy of accepting advertisements was discussed as were topics for 
special issues of the Review. Special issues are open to guest editors. Persons 
wishing to propose a special issue or who have ideas concerning one should 
contact Chip Sullivan. Joe reminded those present of the upcoming Special 
Issue on Narrative (vol. 15, no. 1), guest edited by Judith Haut. 

Chip Sullivan then raised the possibility (initiated in an earlier year) of the 
Section's contracting for and selling Section T-shirts. He reported that setup 
costs would run around $80.00. Linda Morley proposed and Simon Bronner 
seconded a motion empowering Chip to oversee the proposal. The motion 
passed. 

Priscilla Ord moved that Linda Morley and Gary Alan Fine continue to serve 
on the Aesop Prize Committee. They agreed, and the motion was seconded 
and passed. It was also moved, seconded, and passed that a third person be 
named to the committee. 

Danielle Roemer reported that, because of the present state of the national 
economy, the Newell Prize Endowment funds have not earned the requisite 
$400 to currently support the Prize at that amount. Linda Morley then moved 
(and it was seconded and passed) that the Newell Prize amount be reduced to 
$350.00 until our interest earnings improve. 

Linda Morely nominated Roger Pinon for the 1993 Life Achievement Award. 
Priscilla Ord seconded the motion, and it was approved. Priscilla Ord, Linda 
Morley, and Danielle Roemer will serve as the Life Achievement Award 
Committee for Pinon. 

It was announced that the Smithsonian would like to produce audio cassettes 
for children. The Smithsonian has requested nominations (or volunteers) for 
the post of folklorist editor for that series. Persons interested in the project or 
who would like further information should contact Lori Taylor at the 
Smithsonian (Center for Folklife Programs, 955 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Suite 
2600, Washington, D.C. 20560). 

The meeting was adjourned at 8:06 a.m. 
Respectfully submitted, 

 Danielle M. Roemer 
 Secretary rrreasurer 

22 



 

Aesop Prize Committee Report 

The Aesop Prize Committee is pleased to announce the following 
books as co-winners of the first (1992) Aesop Prize: 

Kimmel, Eric A. Days of Awe: Stories for Rosh Hashanah and 
Yom Kippur. Illus. Erika Weihs. New York: Viking/Penguin,1991. 

The three stories from Jewish folklore in Eric Kimmel's Days of 
Awe: Stories for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are beautifully set 
up with an introductory essay that gives a very fine cultural context 
for the appreciation of the stories. The stories are on the theme of 
Charity, one of the three main initiatives of the high holidays of 
Rosh Hoshanah (New Year's) and Yom Kippur (The Day of 
Atonement), the other two being Repentance and Prayer. The trio of 
stories is prefaced by a short essay that includes cultural information 
and interpretation that carefully introduce the young reader to the 
traditional rationale for the customs associated with these important 
holidays in the Jewish year. "Notes to the Stories" are back matter in 
the book, citing precise sources for each tale and explaining the 
author's considerations concerning his adaptation of the tale. In "A 
Personal Note" Kimmel differentiates knowledgeably between the 
storyteller (or writer) and the folklorist. The stories themselves are 
engaging and well told. Their messages are universal, easily 
compared with expressions of similar cultural values by many other 
groups, secular or religious. 

The color illustrations of Erika Weihs nicely balance the text. 
They are direct and uncluttered. Early in the text, they effectively 
complement the cultural information and background explanations 
of ritual and ceremonial references in the text. The illustrations that 
follow are, for the most part, full page paintings of important scenes 
from the stories. The scenes focus on action and human interaction, a 
pleasing extension of the notion of folklore as communication. They 
reveal, as well, cultural priorities for appropriate behavior. The 
illustrations for the supernatural story depict traditional motifs that 
evoke a personal connection between the human and spiritual 
worlds. The illustrations also feature meaningful aspects of material 
culture that involve the reader's attention well beyond the verbal 
narratives themselves. 

Overall, the book expresses the cultural ideal of integrating 
spirituality into behaviors in everyday life, a salient component of 

23 



 

Aesop Prize 

the worldview of many cultures. It is a very satisfying experience to read and 
examine the contents of this book. The reader from outside the tradition is led 
to an enjoyment of the material through more involvement with what is 
familiar to insiders than would be possible without the author's thoughtful 
presentation of cultural information. For readers who identify themselves as 
being actively Jewish, either religiously or culturally, the book is confirma-
tory. Being associated with the calendar year and ritual traditions, the book 
itself potentially functions as a stimulus to the preservation and perpetuation 
of traditional behavior. 

Bader, Barbara. Aesop & Company with Scenes from His Legendary Life. 
Illus. Arthur Geisert, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991. 

The Committee notes the delicious irony of our first Aesop Prize co-winner 
being a book on Aesop and his fables. We confess that, independently and 
jointly, we were overly cautious in deliberating on this book, lest we give the 
impression of being unable to resist the connection between the book's subject 
and the Prize's namesake. We discussed the possibility of giving the book an 
honorable mention. However, after lengthy deliberation, our appreciation for 
its merits reinforced each other's initial evaluation of the book. 

Barber Bader's Aesop & Company with Scenes from His Legendary Life 
is organized into three sections, the first being an impressive essay on the 
background of the fables and their author. The essay is clearly written in a 
style that is easily comprehensible to preadolescent readers and includes a 
valuable discussion of the nature of fables, setting the record straight on such 
matters as the antiquity of Aesop's fables, their purpose, their publishing 
history, and the facts and legends of Aesop's life, the latter from a centuries 
old fictional biography comprised of a group of narratives about the "fable 
maker" that circulated orally among the ancients. A short but excellent 
bibliography concludes "The Introduction." A sample of Aesop's most popular 
fables, nineteen in all, follows. The third part of the book is an excerpt from 
the legendary "Life of Aesop" that Bader discussed in her introductory essay. 
This is a book that admirably honors the child reader's intelligence 
while it provides essential information for the appreciation of a group of 
narratives long beloved by the reading public. The classic fables are typically 
concise and stylistically appealing. Finally, four legends of Aesop's early life 
provide the reader with a small folklore collection to peruse and enjoy. 

The illustrations, "Pictured by" Arthur Geisert, are skillfully executed 
etchings in black and tan. They are interspersed throughout the text, greatly 
enlivening the introduction's explanatory prose and effectively echoing the 

24 



 

Committee Report 

narrative action. Geisert varies his presentations, placing full page illustra-
tions opposite each fable and scattering smaller ones, often details of the 
larger pictures, throughout the first and third sections of the book. The 
arrangements of illustrations and their inclusive designs make the book's 
visual intelligence equal to that of its verbal text. The production of the book 
is also superior, printed on heavy, off-white stock. Educators will find much 
of value in ''The Introduction." The classic look of the book is consistent with 
the dignity conventional for publications of Aesop's tales. Yet the book has a 
contemporaneity that attests to its author and illustrator's attention to the 
continuity of tradition in our own time, in Aesop & Company, translated to 
both word and image. 

Committee remarks: 

There were sixty-nine nominations for the first Aesop Prize, some better 
than others at meeting the criteria stated in the Call for Nominations. This 
seems a most auspicious beginning for our initiative, reflecting, we believe, a 
strong interest in folklore, especially but not exclusively the folktale, by 
children's book publishers. 

We were encouraged by the diversity of the books in terms of the 
vitality of the inclusion of folklore in books for children. The overwhelming 
number of nominations were picturebook adaptations of individual tales, very 
few of which included substantial source material. Taken together, the titles 
well illustrated many of the issues that folklorists working with children's 
books have raised over the years, the most obvious being the failure of 
writers or publishers to acknowledge the source material for the book-the one 
or more specific texts of tales collected in the past by amateur or professional 
folklorists. Members may recall that increasing the awareness of folklore 
sources and a desire to see an increase in books for young readers that 
accurately presented individual cultures were the principal motivations 
behind the initiation of this prize. We believe that the two books honored 
with our first Aesop Prize will carry our message to publishers, authors, and 
illustrators across America as they entertain and enlighten their young 
readers. 

Gary Alan Fine and Linda Morley 
 Co-Chairs 
 CFS Aesop Prize Committee 

25 



 

Oxford Children's Encyclopedia. Edited by Mary 
Worrrall. New York: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1991. 
1,644 pp. Hardcover $200.00 

Written in a style that reminds one of the way a good teacher might 
communicate with children, the Oxford Children's Encyclopedia is a 
storehouse of information presented in a manner that whets the 
reader's appetite for more. The set, which is intended for children 8- 
to 12-year olds, is made up of 7 volumes with volume 7 being an 
index. Entries are arranged alphabetically. Although thematic 
arrangements are often used in children's encyclopedias, the editors 
responded to the wishes of their consultants-children, teachers, 
parents and librarians who said that an alphabetic arrangement was 
really easier than trying to determine which subject volume to 
consult. The editors did decide, however, to place all the biographi-
cal articles together in volume 6 because, as stated in the introduc-
tion, "everyone knows who a person is." The decisions about which 
topics to include were also influenced by children's statements about 
what they wanted to know. In all, 112 writers and 60 subject 
specialists participated in the creation of the encyclopedia. 

Although the set includes 2,000 entries, beginning with "Ab-
origines of Australia" and ending with "Zulus" (aardvarks aren't 
included and abacuses are dealt with in an article on calculators), 
there is not an entry for folklore as a topic. There are, however, 
approximately 50 articles that bear directly on subjects such as 
myths, legends, and folk tales, as well as numerous others of interest 
to folklorists. In general, topics relating to folklore are well 
presented and as precise as can be reasonably expected in an 
encyclopedia written for young children. The entry for folk music 
gives a good sense of the scope of the topic and includes margin 
notes on Cecil Sharp and Alan Lomax as well as interesting asides 
about classical composers who incorporated folk melodies in their 
work. The article on folk tales and fairy tales begins, " No one 
knows who first makes up a folk tale. People (the folk) pass them on 
by telling them." It makes the major points that folk tales are ever 
changing, ancient or recent. Some standard patterns are discussed, 
and the derivation of the term "fairy tale" is explained. Again the 
margin notes hold interesting tidbits including information about 
different sources for the Cinderella story, as well as facts about 
chapbooks and other written sources for stories. Although the article 
does list Hans Christian Andersen, Perrault, Andrew Lang, and the 
Grimm brothers as people who retold folk tales, it refers to their 
works as "folk-tale collections." Unfortunately, no effort is made 

27 



 

Sullivan 

here to clearly distinguish between writers who use the folk tale form and 
collectors of traditional tales. The article on the Grimms' in the biography 
section, however; does point out that although the brothers claimed that they 
were true to their sources they actually rewrote most of the tales, and the 
article on Andersen makes no mention of folk tales at all, referring to 
Andersen's stories as his own creations. 

Missing from the set is any mention of children's games. Under the brief 
article on children there is a section on play, but it makes no mention of 
games, jokes, riddles or chants specific to children and reads a bit like a cross 
between a text on the developmental phases of childhood and a book on how 
children ought to behave. The article on nursery rhymes fares better with an 
opening paragraph which provides a good, simple introduction to the topic. 

Nursery rhymes are the best-known poetry there is. You learn 
them by heart when you are very small and never forget them. 
When you have your own children they wi11learn them from 
you. They may not have been written down at all for hundreds of 
years and we do not know how old they are, or what they mean. 

This is followed by some interesting "guesses" about the origins or symbol-
ism of several common nursery rhymes. 

American readers will notice a decidedly European if not specifically 
British focus throughout the set. In the main that translates into more 
information about Celtic and Norse myths and legends and less about Native 
American legends and heroes of the Old West. However, there is a Native 
American legend included in the article on myths and legends, and the entry 
for ballads refers to Casey Jones and includes the text for "The Streets of 
Laredo." Also, it can be noted that since Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill aren't 
mentioned at all they are not incorrectly identified as folk heroes. 

American children will no doubt have some problems with terminology 
and word usage. For example, no effort is made to clarify words like 
"cooker," "hob," or "cling-film" for the non-British reader, and bowling is the 
British sport played on a green and not the one we play in a bowling alley. 
Still, with its wealth of illustrations, photographs, charts, cross-references, 
and margin notes, the Oxford Children's Encyclopedia provides information 
both directly and incidentally, and most children will find it accessible and 
enjoyable to read. 

Ann B. Sullivan 

28 



 

Alvin Schwartz 
1927-1992 

Alvin Schwartz, a longtime member of the American Folklore 
Society and the Children's Folklore Section, best known to most of 
us for the impressive, extensive collection of books for children and 
young adults on the subject of folklore of and for children that he 
published over the past two decades, died March 14, 1992, in 
Princeton, New Jersey, of lymphoma. Born in Brooklyn, New York, 
April 25, 1927, and knowing early on that the wanted to be a writer, 
he studied at the City College of New York, 1944-45; served in the 
US Navy, 1945-46; received his A.B. from Colby College in 1949; 
and earned an M.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University in 
1951. 

Alvin's early jobs included being a newspaper reporter, 195155; 
writing for non-profit and commercial organizations, 1955-59; and 
serving as director of communications for Opinion Research 
Corporation, Princeton, NJ, 1959-64. In 1962 Alvin accepted a part-
time position as an instructor of English, teaching composition at 
Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. It was in 1964, however, 
after the publication of two of his three novels, that Alvin became a 
free-lance writer and began the work that would occupy the rest of 
his life. 

His body of work includes three novels and three non-fiction 
books for adults on the topics of children's play and recreation, 
public relations, and fatherhood, respectively; sixteen non-fiction 
volumes for children; twenty-six books of folklore of and for 
children; and a recent book that he co-authored with Bill Finger on 
Batman in the Sunday comics. Of these nearly fifty books, written 
from 1948 until his untimely death, over half of them-including all 
the children's folklore titles, with the exception of Chin Music: Tall 
Talk and Other Talk Collected from American Folklore (Lippincott 
1979)--are still in print. A recent conversation with Alvin's editor at 
HarperCollins revealed plans to reprint Chin Music with new 
illustrations in the near future. 

Alvin's non-fiction/informational books for children are unique 
in their ability to provide general information on a given topic that 
he had drawn from a specific source. For example, in The City and 
Its People: the Story of One City's Government (Putnam, 1967), he 
was able to describe and explain the inner workings of the city 
government of Trenton, NJ, and relate that information to the 
governments of the towns and cities where the readers of this book 
might live. Similarly, the University of Pennsylvania was used as his 

29 



 

Alvin Schwartz 1927-1992 

source for life at a typical university in University: The Students, Faculty, and 
Campus Life at One University (Viking Press, 1969). Three dozen different 
stores and businesses in the author's hometown of Princeton, NJ, served as his 
models for Stores (Macmillan, 1977), in which he chronicled the activity that 
took place, described the goods and services that were provided, and 
presented information on the origin or manufacture of the products that were 
sold in the course of a typical business day. Alvin's books on night workers, 
museums, political campaigns, camping, hobbies, unions, and the like are 
equally informative, but due to the use of photographs as illustrations, they 
tend to be dated. Most of these books can still be found in school and public 
libraries, but none is currently in print 

Leaving those portions of folklore that have become literature for 
children in their own right, such as epics, myths, legends, fables, folk tales, 
and fairy tales, Alvin focused, for the most part, on those aspects of the genre 
that tended to remain in oral tradition. In successive books he examined and 
presented tongue twisters, word play, jokes and jests, superstitions and other 
beliefs, tall tales and lies, nonsense, riddles, his ever-popular "scary stories," 
secret languages, noodle tales, fortune telling and divination, tales of hidden 
and lost treasure, folk rhymes, and most recently folk poetry. His most artful 
book may be Gold & Silver, Silver & Gold: Tales of Hidden Treasure (Farrar, 
Straus & Giroux, 1988). This work includes chapters on treasure found and 
lost; pirate ships and Spanish galleons, the Whydah and the Atocha among 
them; codes, maps, and signs, with references to "The Gold Bug" by Edgar 
Allan Poe, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the Beale cipher; 
Captain Kidd and haunted treasure. 

Despite the appeal of buried or sunken treasure and both voiced and the 
written warnings and disclaimers of some parents and teachers who feel that 
some of his material is too frightening for children, Alvin' s best-selling books 
are his collections of "scary stories." The first, Scary Stories to Tell in the 
Dark (1981), includes stories, legends, songs, and poems. Its predictable 
success prompted the publication of More Scary Stores to Tell in the Dark 
(1984) and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones (1991). All three 
are published by HarperCollins and illustrated by Stephen Gammell, whose 
eerie drawings effectively complement Alvin's haunting stories and heighten 
parental and pedagogical concern. These three books may be purchased singly 
or as a boxed set. 

Seven of his folklore titles are part of the HarperCollins "I Can Read" 
series. These books, appropriate for beginning readers, ages four to eight, 
have no restrictions on vocabulary, but they must conform to a 64-page 
format where the text is limited to a set number of lines per page and a 
specific number of characters in each line. It is to Alvin's credit that he was 
able to 

30 



 

Alvin Schwartz 1927-1992 

collect riddles, tongue twisters, noodle tales, scary stories, and folk rhymes 
that met these rigid specifications and, thereby, bring his outstanding work to 
even the very youngest of readers. His titles in this series include: Ten Copy 
Cats in a Boat and Other Riddles (1980), Busy Buzzing Bumble Bees and 
Other Tongue Twisters (1982), There Is a Carrot in My Ear and Other 
Noodle Tales (1982), the extraordinarily popular In a Dark, Dark Room and 
Other Scary Stories (1984),All Our Noses Are Here and Other Noodle Tales 
(1985), I Saw You in the Bathtub and Other Folk Rhymes (1989), and 
Ghosts!: Ghostly Tales from Folklore (1991). 

The hallmarks of Alvin's work are his meticulous research, his artful 
presentation of his findings, and the inclusion not only of a carefully-worded 
forward to each volume that explains the topic or genre being presented but 
also the detailed notes, sources, and bibliography found at the end of each 
work. Every attempt is made to present a balanced picture of the stated topic 
or representative examples of the given genre and to encourage the reader to 
participate in his own collection or invention. When I Grew Up Long Ago 
(Lippincott, 1978), whose complete title easily exceeds that of Simon 
Bronner's American Children's Folklore (August House, 1988), based on oral 
histories from 1890-1914, for example, employed varied informants who 
were rich and poor, lived in urban and rural areas, and were white or were 
representatives of various ethnic minorities. Information on how to collect 
similar oral histories was included. Twister of Twists, a Tangler of Tongues 
(Lippincott, 1972) presents a brief history and some background information 
on tongue twisters, followed by examples in several categories, including 
some from foreign languages, and ends with instructions "To Twist Your 
Own Twister" and thorough "Notes," "Sources," and "Bibliography" sections. 

As interest in folklore and oral tradition as a genre of children's literature 
increased, in general, many people wanted to know more about Alvin 
Schwartz and his work, in specific. It was then that he began to be invited to 
speak at various workshops and conferences. One of those early invitations 
came from The National Council of Teachers of English in 1976. His speech, 
"Children, Humor, and Folklore," later reprinted in two parts in The Horn 
Book Magazine, clearly shows his understanding of humor, particularly forms 
of folk humor, and its appeal to children. Due to his unique position as an 
inveterate collector of all forms of folk humor and "scary stories" as well as 
his prolific publication of anthologies for children on these topics, he was the 
obvious choice to be the keynote speaker at the 13th Annual Children's 
Literature Conference at East Carolina University in 1989. 

No complete list of awards is available for Alvin's work, and classifica-
tion of his books, as non-fiction or folklore, excluded him as an author from 

31 



 

Alvin Schwartz 1927-1992 

consideration for many of the more prestigious awards for children's litera-
ture. In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories (HarperCollins 1984), 
illustrated by Dirk Zimmer, however, won the 1987 Garden State Children's 
Book Award for an Easy to Read Book. Likewise, More Scary Stores to Tell 
in the Dark (1984), illustrated by Stephen Gammell, also published by 
HarperCollins, was the winner of the Buckeye Children's Book Award in 
1989. These accolades, conferred as they were by state library and teachers' 
organizations, with direct input from the readers themselves, must have been 
quite well received by the author. 

Alvin has left us, and his intended readers, a noble legacy of more than 
two dozen well-researched, delightful, readable, annotated volumes of folk-
lore. He is survived by his wife Barbara-who, with his editor at 
HarperCollins, will attempt to put "a longer work of folklore" into 
publishable form for us and future readers-and their four children, John, 
Peter, Nancy, and Elizabeth. 

Priscilla Ord 
Longwood College 

Chronological Bibliography by Genre 

Novels 

The Blowtop. Dial Press, 1948. 
No Such Mirrors: a Novel. Writers' Cooperative, 1972. 
Sword of Desire. Arco Publishing Company, 1952. 

Non-fiction, Adult 

Parent's Guide to Children's Play and Recreation. Collier Books, 1963.  
Evaluating Your Public Relations. National Public Relations Council of Health and 
 Welfare, 1965. 
To Be a Father: Stories, Letters, Essays, Poems, Comments, and Proverbs of the 
 Delights and Despairs of Fatherhood. Crown Publishers, 1967. 

Non-fiction, Children and Young Adult 

How to Fly a Kite, Catch a Fish, Grow a Flower. Macmillan, 1965. 
America's Exciting Cities: A Guide for Parents and Children. Crowell, 1966.  
The Night Workers. Dutton, 1966. 
What Do You Think? An Introduction to Public Opinion: How it Forms, Functions. 

and Affects Our Lives. Dutton, 1966. 
The City and Its People: the Story of One City's Government. Putnam, 1967. 

32 



 

Alvin Schwartz 1927-1992 

Museum: The Story of America's Treasure Houses. Dutton, 1967. 
Old Cities & New Towns: The Changing Face of the Nation. Dutton, 1968. 
The People's Choice: The Story of Candidates, Campaigns, and Elections. Dunon, 

1968. 
The Rainy Day Book. Trident Press, 1968. 
Going Camping: A Complete Guidefor the Uncertain Beginner in Family Camping. 
 Macmillan, 1969. 
University: The Students, Faculty, and Campus Life at One University. Viking Press, 
 1969. 
Hobbies: An Introduction to Crafts, Collections, Nature Study, and Other Life-long 
 Pursuits. Simon and Schuster, 1972. 
The Unions: What They Are, How They Came to Be, How They Affect Each of Us. 
 Viking Press, 1972. 
Central City/Spread City: The Metropolitan Regions Where More and More of Us 

Spend Our Lives. Macmillan, 1973.  
Stores. Macmillan, 1977.  
When I Grew Up Long Ago: Family Living, Going to School, Games and Parties, 
 Cures and Deaths, a Comet, a War, Falling in Love, and Other Things I 
 Remember: Older People Talk About the Days When They Were Young. 
 Lippincott, 1978. 

Folklore for Children and Young Adults 

*Twister of Twists, a Tangier of Tongues. lllus. Glen Rounds. Lippincott, 1972.  
*Tomfoolery: Trickery and Foolery with Words. lllus. Glen Rounds. HarperCollins, 
 1973. 
*Witcracks: Jokes and Jests from American Folklore. Illus. Glen Rounds. 
 HarperCollins, 1973. 
*Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat: Superstitions and Other Beliefs. Illus. Glen 

Rounds. HarperCollins, 1974. 
*Whoppers: Tall Tales and Other Lies. lllus. Glen Rounds. Lippincott, 1975.  
*Kickle Snifters and Other Fearsome Critters. Illus. Glen Rounds. Lippincott, 1976. 
Chin Music: Tall Talk and Other Talk Collected from American Folklore. Illus. John 
 O'Brien. Lippincott, 1979. 
* Flapdoodle: PureNonsense from American Folklore. lllus. John 0 'Brien. 
Lippincott, 1980. 
*Ten Copycats in a Boat and Other Riddles. lllus. Marc Simont. Harper & Row, 

1980.  
*Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Illus. Stephen Gammell. HarperCollins, 1981. 
*Buzzing Bumblebees and Other Tongue Twisters. lllus. Kathie Abrams. Harper & 
 Row, 1982. 
*The Cat' s Elbow and Other Secret Languages. lllus. MargotZemach. Farrar, Straus 
 & Giroux, 1982. 
*There Is a Carrot in My Ear and Other Noodle Tales. lllus. Karen A. Weinhaus. 
 Harper & Row, 1982. 

33 



 

Alvin Schwartz 1927-1992 

*Unriddling: All Sorts of Riddles to Puzzle Your Guessery. Illus. Sue Truesdell. 
 Lippincott, 1983. 
*Fat Man in a Fur Coat and Other Bear Stories. Illus. David Christiana. Farrar, 
 Straus & Giroux, 1984. 
*In a Dark, Dark Room, and Other Scary Stories. Illus. Dirk Zimmer. Harper & Row, 
 1984. 
*More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Illus. Stephen Gammell. HarperCollins, 
 1984. 
*All of Our Noses Are Here, and Other Noodle Tales. Illus. Karen A. Weinhaus. 
 HarperCollins, 1985. 
*Tales of Trickery from the Land of Spoof.  Illus. David Christiana. Farrar, Straus & 
 Giroux, 1985. 
*Telling Fortunes: Love Magic, Dream Signs, and Other Ways to Learn the Future. 
 Illus. Tracey Cameron. Lippincott, 1987. 
*Gold & Silver, Silver & Gold: Tales of Hidden Treasure. Illus. David Christiana. 
 Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1988. 
*I Saw You in the Bathtub, and Other Folk Rhymes. Illus. Syd Hoff. HarperCollins, 

1989.  
*Ghosts!: Ghostly Tales from Folklore. Illus. Victoria Chess. HarperCollins, 1991. 
*Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones. Illus. Stephen Ganunell. 
 HarperCollins, 1991. 
*And the Green Grass Grew all Around: Folk Poetry from Everyone. Illus. Sue 
 Truesdell. HarperCollins, 1992. 
*Stories to Tell A Cat. Illus. Catherine Huerta. HarperCollins, 1992. 

Article 

"Children, Humor, and Folklore." National Council of Teachers of English. 26 
November 1976. Reprinted in The Horn Magazine. "Part I," LID:3 (June 
1977):281-87; "Part II," LID:4 (August 1977):471-76. 

Co-Authored Work 

*Finger, Bill, and Alvin Schwartz. Batman: The Sunday Comics. Ed Denis Kitchen. 
 D. C. Comics, 1991. 

* Denotes books currently in print. 

34 



 

Notes and Announcements 

Libraries Unlimited announces the publication of Gail de Vos' 
Storytellingfor Young Adults : Techniques and Treasury. Ms. de 
Vos, a storyteller and consultant in Edmonton, Canada, discusses 
the art of storytelling and outlines the potential classroom uses of 
folktales and folktale motifs, classical myths and legends, urban 
legends, and tall tales and shows how storytelling can be combined 
with the visual arts. 

For ordering information, contact Libraries Unlimited, P.O. 
Box 3988, Englewood, CO 80155, or call 1-800-237-6124. 

Previously unpublished African American, Hispanic American, 
Asian American, and Native American (ARANA) authors and 
illustrators are invited to submit manuscripts for the newly 
established Multicultural Publishers Exchange (MPE) Children's 
Book Award. The award will consist of a publishing contract with 
Highsmith Press, including royalties and a $2000.00 advance 
against royalties to be divided equally between the author and the 
illustrator, and a medal and certificate to be presented at the Annual 
MPE Conference. 

Criteria for selection, entry rules, and additional information 
can be obtained by contacting Dr. Charles Taylor, Executive 
Director, Multicultural Publishers Exchange, 2215 Atwood Avenue, 
Madison, WI 53204 or by calling 1-608-244-5633. 

On 1 April 1993, Oxford University Press Books for Children and 
Young Adults will publish two books-The Adventures of Young 
Krishna. The Blue God of India. by Diksha Dalal-Clayton, and The 
Elephant-Headed God and Other Hindu Tales. a collection of 
twelve tales-that bring the world of Hindu mythology to life for 
readers from ages 9 to adult. 

For ordering information, contact Annie Stafford, Oxford Uni-
versity Press Books and Children and Young Adults, 200 Madison 
Avenue, New York, NY 10016. 

The 1993 Old Songs Festival of Traditional Music and Dance will 
be held at the Altamont Fairgrounds, Altamont, NY, 25-27 June 
1993. Children under 15 are admitted free when accompanied by an 
adult, and there is a creative play area and a full time music 
performance stage for families. 

For information, contact: Old Songs, Inc., P.O. Box 399, 
Guilderland, NY 12084. 

35 



 

Notes and Announcements 

The Children's Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society annually 
offers the W.W. Newell Prize (which includes a cash award of $350.(0) for 
the best undergraduate or graduate student essay on a topic in children's 
folklore. Students must submit their own papers, and published papers are 
eligible. Instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to 
enter the competition. 

Papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white bond paper. On the 
first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and 
telephone numbers. Deadline for each year's competition is March 1st. 

Submit papers or write for additional information: Carole H. Carpenter, 
172 Roselawn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, M4R lEC CANADA. 

36 



 

The Children's Folklore Review is available only to members of 
the Children's Folklore Section of the American Folklore 
Society. To become a member, send $10.00 yearly dues to 
Danielle Roemer, Literature and Language, Nonhero Kentucky 
University, Highland Heights, KY 41076. 

CFR requests manuscripts that are prepared using laser printed 
text or letter quality text. We request that authors using typewrit-
ers or dot-matrix printers have their manuscripts redone and a 
laser printed copy made. This will enable us to scan the copy, 
thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. 

Please send manuscripts to: 
C. W. Sullivan III, Editor 
Children's Folklore Review 
Department of English 
East Carolina University 
Greenville, NC 27858-4353 

Children' s Folklore Review is published twice a year and sent to 
all members of the Children's Folklore Section of the American 
Folklore Society. 

Published by East Carolina University ISSN: 
0739-5558 Copyright @ 1993 Children's 

Folklore Section Printed by Morgan Printers 


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	Alvin Schwartz
	Notes and Announcements