Cockerel Dog and Fox | Aesop's Fable | Kids' Poems and Stories with Michael Rosen

Popular storyteller Rosen (We’re Going on a Bear Hunt) distills 13 well-known Aesop’s fables into one-page retellings, illustrated in folk-art style by Canadian artist Hacikyan.

Michael Rosen engages the stories’ livelier aspects, and Hacikyan’s stylized illustrations, chalked on black backgrounds, suggest troublesome dreams on moonless nights.

In “Cockerel, Dog and Fox,” a treed rooster protects himself by asking the predator to wake his “Doorman” (“So Fox woke up Dog. And Dog snarled and snapped and tore Fox apart quicker than it takes a leaf to fall from a tree”).
Rosen supplies morals tailored for today’s cultures of bullying and savvy social interactions.

In “Dog and Wolf,” a wolf with an empty stomach eyes a “sleek and fat” dog’s collar and snarls, “I’d rather be free than a well-fed slave.”

When Fox praises Crow’s voice, so that Crow opens his mouth and drops a piece of cheese, Rosen remarks that sneaky individuals use compliments “just so they can get something from you.”

There is comfort in these pages, the fables provide ample material for conversation.

Michael Rosen, illus. by Talleen Hacikyan. Tradewind (Orca, dist.), (32p) ISBN 978-1-896580-81-4