My Caldecott challenge: Although these Caldecott winner and honor books are not, for the most part, books I’ve read aloud to my son, I still found them interesting. A few I had strong negative opinions of; they show that even books that earned the Caldecott award do become dated!
When I saw the title for the 1981 Caldecott Winner, I figured Arnold Lobel had illustrated some of Aesop’s fables. No, Fables by Arnold Lobel is a collection of completely new fables, appropriate for our day.
In the Aesopic tradition, there is a one-line moral at the end of each one-page tale. And yet, these are fun, and the one-page illustration accompanying each tale is likewise fun. My favorite fable was the one illustrated on the cover: a bear wanted to be “in fashion” when he went into town, so he took the advice of a crow as he dressed.