James Minter's Blog: Writers do it in Public... - Posts Tagged "fables"

24 Modernized Aesop Fables by Luke Christodoulou

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book is close to my heart, and I have to applaud Luke Christodoulou for making these ancient stories accessible to modern youth. My preoccupation is with teaching positive values to children through storytelling in the Billy Books series. Morals and values are a part of the behavioural aspect of a person. Whereas morals are a system of beliefs that are taught for deciding good or bad, Values are personal beliefs that come from within. However, the two are emotionally related for choosing right or wrong.

Over and above rewriting the stories in contemporary language, for each fable, Mr. Christodoulou has included extra pages for parents to make clear the moral under discussion, and he’s proposed a number of activities parents can do with their children to help to reinforce the message. Also, he has also included suggestions for YouTube where children can see cartoon versions of each fable.

My only issue with the book is the extra ‘parent’ pages – Mr Christodoulou is an English graduate, and some of his exercises appear a little demanding. The book is an eBook I would have expected to see clickable links to YouTube versions, and some of the parent’s pages seem to be rushed making them light on content. Though this is still a very worthwhile read, I feel there is an opportunity to revisit it to make it easier to use in this digital age.



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