The American Book of Fables by Matthew Mehan, illustrated by John Folley. Sophia Institute Press, 396 pages.
I’m certainly not the first person to remark upon this, but the chief moral fable of the United States—young George Washington admitting he chopped down a beloved cherry tree because he “can’t tell a lie”—is a far cry from the trickster tales passed down by peoples like the Yoruba in Africa, the Norse in Scandinavia, and the Apache in North America. The author Matthew Mehan acknowledges this in his new book for children and families, The American Book of Fables, writing, “In the time of America’s Founding, we praised less the creatures whose mouths were full of falsehoods and lies and more greatly honored the truth-tellers among us. But in other times and places, the liar is praised for his clever lies.” These tales’ morals don’t sit dormant in storybooks. They shape culture.
Mehan’s project comes as American culture has fractured. When neither politics nor religion seem able to bring us back together, perhaps long-forgotten folk tales and fables can. As the late American folklorist Barre Toelken noted, citing Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order,
If we do not learn to deal positively and profitably with the multiplicity of cultures with which we now intersect, we will be living in an unrealistic and very problematic world. But [Huntington] speaks of culture and civilization as if these are properties which exist in and of themselves, expressed by paradigm and conscious philosophy; the work screams for the perspective of a folklorist or anthropologist, for the ongoing dynamics of vernacular ethnic worldview – with all its attendant assumptions and emotional loads – remain unexplored… Where are the folklorists when we need them?
The American Book of Fables, which is illustrated by John Folley, is a wide-ranging endeavor: a celebration of the Declaration of Independence’s 250th anniversary, a McGuffey Reader–style primer to introduce children to early American history, and an instrument of moral formation reimagining Aesop’s fables with distinctly American flora and fauna. Mehan’s book is hitting shelves right before America’s 250th birthday on July 4, and the book’s format—sections aimed at “Littles,” “Middles,” and “Bigs”—makes it appealing to families with kids of any age, but especially large families with a wide age range of children. (I tested out the “Littles” section on my 3-year-old, and it was a hit.) With its double-page illustrations and interspersed aphorisms, it’s a fun book for kids to leaf through on a lazy afternoon, but The American Book of Fables also contains enough primary sources to be used as a read-aloud homeschool history textbook. No matter how your family uses it, the Mehan’s core message shines through: the United States of America is a nation worth celebrating, and we must be worthy of it as citizens.
To say there’s a lot going on in The American Book of Fables would be an understatement. The book is divided into 13 parts, with each representing a different region of the U.S., from the Great Plains to the Great Lakes. Mehan serenades us with a patchwork of rhymes called “Melodies from Father Goose” at the beginning of each section, then launches into adapted Aesop’s fables (sometimes “greatly adapted”) and excerpts from early American documents, then jumps into the narrative that’s woven throughout: the journey of protagonist Hugh Manatee across our great nation to—well, to do what, exactly? The material goals of Hugh Manatee’s quest (yes, he’s an actual manatee) don’t make a lot of sense. Why does he leave his manatee family in the Florida Everglades in the middle of a storm? What will winding his way to the Pacific Coast to commune with a whale accomplish? Even Hugh realizes his quest for help is quixotic by the end of the book.
But Hugh’s immaterial goal, or, some might say, his spiritual goal, is to teach his fellow animals the tough yet gentle ways of the manatee. Hugh traverses the nation by boat, by covered wagon, and by truck, meeting animals like Louis the cardinal and Cato the armadillo, bringing together animals who would otherwise never be friends, and somehow toting several volumes of American history books to educate his animal companions along the way.
What stories does Hugh tell the other animals? While in New England, he reads Cotton Mather’s account of Hannah Dustan, a mother of eight who was kidnapped by Indians and slew her captors. While in the Southwest, Hugh reads Major General Oliver Otis Howard’s account of Navajo war chief Manuelito, who warred with the U.S. Army before finally making peace. While in the Badlands, he reads from cowboy James H. Cook’s 1923 memoir Fifty Years on the Old Frontier. Ever courteous, Hugh tells a family of chickadees before reading Dustan’s story, “You may want to cover the little chicks’ ears for just a moment.” Since he marks these sections as “For Bigs,” Mehan doesn’t edit out the violence and even death that is often integral to these stories of early America. Mehan avoids a mistake that many children’s authors make: sanitizing and dumbing down material. That choice may be what keeps older children enthralled. The “For Bigs” sections of The American Books of Fables calls tween and teen readers up to its level instead of descending to theirs.
The current state of children’s literature gives conservatives much to complain about. But the process of creating The American Book of Fables shows that those complaints must be coupled with action. Mehan’s book came together thanks to funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Heritage Foundation. He and illustrator Folley were able to travel to national parks and develop online resources for readers. How many more works like The American Book of Fables could be created with a little institutional backing and some cold, hard cash? And how much more culturally impactful could work aimed at young citizens be than work aimed at citizens already formed?
Forming young minds is no foreign concept for Mehan, a father and Hillsdale College professor. At the end of Mehan’s book is an excerpt from another Hillsdale College professor’s new book—Matthew Spalding’s award-winning The Making of the American Mind: The Story of Our Declaration of Independence. The books’ parallels are worth noting. Spalding’s book “examines the influence of the Greeks and Romans, the Christian West, and the English constitutional tradition” on the Founding Fathers, its synopsis states. The American Book of Fables includes quotes from Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and the Magna Carta that figures like Washington and Thomas Jefferson were undoubtedly familiar with.
Mehan also includes excerpts of letters to Washington from Roman Catholic clergy, a Jewish congregation, and a group of Protestant ministers of various denominations. His message is clear: faith was an integral part of our nation’s founding. That’s a message Americans can’t seem to agree on today. Mehan’s book’s benedictory poem was read at Rededicate 250, a gathering of thousands of Christians on May 17 in Washington, D.C. The New York Times described Rededicate 250 as a “rally” that “aims to crystallize the narrative that the nation’s founding was an intentionally Christian project, a framing disputed by many scholars.” Children who read The American Book of Fables would likely be able to rebut such claims.
The American Book of Fables is not perfect. In one of the only “For Bigs” sections that doesn’t contain excerpts of primary sources, Hugh Manatee meets Rook the robotic elephant seal. Mehan notes that “the voice of Rook [is] written by Grok (mostly).” As Hugh converses with the AI-powered elephant seal, he strips away the linguistic deceptions that allow the robot to masquerade as a charming, convincing consciousness. Readers will find this section out of place, not because it’s poorly done, but because it’s so effective—almost ready to be a standalone book that educates children about chatbots and LLMs. Perhaps Mehan’s next project could help kids make sense of the emerging technologies vying for their attention.
In most of Mehan’s fables, liars fail and those who recognize the truth are rewarded. But in the fable “The Raccoon, the Opossum, and the Kingdom of the Boars,” the opposite is true. The quote in the opening of this review continues as follows: “In other times and places, the liar is praised for his clever lies, and the truth-teller is thought to be ugly and burdensome.” In the fable, the raccoon obtains a place of high honor by flattering King Scruffy Sosa, Lord of the Boars. The opossum assumes that truth will be even more highly regarded than flattery, and tells King Scruffy that “your crown is an abomination, and your throne is a pile of weeds not fit to be burnt.” The opossum meets a sorry end.
On the surface, this fable seems to contradict the rest in the book, but the key to this dilemma lies in the Scripture that opens the book: Mehan’s message to young readers clearly isn’t to lie indiscriminately but to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” knowing that different situations require different solutions. This admonition from Matthew 10:16 is perfectly placed at the start of The American Book of Fables—a reminder to both children and parents that the citizens America needs in her 250th year and beyond must not be coddled but instead nurtured, equipped, and sent to the frontier.
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