Reading Notes: Reading B: Aesop for Children (Winter)

For the Reading B of the Aesop for Children (Winter) it continued with more small stories of animals and humans learning lessons or morals. For these different stories, you can image a grandparent telling their grandchildren the tales and then explaining the moral. But could these same stories be used today? In the story, The Goatherd and the Wild Goats you learn the moral of the story; “it is unwise to treat old friends badly for the sake of new one”. This is a great lesson that can be used today but how relatable is the story to children now? The younger generations do not know about Goatherders, making the story un-relatable which makes it hard to keep children entertained and interested. Giving the stories a more modern update could help still teach these valuable lessons to a new generation. An example could be using the moral from The Mischievous Dog “notoriety is not fame” that could be altered to modern times by using popular sites like Facebook and YouTube where children currently try to seek fame. Another common idea is the animals used are more basic animals. By basic animals I mean goats, mice, frogs, eagles, wolfs which are used in multiple stories. While this may not seem like a major change, I think that trying to do different animals that might be considered exotic could also bring in some differentiation and new excitement to the stories.

A cat checking his Facebook profile. Source: Flickr by Caroline Galipeau