Fox stories

The fox is the cleverest animal in the fable and the one most often punished for it. The Fox and the Grapes gave English the phrase sour grapes, and it takes six minutes. The Fox Without a Tail is four minutes about trying to persuade everyone else that your misfortune is a fashion.

The exception is The Fox and the Crow, where flattery works perfectly and the fox walks off with the cheese. Reading that one straight after a fox who fails is a good way to show a child that stories are not obliged to be fair.

The collection sorts itself neatly, which helps at half past seven.

The fox against a bigger animal

The Lion and the Fox, The Old Lion and the Fox and The Lion, the Fox, and the Beasts all put wit against strength. These are the ones a small child enjoys most, because the fox is the underdog for once.

The fox against another clever animal

The Fox and the Stork is the famous one: dinner served in a dish the guest cannot use, and the return invitation. The Fox and the Monkey and The Fox and the Goat are variations on being outmanoeuvred.

The fox with something to be ashamed of

The Fox and the Leopard and The Wild Boar and the Fox both end with an apology rather than a punishment, which is rarer in fables than you would expect and worth pointing out.

The fox as an ordinary neighbour

The Farmer and the Fox is four gentle minutes for a three to seven year old, and The Fox and the Pheasants is about sharing rather than stealing.

Princess Susie is eleven minutes and the least fable-like thing here: a full adventure listed for six to ten. The Old Hound is also eleven minutes and is really a dog story that a fox wanders through. Both need more evening than the rest of the collection.

At the other end, The Fox Without a Tail is four minutes and makes its point before anyone can object.

Nineteen short stories with a clear lesson at the end give a child a great many repetitions of one thing: a situation, a choice, a consequence. That is a large part of why fables survived. Our guide to Aesop and his fables covers where they came from and how little they have changed. A child who has heard nineteen of them has a working grammar of stories, whether or not anybody says so.

Where the foxes lead

For more of the same, Aesop's fables is the full collection, bird stories holds the crows and storks the fox keeps meeting, and wolf stories covers the other great fairy tale predator.