22nd July Lion's Share Day

 Lion's Share Day is celebrated on 22nd July.  In the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables were written by a formerly enslaved Greek, and the phrase "the lion's share" was born. Its meaning refers to the biggest share or special treatment of something divided between different parties. Yet, the moral of the story is mostly seen as being cautious when dealing with someone much stronger! After all, the lion is the king of the jungle.

A "lion's share" is an idiom meaning "the largest part of something divided amongst other people." It comes from the fable The Lion's Share where a lion goes hunting with a fox, jackal, and wolf. After making a kill, the lion asserts his status, strength, and bravery to demand all four quarters of the stag for himself, leaving nothing for his partners. 

                      

To celebrate this day read the original Aesop's fable which you will find in many fable anthologies. The library has a large collection. Last term I shared several fables with Year 1 students and they became very good at ascertaining the intended message and identifying idioms.  

The library also has these books which also illustrate the idiom.

• The Lion's Share  by Martha Lightfoot

Lion always wants more than everyone else, and he thinks it's only fair that he gets the most! But will he still want the Lion's share when all the fun is over?

• Lionel and the Lion's Share  by Lou Peacock & Lisa Sheehan

Lionel the lion does NOT like to share. After all, lions always get the lion's share. He buys all the best instruments from the music ship, all the smartest hats from the hat shop and all the brightest balloons from the balloon stall. But at Chloe's birthday party Lionel goes too far and eats ALL the cake. That's when Lionel's friends decide that enough is enough.

• The Lion's Share  by Said Salah Ahmed & Kelly Dupre

A Somali-English Bilingual Children's Picture Book. The hungry animals of the Somali forest have worked together to kill a big fat camel. Now they must decide how to divide it. Will the portions be equal? Not with the lion in charge! Read this popular Somali fable and see why, as the other animals come to understand, "the lion's share is not fair!"

• The Lion's Share by Matthew McElligott 

When Ant receives a special invitation to dine with Lion, she is ready to be on her best behavior. During dessert, the other guests do not mind their manners, and by the time the dessert cake reaches Ant, barely a crumb is left for her to share with the King! Baking a cake seems like the perfect way to make it up to him . . . until the other guests turn her kind gesture into a contest. Exactly how many cakes are fit for a king?

4th June Aesop's Birthday

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Many websites say that today is Aesop's birthday. How they know given all the inconsistencies about everything else that is written about him I don't know. But it is a good excuse to tell you about favourite fable picture books.

Aesop was a fabulist or story teller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains uncertain and (if they ever existed) no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. In many of the tales, animals speak and have human characteristics.

Of all the fables The Hare and the Tortoise and The Lion and the Mouse are probably the two most well-known to children, probably because they are often used to produce beautiful picture books. There are a large number of beautiful anthologies of Aesop's fables, many with wonderful illustrations and just the right amount of text for each story, but here I want to share six picture books that I love sharing with children.

1. The Lion and the Mouse by Jerry Pinkney won the Caldecott Medal in 2010. The artwork is exquisite and it demands to be perused closely. In fact the story is textless and whether children know the story or not, they will still be able to 'read' the story here.

2. Mouse and Lion by Rand Burkert and Nancy Ekholm Burkert. This is the most recent version of this story and it too is made exquisite because of Nancy's illustrations. The fact that she collaborated with her son I think makes this a real work of love and commitment. The cover doesn't make it leap off the shelf but once you open it you will be enthralled.

3. The Lion and the Mouse by A.J.Wood and Ian Andrew. This version too, is mainly illustrations. This time phenomenal lead pencil drawings with a lot of close-ups. You get to know the mouse in particular, intimately. My copy has a different cover from the one depicted here. It is old-fashioned red book material on the cover with just a tiny drawing of the mouse in the centre, so straight away you know that the book is 'old' and special.

4. The Hare and the Tortoise by Helen Ward. I like this version of the story because there are a lot of visual secrets for the reader in the illustrations and the children love discovering them. When the hippos make stepping stones to help the tortoise across a river the children love the fact that the hare has been tricked.

5. The Tortoise and the Hare by Angela McAllister and Jonathan Heale. This version has beautiful illustrations done with woodblocks which I can't resist. The children and I always have interesting discussions about why the tortoise comes first in the title of this book when it is usually the hare first.

6. The Fox and the Stork by Karl Ruhmann and Roberti Allesander. I have included this one not so much for its illustrations, but because it is a good retelling in picture book format of a fable that the children know less well, but enjoy. Also they easily ascertain the moral.