Blog #20 The North Wind and the Sun

Aesop’s Fables: The North Wind and the Sun

Newly Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
SeaStar Books
2000
77 pages

Traditional Literature

          This newly illustrated collection of Aesop’s Fables includes all of the traditional stories with highly detailed illustrations by Jerry Pinkney. In this particular story, The North Wind and the Sun, the North Wind argues with the Sun that he is stronger than any and everything. The Sun disagrees and challenges him. He says that he is stronger than the North Wind because he can make a traveler take off his coat and hat but bets the North Wind that he cannot. In the end, the Sun is able to warm the traveler and make him remove his hat and coat, but the North Wind only made the traveler cling tighter to them for warmth. 

          Jerry Pinkney uses pencil, colored pencil, and water colors to as his medium for his illustrations in this collection. The incredibly detailed layering of watercolor allows for depth and varied saturation of color that creates a realistic tone to the illustrations. These illustrations have a somewhat Van Gogh style to them in regards to the brush strokes and use of color. The style of this book is very formal and mirrors the traditional aspect of Aesop’s Fables. 

          This would be a great asset to a classroom. To familiarize students with the everyday lessons described in the fables, a teacher could take five minutes at the end of the day to read one short (usually one-paged) fable a day. Because these are so short, the teacher could read one of these to students while they are reading other books in the class and have them make text-to-text connections between the two. This activity would be most appropriate for middle to upper elementary students while the daily character education read aloud would be best suited for younger elementary students. This particular story could be told to students to demonstrate the effectiveness of asking politely for something they want instead of demanding it. 

Below is a video of The North Wind and the Sun: