Book excerpt: Enjoy a collection of classical stories, culled from the greatest storytellers of all time, offering up tales of animals and other enchanted creatures to delight readers young and old. As fables, each story demonstrates a moral lesson or a piece of advice for readers some of whom may be struggling with related problems, difficulties, and stumbling blocks addressed by the lessons in each tale. Whether it's a rousing tale of stone soup, a tortoise and eagle, country and city mice, or foxes, hens, and farmers, readers of all ages will be entertained by the fresh story approach of Aesop, Roberts Dodsley, Phaedrus, and others, some retold from tales of cultures as diverse as those of Native Alaska, Africa, Arabia, the Far East, and more."