Animal fables play a major role in children's literature. Who does not know the stories of the hare and the tortoise, the ant and the cricket or Frederick the mouse? While classical fables were part of a fixed set of norms and values, modern adaptations or new texts transport the fables into today. In doing so, they brush the pithy messages against the grain in many ways by breaking them ironically, questioning them or turning them into the opposite.
The exhibition "Of Foxes and Fables" presents fable texts and illustrations: A broad panorama of fables and animal stories from all over the world is presented. In addition to canonical fables in various historical, contemporary and international adaptations, stories from Tanzania are also on display. The focus is on the fox as the central fabulous animal.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a variety of workshops for school classes from grade 1 to 8. In writing, poetry and creative workshops, the pupils actively get to know the exhibition, become creative themselves and thus experience literature in a completely new way.
In this fabulous writing workshop, the children decode stories from "Fox Fabulous" by Tony Ross. In creative writing tasks, they invent new animals for modern fables and assign them typical characteristics or even write their very own new fable for them.
Who doesn't know the story of the mouse and his very special abilities? But who knows where it originated?
Together with Frederick we will travel into the realm of fables, far back into ancient Greece to Aesop, the "fable poet". We get to know the fox, lion, wolf, raven, turtle, ant, grasshopper, mouse and rabbit as popular main characters and decode the "secret language" of these stories together. Full of curiosity, we find out about these animals in non-fiction books and get further ideas in the exhibition. In this way, rich in ideas, we can visually create the beginning of our own story.
Old fables in a new guise:
Inspired by fables,
rhyme and fantasise.
No matter what level,
with or without beat,
with fun and with flow,
you will become a verse smith.
Clever foxes, simple-minded ravens, boastful rabbits - in their fables, storytellers have been reflecting human strengths and weaknesses since ancient times. Fables are full of life lessons and we can learn a lot about ourselves from the example of sometimes clever, sometimes foolish animals. In the exhibition, we will get to know fables that are full of wit and irony.
In our workshop, we will focus on the fable "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse", which deals with the important question of one's own happiness and personal freedom. We will look at how today's authors retell this old fable, fill it with current themes - and thus give the story a whole new meaning. Using oil crayons, coloured pencils, scissors and paper, we will contrast the lives of the two mice: On the one hand, the spoilt city mouse with all its advantages and riches, on the other hand, the frugal country mouse with its modest possessions. Let's see which world we like better ...
Duration: approx. 2.5 h
Cost: 5 euros per person (minimum price 120 euros)
Registration via: (089)8912110 or fuehrungen@ijb.de
Please book workshops at least six working days before the their start. Cancellation is free of charge until three working days before the workshop starts, after that a fee of 80 euros will be charged.