'40 Fun Fables' Recognized with Storytelling World Resource Award Honors

Another year of Storytelling World Resource Awards brings another round of honors for August House authors Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss. 40 Fun Fables: Tales that Trick, Tickle, and Teach, written by the award-winning the creative team Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss, known as "Beauty and the Beast Storytellers," was honored as a 2016 Special Storytelling Resource for its collection of fables curated to meet Common Core Reading Standards.

Whimsical stories from this collection include Aesop Fables such as "The Sick Lion and the Sly Fox" and "The Rabbits and the Frogs," along with unique adaptations of stories from a wide spread of cultures such as "The Fussy Mouse" and "How Momma Mouse Confused the Cat." Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss thoroughly field-tested all of the fables through their extensive work with schools. At the end of each fable, the authors offer "The Moral of the Story" to help guide student interpretation.

Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss also noted that their goals for the book were to make sure that the stories could be easily integrated into lesson plans by teachers. They also simplified the stories to make them fun for students to read aloud in class and to retell in their own words. At the back of the book, the authors included a resource section of learning activities (correlated to specific Common Core Standards) that can be used to help develop students' reading comprehension and independent thinking skills.

Beauty and the Beast Storytellers, Martha Hamilton and Mitch Weiss, have published fourteen additional picture books and story collections with August House, including Ghost Catcher, Scared Witless, Priceless Gifts: A Tale from Italy, Noodlehead Stories and Hidden Feast: A Folktale from the American South. These books have earned a number of prestigious awards such as the Irma Simonton Black and James H. Black Award for Excellence in Children's Literature, Parents' Choice Award, National Parenting Publications Awards, and Storytelling World Awards.

August House is a highly acclaimed and award-winning multimedia publisher of children's picture books, folktale anthologies, and resource books. Located in Atlanta, GA, August House has developed one of the most highly respected collections of folktales from the world's great oral traditions.