I love reading to kids. It’s probably my favorite thing about being a children’s author. This spring, I visited several kindergarten classes shortly after publication of my latest picture book, The Tortoise & the Hare.

Before I start reading my retelling of any well-known tale to a class, I take a minute to talk about the fact that although the students will likely recognize the story, it will also be a bit different from the version(s) they have heard previously. We also talk about how lucky human beings are that we have a collection of stories which are so very old that they belong to the whole world, meaning that anyone—including them, including me—can choose to tell one in a new way and make it their own.

One of the delights of sharing a familiar story with children is watching them learn to balance the dramatic tension they’re experiencing with their certainty about what’s coming next. Every time I read a passage about the hare passing the tortoise, a new voice pipes up from my young audience, loudly proclaiming: “The tortoise is going to win!”

But will he? Should he? Does that make sense?

For me, interpreting a new fable, fairy tale or folktale begins with research. I spend some quality time with the original version.* I collect a stack of modern adaptations for reference (and fun) as I work. I study various interpretations and analyses written by people who’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have.

Most versions of this fable, ancient and modern, portray a significant personal animosity between the hare and the tortoise. The hare arrogantly taunts the tortoise about being slow, until the tortoise finally tires of his bragging and challenges him to a race.

What’s the tortoise thinking here?

It’s not as though these two competitors are closely matched. The hare and the tortoise could not be more unequal in their natural abilities to run; in any logical scenario, the tortoise doesn’t have a chance. The tortoise’s certainty in his own victory appears to be fueled by a mysterious clairvoyance. The implication, of course, is that the hare is so lazy and arrogant he can be reliably predicted to perform not merely poorly, but disastrously. Moral lesson or not, this still seems to me like a huge risk for the tortoise to take.

Instead of a direct challenge from the tortoise to the hare, intended to humiliate a bully, I decided to convert the race into a local event in which anyone can participate. Suddenly, the tortoise no longer needs uncanny intuition about his victory in order to enter. He signs up for the race as a commitment to do his personal best at something new, something at which he isn’t naturally talented. And as an author, omitting the pre-existing rivalry freed up precious page space for me to more fully explore the participants’ contrasting attitudes as they navigate the sustained physical and emotional challenges of the race. (The original tale is so brief—less than a page—that it necessarily glosses over the reality that races are not easy and serious commitment is required to finish. Likewise, many adaptations do not acknowledge that the tortoise might struggle with endurance.†)

This approach has another benefit, too. Opening the race up to “everyone” means that other animals might decline to participate because they’re certain the hare will win. So now we have the hare, who is talented but taking victory for granted, the tortoise, who isn’t as talented but is nevertheless committed to giving his all, plus a handful of other characters who don’t even bother to try. Adding this third group felt like a powerful way to enhance the impact of the tortoise’s victory.

Eliminating the personal rivalry also made it easier for me to make the hare a semi-graceful loser. Foiled by an ill-timed nap (as in many other versions of this tale), the hare has a brief tantrum upon losing, but rapidly realizes that he has no one to blame but himself for the outcome.

Which brings me back to those adorable kindergarteners and their utter certainty that the tortoise has to win.‡ I usually like to ask them a question after I’ve finished reading:

If the hare had done his best, do you think he would have won the race?

Generally, more kids answer yes than no. But there’s usually a lengthy pause first, and often more than a few looks of confusion. For that reason, I think it’s critical to discuss with young audiences that in any competition:

We might know who we think is going to win.

We might know who we want to win.

But until the race is over, we don’t know with 100% certainty who is actually going to win.

And that is how this story ends.
The tortoise and the hare stayed friends,
And everyone learned something new.
Today that secret still holds true:
More often than you’d think, the pace
Of slow and steady wins the race.

(Italicized above is the last page of my adaptation of this fable. For another excerpt and a discussion of the book’s rhythmic patterns, please see my previous blog post (link at top of page).)


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*“The Hare and the Tortoise”, in Aesop’s Fables, compiled by Russell Ash and Bernard Higton (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1990), 12.

†One retelling that mentions the tortoise finding the race difficult: Brian Wildsmith, The Hare and the Tortoise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). (Original work published 1966)

‡It’s worthwhile to note that the tortoise does not always win in retellings of this fable. An adaptation written by Toni Morrison and her son Slade handles the mismatch in running speeds with a “winner loses/loser wins” scenario—in which hare physically crosses the finish line first, but the tortoise also achieves a victory to his own satisfaction. Toni Morrison and Slade Morrison, The Tortoise or the Hare, ill. Joe Cepeda (New York: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers, 2010).