The Perfect Children’s Book for America 250

As our nation marks the 250th anniversary of its independence, we are offered many occasions to commemorate, debate, and reassess. What “The American Book of Fables,” written by Matthew Mehan and illustrated by John Folley, offers is something different and more lasting: the chance to remember and to love. Not with passing sweetness, but with the honest affection that comes from knowing a thing well, its struggles, its sorrows, and its extraordinary promise. 

I will confess at the outset that I have not read this book in its entirety. I say this not as an apology but as a tribute. This is not a book meant to be devoured in a sitting. It is a book meant to be savored, turned to when one is planning a family trip to Boston or Philadelphia, or preparing the children for a drive through the Midwest, or packing for a visit to the national parks of the West, or simply pausing on a quiet evening to wonder about the sweep of this great republic we call home.

Even those who know they may never visit the Upper Missouri or Many Glaciers will find themselves drawn into the stories and songs and sayings compiled here, grateful that someone thought to gather them at all. This is the sort of book you put on the coffee table not to serve as a large coaster but as a little temptation, an open invitation to those who live there and those who visit to pick it up and enjoy it for however long they can. 

Mehan, who now serves as associate dean and associate professor of government at the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C., campus, holds an honors doctorate in literature from the University of Dallas and is the father of a large family, with children from college age all the way down to elementary school, which perhaps explains why he writes for every age with such a sure hand. It is touching, and not at all surprising, that in addition to acknowledging collaborators and friends at the end of the book, Mehan thanks his parents, his children, and his wife—his “dear love.” 

This grand, 395-page volume divides the country into 13 regions, from the Mangroves and Everglades to Many Glaciers, and invites readers into each one with content suited to three distinct audiences, affectionately named Littles, Middles, and Bigs.

The Littles receive rhymes and songs drawn from the wells of our national tradition. The Middles are offered fables, new and old, with characters drawn from the distinctly American landscape. For the adult readers seated on the couch, there is something richer still: stories, letters, sayings, and sagas drawn from the full breadth of the American founding and the wider life of human civilization. 

What holds it all together is the Declaration of Independence, which Mehan uses as a spine running through the entire book. Each region opens alongside a passage from that founding document, and readers are invited to sit with those sentences and consider what they have meant to the people and places that form this nation’s story.  

Accompanying readers through these regions is a cast of memorable characters whose adventures give the whole book its beating heart. Each creature teaches something true about human nature, American life, and virtue and vice.  

Mehan’s masterpiece is not a textbook but a long and lively conversation to which Americans of every age are welcome. Folley’s oil, watercolor, and pen-and-ink illustrations are warm and sure, never condescending, always a pleasure. 

I should make one more confession: I come to this tribute with something of a personal stake. Mehan was a mentor to one of my sons during high school. His genuine care for his students was the quiet, steady overflow of a man who had read widely, thought deeply, and believed sincerely that ideas and stories shape souls.  

When my youngest spotted the book on my desk and said, “Hey, I know this author!” I was not entirely surprised, but not because I know Mehan personally.

We have his two earlier children’s books, both illustrated by Folley: “Mr. Mehan’s Mildly Amusing Mythical Mammals,” a witty alphabetical journey through a world of invented creatures whose two friends, the Dally and the Blug, discover something along the way about courage, humor, sorrow, and hope; and “The Handsome Little Cygnet,” a quieter and more tender retelling of the Ugly Duckling, set across four seasons in Central Park, where a baby swan grows up amid the love of devoted parents and learns to know himself. Both are well-loved in our house. 

Mehan’s latest will become a treasure in any home that receives it. I am quite certain it will become one in mine. 

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