Atlas Obscura continues their Children’s Literature Week with a look at the fable “The Tortoise and the Hare.” The story, attributed to Aesop, comes down to us from antiquity, and has been told in many different ways.
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In the tale, the two animals challenge one another to a race to prove who is fastest: mid-race, the hare lays down to rest, certain that it’s going to win. Then out comes the tortoise, plodding along without pause, the winner; slow and steady wins the race, as the moral goes. Then there’s a huge forest fire, and almost everybody dies.
Wait, what?
That’s in Irish writer Lord Dunsany’s 1915 version of the tale, which is turned into a political joke with a terrific punch line. Read it and several other confounding versions of “The Tortoise and the Hare” that turned its message sideways.
Source: neatorama