“America is running on empty. Republics never last long. They’re notoriously short-lived. The American people are no longer capable of self-government. Things are going south; it’s all breaking bad. The bots are going to up-end our constitutional way of life, and if the bots don’t take us down, China will. Nobody is getting married. Nobody owns a home. The population is aging, and the next generation’s kids barely speak English, be they foreign or native born. Gas prices are up. The West is falling, and the old roads are no longer safe: there are wolves on every bluff and thieves in every vale. Like an old man, America is shrinking into itself, and worse still, old Uncle Sam can barely remember his own past—we are a nation with early onset Alzheimer’s.”
Sound familiar? Do thoughts like these feel familiar? The fact of the matter is this: America is in a crisis, but it isn’t a crisis to do with the litany of problems above, both real and imagined. No. America has a crisis of hope.
We have forgotten how to count our blessings. We have forgotten how to look back at the past with anything more than a critical eye. We do not know our forefathers and forebears, and we do not know how to look backward with love the way they did nor how to look forward with optimism and hope the way they did. We have lost the American habit of looking out over this beautiful land and giving thanks to Nature’s God for so much beauty and bounty and for our own glorious human nature. And if we don’t restore our hearts and minds with our own beautiful way of life, we will lose something equally precious: that uncanny ability of Americans to laughingly shift for ourselves even as we push away the tears that have always accompanied even the fullest achievement of the American dream.
Much ink has been spilled explaining how we got here; who, what, and how we were brought to such a sad and sorry state of forgetful ingratitude and pessimism. But too little ink has been spilled explaining how we get out of these Disunited States of Despairica. With a media culture that is hellbent on showing us only examples, be they true or false, of America at its worst, we have to overwhelm this dismal tide of sad imagery with a wide and mighty flow of good examples and good deeds. Forgive a bit of American bravado, but The American Book of Fables is a healthy dose of both: good deeds and witty-wise examples.
The American Book of Fables is full of good examples of American courage, sacrifice, clever prudence, friendship, forgiveness, and justice. The nursery rhymes and fables in the book are old and new, but all of them are adapted to American folklore, history, ecology, wildlife, and the principles of liberty and justice for all that are the hallmark of our Declaration of Independence. The founding generation had grand books of rhyme and fable, full of examples of how to be good and great, witty and wise. Such a grand book as that has not been written or updated for America since before the country’s Founding. For America’s 250th birthday, The American Book of Fables offers a restoration of the American imagination, with 400 pages of beautifully illustrated examples of what it means to be an optimistic, faithful, witty, and self-governed American once again. Our imagination needs vivid, familiar, and fresh examples of how to live well and maintain the American republic, the American way of life.
To that end, the book also has primary source material from the founding and the settlement, so readers can get close to moving examples of amazing Americans that came before us, secured our liberties, and settled this rugged and wonderful land. There are also short stories and a narrative of the jolly and gentle Hugh the Manatee, who travels the country and meets a merry band of friendly animals, all of which teach lessons both about living a good life and about the principles of our Declaration of Independence and the history of our country. In this way, readers of The American Book of Fables will come to know and love their own way of life once again, like a forgetful old man coming back to his senses and realizing he is not nearly as old as he felt in his sad and forgetful doldrums.
The American Book of Fables was made in just that rejuvenating, hopeful, and patriotic spirit. My friend and illustrator John Folley and I have written an heirloom, a grandly illustrated, coffee table quality magnum opus, and filled it with realist-impressionist oils, watercolors, and pen-and-ink illustrations throughout its thirteen chapters, one for each region of the country. We traveled America researching, writing, interviewing, sketching, photographing, and painting this beautiful and blessed land and learning about its amazing culture, history, and virtues in order to give to America a fitting 250th birthday present. A civilization fails when its people refuse to do beautiful and magnanimous things for each other, when they refuse to expend themselves for each other. John Folley and I hope that The American Book of Fables will help to strengthen that American habit of magnanimity and to restore the hopeful hearts of our fellow Americans for many generations.
And so it is with the simple candor of the American people, whom I have come to love so much more deeply through the research and writing of this book, that I ask you—I implore you—to take up The American Book of Fables and to take up all that our 250th anniversary offers us in the way of reflective and affective patriotism. Fall in love with America again and help others to do likewise this Semiquincentennial summer. Only then can we come back to ourselves and become once again the United States of America, a hopeful people, full of wit and wisdom.
Matthew Mehan is the author of several best-selling illustrated works, including his latest, The American Book of Fables. He is the associate dean and an associate professor of government at Hillsdale College’s D.C. campus on Capitol Hill. The book trailer can be viewed here.