SOURCE: Mary-Agnes Taylor, "The Literary Transformation of a Sluggard," in Children's Literature, Vol. 12, 1984, pp. 92-104.

In the following essay, Taylor discusses how and why various poets change the moral of the "The Grasshopper and the Ant."

I cannot claim that I learned to read from Dick and Jane; I can, however, say that I remember quite well the first time that I was able to decipher Baby Ray. I can also remember that our class was not allowed to linger with such innocent reading matter. Rather quickly we moved to more substantial tales such as those found in a collection of Aesop's fables. From the very beginning we were made to understand that the selections were somewhat akin to our Sunday School lessons. But in spite of such exalted status, there was one story which particularly troubled my child mind: how could those miserly ants be so unkind...