Flower Fables is Louisa May Alcotts first book, penned at 16. She created the fanciful stories for the amusement of the daughter of a family friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Miss Alcott loved and was well acquainted with flowers, insects, birds and animals of the meadows and forest. From these beauties she spun adventures of enchanting natures woodland fairies, telling them to children of friends and others. Each fable has a moral of sorts, a captivating way to inspire children to selfless, gentle, loving behavior. Readers meet a cast of elves, fairies, brownies and sprites with such Shakespearean names as Willy Wisp, Moonbeam and Thistledown, and the children who occasionally dally with them. Thinly disguised morality lessons told in an over-upholstered style, they instruct the audience in the importance of various virtues. This is a nice collection of fairy tales that is sure to please young readers and the adults reading to them alike.