Small Wisdoms
SMALL WISDOMS: Fables for Life's Journey
A beaver learns what greed costs.
A river learns when to say no.
A chrysalis endures the unbearable middle of transformation.
A shepherd protects what he loves.
Small Wisdoms is a collection of 128 original fables for readers at every stage of life. Eight-year-olds discover their first moral compass. Eighteen-year-olds find guidance at life's crossroads. Adults uncover new insight amid life's complexity. Eighty-year-olds return to what matters most. Read aloud to children or savored in solitude, these stories reveal small wisdoms that deepen with each passing stage of life.
Inspired by Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen, and Joseph Campbell, these modern fables explore ancient themes through contemporary eyes:
-When does patience become complicity?
-How do we remain authentic in a curated world?
-What does courage look like when no one is watching?
Foxes debate philosophers. Trees offer counsel. Rivers, owls, tortoises, and stars navigate choices of integrity, identity, and purpose.
Written in language simple enough for children and rich enough for adults, each tale invites reflection-and rewards rereading across decades.
Some stories speak to beginnings, others to loss, patience, courage, forgiveness, or letting go.
Together they trace a life-not as it should be lived, but as it is.
Paul Mandelstein writes fables for a world that has outgrown simple answers but still hungers for wisdom.
For more than six decades, he has studied how insight travels across cultures and centuries-from Aesop and Hans Christian Andersen to Sufi storytellers, Hebrew wisdom traditions, and modern mythmakers. He discovered that the most enduring stories do not instruct or persuade. They illuminate. They invite reflection. They trust the reader to find what they need.
A pioneer in mind-body-spirit publishing, Mandelstein founded Quantum Publishing (later acquired by John Wiley & Sons) and served as founding President of The Book Publishing Company, helping shape the modern self-help movement. He has also been a co-facilitator and workshop leader at the Esalen Institute.
Small Wisdoms distills a lifetime of study into original fables meant to be read aloud, revisited often, and understood differently across time.
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