Charlie Mackesy’s bestselling and Oscar-winning stories about a boy, a mole, a fox and a horse deal in aperçus such as ‘Nothing beats kindness. It sits quietly behind all things’; ‘always remember, you’re enough, just as you are’. The ancient Greek Aesop – whoever and whenever he was (6th century bc?) – is the West’s inventor of animal fables, and his creations are rather more challenging.