Sing Me a Fable › Play Me Arcade › M
M is for Meanness
The Mean Hyena
Hattie is the funny one, and three friends come to play. Each one arrives happy and leaves hurt — and then there is nobody left to laugh with.
What happens in it
Nothing is explained. You watch what happens to Rabbit, to Elephant Cub and to Tortoise, and then you say how each of them felt.
Watch, then notice
1. How did they feel? Three short scenes, one friend at a time. Hattie laughs at each of them. Then three pictures come back and you choose the feeling: happy, okay or hurt.
The bar at the top is Hurt caused — it counts the hurt, not the child.
2. No one wants to play. All four are playing with the ball. Each time Hattie says something, you decide: was that mean, or kind? One by one her friends walk off, until she is standing there on her own.
3. Bring your friends back. She wants to make it right. Choose what she should say and do, and each good choice brings one friend back to the ball.
Tap the face that matches.
The three levels
- HOW DID THEY FEEL? — Easy
- NO ONE WANTS TO PLAY — Easy–medium
- BRING YOUR FRIENDS BACK — Medium
Why meanness is one of the twenty-six
Sing Me a Fable is an alphabet of faults, one for every letter, from Aggression to Zealotry. M is meanness, and this is the playable half of that fable: the child makes the choice the animal makes, and watches what it costs. Nobody explains the moral afterwards, which is the whole point of a fable and the reason the form has lasted two and a half thousand years.
Every letter has one: twenty-six fables, twenty-six faults, twenty-six games. See the whole arcade, or take the twenty-six colouring posters and Find the Error sheets free.
