Wisdom wins the race

Susan Lowell adapted a famous fable in her book The Tortoise and the Jackrabbit (1977) to feature creatures of the American Southwest. Her characters are an elderly tortoise and a jackrabbit. I found this book in 2019, worked with it, and set it aside. In 2024, I picked it up again and discovered that Jim Harris changes the meaning of the story for me. His paintings are indeed glorious, but one single artistic choice implies that slow and steady does not win the race, wisdom does.

Harris’s Jackrabbit snoozes with a sign hanging from his huge hind foot. It reads “SILENCIO!”. The Spanish word suggests to me that Jackrabbit is taking a traditional afternoon siesta. He isn’t snoozing out of arrogance. I infer that the wise Tortoise knew this custom and meanders past the sleeping Jackrabbit unsurprised. Her plan is working.