Right beside Aesop’s fables and D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths on my bookshelf, you’ll find creation stories: Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories and How the Whale Became by Ted Hughes, illustrated by Jackie Morris. Creation stories are a genre – they take place in the early days of creaturely life, where animals and humans roam the nascent earth but have not quite reached their recognizable state. The worlds of these stories share elements of both myth and fable, and they teem with imaginative whimsy and wit. In them, creatures are still developing – coming into their own unique characteristics and quirks – sometimes helped along or punished by various genies or demigods, sometimes internally driven to discover their role in the world, or other times cajoled by their fellow creatures to do something productive. These books offer delightful reading and prove fruitful as they form our imaginations and help us grow in virtue.