Mitzi Reed, age 12, of Beaumont, Texas., for her question:

WHERE DO WE GE THE SAYING 'SOUR GRAPES?'

People often say "sour grapes!" to someone who pretends he does not want soemthing that he cannot have. The saying comes from an old Aesop fable.

A hungry fox once saw some fine, luscious grapes hanging temptingly from a vine above his head. He leaped and snapped and leaped again, but never could he quite reach the grapes. So many times did he try that he tired himself out completely and it was some time before he could drag himself limping away, angry with the world and himself.

As the hungry fox went along, he grumbled savagely to himself: "What sour things those grapes are! No gentle man would want to eat them."

A fable is a short, special kind of story that usually has animal characters. It teaches a lesson. The animals talk and act like people. The meaning is often made at the end by what one of these animals wisely says.

Many of today's best known fables are said to be by Aesop, a Greek slave who lived about 600 B.C. The fables were collected about 300 years after Aesop's death by Demetrius Phalereus, the first manager of the great library at Alexandria.