SKOWHEGAN - One young couple had driven 40 miles from Bingham to attend. Another brought in their less-than-week-old infant (they didn't stay, but they wanted to make sure they picked up their books for next time). Two mothers showed up with their teenaged daughters.

"What did you like about this story?" says David Richards to a young woman who has, since the last session, started a job at MacDonald's. "The king is so-o-o big, and the beetle is so-o-o small," she replies with glee.

It's the monthly meeting of the Maine Humanities Council's New Books, New Readers program in the conference room of the Margaret Chase Smith Library, and it's that note of glee that characterizes the whole evening. Not that everyone speaks up. Many of the younger people and the newcomers sit back, rather shyly, and take it all in. But the regulars are happy to see each other, even happier to banter with David, and downright delirious in their pleasure to be talking about...a book.

It's Arnold Lobel's witty, ironic update of Aesop, entitled Fables, a Caldecott-winning collection of one-page stories in which animals are used to convey some very human messages. The story in point is "King Lion and the Beetle," the tale of a pompous monarch who has to bend down so low to make sure a little beetle is bowing to him properly that he topples into the mud. (Moral: It is the high and mighty who have the longest distance to fall.)

The fable takes only a moment to read, but there is nothing dumbed down about it. There's a lot to talk about the king's vanity, the possibility the beetle was leading him on, the types we all know who are mirrored in the tale. The point is the talking. New Book, New Readers does not teach people how to read, but rather how to explore the ideas in what they have read in a safe, supportive group setting and relate these ideas to their own lives. It uses high quality, handsomely illustrated children's books as texts. Participants get to keep the books, passing them on to children and grandchildren or collecting them as the beginning of a personal library.

The Maine Humanities Council sponsors this program in a variety of settings across the state, such as libraries, adult basic education centers, and prisons, and for people of all ages and life histories. Some had reading disabilities never recognized by teachers or parents. Some moved around too much as children. Some are working on their GEDs yet need experience in "processing" their reading. Some no one ever bothered to teach.

"What's the significance of the last fable?" asks David toward the end of the evening, turning to "The Mouse at the Seashore," the mini-epic of a tiny animal who braves peril after peril in order to see the ocean. "Could it be about taking risks?" asks a participant.