Taking as a point of departure the allegorical nature of the Chinese fable The Wolf of Zhongshan (1544), this paper investigates the cultural poetics of anthropomorphism in contemporary re-constructions of the tale in its adaptation for young children. The poetics suggested in this essay is twofold: the aesthetic and the ethical. It first and foremost theorizes a subversive function of the fable, challenging the commonly accepted function of fable as moralizing cautionary tale, and posits fable as a dynamic, evolving form. Then the poetics aims to issue various ethical calls to the reader: to cast away presumptions of form, to engage the moral ramifications of criticism, and to consider environmental ethics in encounters with non-human alterity.