Christopher Corr

A lovely collection of 52 folktales and legends from various countries and cultures from across the world.

The books is organised in terms of months. So there’s a mention of the month, and some special days/festivals/celebrations that occur in that month. For each special day, there are one-two stories. Many of these tales are linked to the event. For instance, Friendship Day comes with the Roman story of ‘Androcles and the Lion’, while Human Rights Day connects with the tale of ‘The show more Bell of Atri’.

There are a couple of mythological tales, but most of the stories are folktales. As such, a few of them feel somewhat outdated due to their focus on the hackneyed ideas of princesses wanting a prince and girls looking for husbands/wanting babies and frogs wanting to be kissed and so on. They are entertaining, no doubt. A part of me feels that such content should be “retired” from children’s fiction. They have had a long enough run, and it is high time children’s fiction looks beyond old-fashioned thinking.

The special days in the book are quite varied, ranging from festivals such as Easter, Diwali and Chinese New Year, to special days such as World Water Day and April Fools’ Day, to celebrations such as Midwinter and Harvest, to localised occasions such as Pirim, St. Swithin’s Day and Kwanzaa. A brief explanation of every single special event is provided at the end of the book. It would have been better had the details been provided in the same page as the name of the event appears on. The meaning would have come out clearly, and the related story would have also liked better in its theme.

The illustrations are charming and definitely match the spirit of the book well.

Angela McAllister is one of my favourite authors when it comes to children’s anthologies, but this wasn’t my favourite, though I did like it to a great extent.

3.75 stars.

The book is available to Amazon Prime subscribers.

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I read this tale adapted from a Hans Christian Andersen story to my 6-year-old and 8-year-old. We've read quite a few of his stories, but we weren't familiar with this one, so I was ready to dig in knowing that it would probably be an emotional roller coaster.

The story focuses on a little fir tree who at first isn't appreciating his circumstances and wanted more out of life. Seasons progress, plot progresses, and the (spoiler: eventually dead) tree has a change of heart.

My kids enjoyed show more it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free digital review copy. show less

The Great Race is a cute little story bringing to life the folktale about the creation of the Chinese Zodiac.

For the longest time there was no way to keep track of the passing time. One day, the Emperor decided to hold a great race. He invited all the animals to join in. The first twelve to cross the river would be given the honour of having a year named after them.

I love myths, legends, and folktales. It's neat to see how useful information is encoded into stories. This story, simply told show more aloud, teaches kids (and adults) the sequence of the Chinese Zodiac, and provides a duel explanation of why the Zodiac consists of these animals, and also why cats and rats don't get along.

The artwork was… interesting. It's a bit too abstract for me. I prefer things to look a little more realistic. I read this with my cubs though, and the younger ones really liked the pictures. I'm guessing that art is geared towards the younger readers.

***Many thanks to Netgalley and Quarto Publishing for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. show less

This was an adventurous story of how the Chinese calendar was made. This fun story showed the strengths of different animals. Despite the animals using each other to win the race everyone seemed to have a positive attitude about finishing the race no matter what place they came in. Everyone except the cat, who was supposed to be waken up by the rat so that they could finish the race together. Despite the rat's attempt to wake the sleeping cat, cat stayed sleep and rat left for the race show more finishing in 1st place. In the end cat finally woke up, saw that rat had finished and became very angry and chased him down. The last remarks explained why rats always run away from cats. I loved this story and the illustrations told the story all on its own. show less