Tales of Wonder and Magic - Hardcover

Berlie Doherty has written many books for young people and has twice won the Carnegie Medal - for Granny Was a Buffer Girl and Dear Nobody. Her other titles include Spellhorn, Daughters of the Sea, Willa and Old Miss Annie (Highly Commended for the 1995 Carnegie Medal), The Magic Bicycle and the anthology Fairy Tales. She has also writes poetry and plays, and adapted her own books for television and radio. Juan Wijngaard was born in Argentina of Dutch parents. In 1970 he came to England and studied at the Royal College of Art. His first picture book, Greenfinger House, won the 1981 Mother Goose Award and in 1985 he was awarded the Kate Greenaway Medal for Sir Gawain and the Loathly Lady. Among his other titles are Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Nativity, The Midas Touch and the Walker Treasure The King and the Golden River. Juan lives in California.

Grade 3-7-An assortment of nine traditional stories plus an original selection by Doherty. Five of the folktales are from the British Isles, one is from Africa (no country given), one is Canadian (a Northwest Coast Indian tale), one comes from the Australian Aboriginals, and one comes from African-American culture. The majority of the retellings have appeared in other collections, which are cited at the back of the book. Although the writing styles are widely varied, there is a similarity of mood. The stories are romantic, mysterious, sometimes elegiac. Wijngaard's gouache paintings are perfectly suited to the otherworldly quality of the tales. The book is beautifully designed, with both full-page and smaller color illustrations on glossy paper, plenty of white space, and decorative borders of motifs related to each selection. Although the collector is described as a storyteller, these selections are all more literary than oral in character, with the exception of "The People Could Fly" by Virginia Hamilton. The versions of "The Bogles and the Moon," "Tamlane," and "The Black Bull of Norroway" found in Joseph Jacobs's More English Fairy Tales (Putnam, 1894; o.p.) are more suitable for telling aloud. Susan Cooper has retold "Tam Lin" in a monograph illustrated by Warwick Hutton (McElderry, 1991) and Susan Jeffers illustrated The Buried Moon (Bradbury, 1969; o.p.).
Pam Gosner, formerly at Maplewood Memorial Library, NJ
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