Josephine Evetts-Secker

I enjoyed this book for several reasons. The main message of the book was to provide the reader with a variety of family-themed folk tales from around the world. I really liked that the book was a collection of stories from around the world. This way, the reader could read folk tales from a variety of cultures and compare and contrast the stories. I enjoyed that the stories all had the same theme of family, particularly mother daughter relationships, but presented them in different ways. I liked that underneath each folk tale title the nationality of the story was listed which gave the reader some background knowledge on the culture. I also enjoyed that the illustrations corresponded with each story and the culture of that story. I like that the colors used in the stories also change according to the story. For example, the Native American folk tale features more browns, reds and blues while the Japanese folk tale featured pale reds and pinks and yellows. This helps set the mood of each story and gives the reader a visual image of that culture. The language would be appropriate for upper elementary readers. For example, the stories use words and phrases such as “sorrowful” and “feeble”. Younger children might need to use context clues to determine what some of these words mean.… (mehr)