cover

Editor: Jane Yolen

Format: Paperback

Favorite Folktales from Around the World is a collection of a couple hundred ``folk tales’’ from what appears to be an attempt at a wide variety of cultures and traditions. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until partway through reading that it was published in 1986, so I was expecting a much more interesting and, frankly, better collection than what I read. The moment that really made me question everything about the book was when I read a story titled ‘‘The Emperor’s Favorite (China)’’ about a ‘‘concubine’’ named ‘‘Mi Tsu-Hsia’’, which turns out was just a straightwashed retelling of the story of Mizi Xia. Apparently Jane Yolen sourced this story from Moss Roberts’s collection of fairytales but like, how do you miss the one important detail in the story?? 1 There were a handful of other stories that I recognized and seemed dubious as well, but that’s the one that sticks out to me.

The selection of stories in general was also a bit baffling - given it’s from 1986 I didn’t expect it to be particularly Woke or anything but the specific stories often just felt needlessly cruel, especially to women (mostly wives). Many of the stories were also quite clearly different retellings of the same underlying story, which could have been interesting if it was commented on in any way or if it seemed more deliberate than it was. As it stands, it feels like every so often a spot would be wasted on retelling a story I literally just read. It also seemed to avoid ‘classic’ myths in favour of more ‘traditional’ tales, which is fine, except then it threw in Orpheus and Eurydice?

The organization of the collection was also quite odd - in principle, the book is organized into ~10 thematic sections, with stories about, say, ‘birth’, or ‘tricksters’ grouped together. This would have been fine if it was actually used, but towards the end of each section, the stories started to completely drift from the theme of the section - ‘‘The Emperor’s Favorite’’ story, despite clearly being about the fickleness of love etc. was confusingly grouped in with tales about ‘‘old and young’’ people? This happened basically without fail in every single section, which made the organization almost worthless.

Anyway do not recommend, go just like watch OSP or smth.

  1. I couldn’t find a copy of the Moss Roberts collection to see whose fault it was but… ↩