Lonely Planet Kids A Treasury of Traditional Tales

Lonely Planet Kids A Treasury of Traditional Tales
October 22, 2024 by Lonely Planet
Copy provided by the publisher

Our sixth grade used to do a massive folk and fairy tale project that involved students reading a story from one specific culture, then choosing a country from a completely different continent, and retelling the tale with details from the new country. I vividly remember my younger daughter retelling the German tale of Clever Gretchen, but setting in India. The language arts standards have changed, but I still have a collection of global tales, and this will certainly be one that students enjoy. 

Lonely Planet, which publishes a lot of travel books, does a great job of grouping the stories by continent, and each one lists the specific country or culture of origin. While there isn't a large map at the beginning of the book (they have conditioned me to always look for a map!), there is a smaller inset of the continent with the location highlighted for each tale. There is also a brief introduction for each tale. 

The thing that really amazed me about this collection was that I wasn't familiar with any of these stories! The sixth grade project went on for a long time, so I have a pretty good knowledge of what's out there, but these were all new to me. There are only so many versions of Cinderella that I need to read, or different variations on Tales of the Brothers Grimm that I need in my collection. This is a fresh crop of intriguing tales, and the colorful illustrations make it even more appealing. 

This collection of retold traditional tales boasts quite the array of authors. I've read books by David Bowles, Anita Ganeri, and Shirley Marr, and am glad to have other authors to investigate. There are thumbnail drawing of the authors with short biographies at the end of the book, which might have been my favorite part.