Grimm Stuff
Folk Tales and Re-Tellings
from around the world
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Folk tales from around the world
Folk tale: any timeless story that developed within the oral tradition and,
therefore, represents the cumulative authorship of many tellers.
All cultures have their own store of folk tales. Around the world, folk
tales display similarities in plot, characterisation, style and motif. They
will usually include stories to explain how the world came to be and they may
focus on explaining the origin of local geographical features. Many focus on
how the local creatures came to live there and to look and behave as they do.
Folk tale characters, often serving as symbols of good and evil, are typically
uncomplicated, changeless and quickly introduced so that the story can proceed
apace. Folk tales explore the interactions of people with each other and with
the natural world around them.
In the twentieth century there has been a resurgence of collecting and
retelling ethnic and multicultural tales. Frequently, the authors have been
seeking to preserve native traditions (of their own culture or of a culture
they perceived to be threatened) or to revise misconceptions about ethnic
identity and history. Many of the stories in the books gathered here are closer
in time to when they were available only in their oral form than the European
fairy tales elsewhere in the exhibition.
Below
Congo, Africa
Bantu tales, retold by Pattie Price, with eighteen illustrations in
three colours by Desmond Smith
New York, E.P. Dutton, 1938
Dorothy Neal White Collection
Above
Germany
"The seven Swabians", in Eric Carle’s treasury of classic stories for
children, selected, retold and illustrated by Eric Carle
London: Hamilton, 1988
National Children’s Collection
Also on display to illustrate this theme:
Australian Aboriginal
"The rainbow serpent" in Folk tales and fables of the world
Retold by Barbara Hayes ; illustrated by Robert Ingpen
[Limpsfield] : Paper Tiger, c1987
National Children’s Collection
Nigeria, Africa
Why the sky is far away : a folktale from Nigeria, retold by
Mary-Joan Gerson ; illustrated by Hope Meryman
New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, [1974]
National Children’s Collection
Cornwall, England
"The giants of St Michael’s Mount", in Michael Foreman’s world of
fairy tales
London: Pavilion, 1990
National Children’s Collection
South America
Love and roast chicken : a trickster tale from the Andes Mountains
by
Barbara Knutson
Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books, c2004
National Children’s Collection
African American, USA
"The talking mule", in The Andersen book of American folk tales &
songs, collected by Ann Durrell ; illustrated by Diane Goode
London: Andersen Press, 1990
National Children’s Collection
India
Hanuman by A. Ramachandran
London: Adam & Charles Black, 1979
National Children’s Collection
Yiddish
Zlateh the goat : and other stories, by Asaac Bashevis Singer ;
pictures by Maurice Sendak ; translated from the Yiddish by the author and
Elizabeth Shub
London : Longman Young, 1970
National Children’s Collection
Two of these stories are displayed:
Zlateh the goat
In hard times, 12-year-old Aaron is given the task of taking the aging goat,
Zlateh, to Feyvel the butcher. They find shelter in a haystack during a
three-day snowstorm and Aaron is kept alive by Zlateh’s milk. Upon their
return home, Zlateh has earned a life-long reprieve and the special privilege
of joining the family inside the house whenever she wishes.
The grandmother’s tale
On Hanukkah night the children have stayed up late, playing dreidel (a
four-sided spinning top), when a stranger calls. Bedtime is forgotten until the
disturbed animals and the clock striking thirteen make them aware that their
guest is not the merry fellow he seems. “He rose with a loud laugh, stuck his
tongue out to his belly, and grew twice as tall. Horns came out his ears, and
there he stood, a devil.”
Australasian Stories
Two early publications featuring stories from Australia and New Zealand were
Australian fairy tales and Māori tales & legends.
Australian fairy tales are original stories written by Atha Westbury,
not a collection of stories based on the lore of the indigenous people. I have
not found any information about A. J. Johnson.
Kate McCosh Clark collected and retold Māori tales which were illustrated
by Robert Atkinson (1863-1896).
English-born, Atkinson came to New Zealand in 1885 for health reasons and
settled in Auckland as a professional artist with a studio in Victoria Arcade.
He was a friend of painter and author Mrs Kate McCosh Clark and illustrated two
of her books - A Southern Cross fairy tale (1891) and this early book of
Māori folk tales and legends. The pictures in these books are atypically
accomplished for New Zealand books in the early days of settlement. Many other
books of the period had very amateurish illustrations.
Above
Australian fairy tales, by Atha Westbury; illustrated by A.J.
Johnson
London : Ward, Lock & Co., 1897
Dorothy Neal White Collection
Māori tales & legends, collected and retold by Kate McCosh
Clark; with illustrations by Robert Atkinson
London [England] : David Nutt, 1896
Dorothy Neal White Collection
Stories retold
James Marshall 1942-1992
James Marshall was a self-taught artist who illustrated over 70 children’s
books in a distinctive, minimal style and wrote many of the texts. Marshall was
posthumously given the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (2007), honouring an author
or illustrator, published in the United States, whose books have made a
substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children. “Marshall
conveyed a world of emotion with the placement of a dot or the wrinkle of a
line,” said Wilder Award Committee Chair Roger Sutton. “In both his
drawings and impeccably succinct texts, he displayed a comic genius infused
with wit and kindness.”
Below:
Red Riding Hood
Retold and illustrated by James Marshall
New York : Dial Books for Young Readers, c1987
National Children’s Collection
Above:
Hansel and Gretel
The brothers Grimm ; illustrated [and adapted] by Anthony Browne
London : MacRae, 1981
National Children’s Collection
Anthony Browne b.1946
Browne planned to become a painter but needed money, so took a job as a
medical illustrator for three years, drawing the insides of bodies. He then
designed greeting cards for fifteen years and later he had some success with
picture books, including A walk in the park and Bear hunt, both
of which have his trade-mark surreal details. His publishing breakthrough came
with Gorilla (1983), a book based on an idea from one of the greeting
cards he had designed. This won him his first Kate Greenaway Medal. In 2000 he
became the first British illustrator ever to win the Hans Christian Andersen
Award.
As well as writing and illustrating his own stories, Browne has illustrated
the children’s classic Alice in Wonderland and several fairy tales.
There are echoes of Rackham in his murkily atmospheric backgrounds and animated
trees.
Richard Doyle 1824-1883
“Dicky” Doyle (uncle to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) was one of the most
popular illustrators of the Victorian period. Doyle had no formal art training
other than his father's studio, but from an early age displayed a gifted
ability to depict scenes of the fantastic and grotesque. He was a regular
contributor to Punch and drew the cover picture that was used for more
than a century. In fairyland (1870) is considered to be amongst the
finest picture books printed in colour in the nineteenth century. The printing,
by Edmund Evans, was done by wood engraving. Allingham’s poem was eminently
forgettable, but the illustrations were later re-issued as The Princess
Nobody, with a fine new text by Andrew Lang.
In fairyland : a series of pictures from the elf-world
Richard Doyle ; with a poem by William Allingham
London: Bodley Head, 1981 (facsimile edition)
Dorothy Neal White Collection
Ed Young b.1931
This Chinese-born American has illustrated over eighty books for children.
He went to the United States to study architecture but turned instead to his
love of art, beginning his career as a commercial artist in advertising. Then
he found himself looking for something more expansive, expressive, and timeless
– and discovered all this, and more, in children's books.
The subject and style of each story provides Young with the initial
inspiration for his art and with the motivation for design, sequence, and pace.
In 1990, his book Lon Po Po (a Chinese version of Little Red Riding
Hood) was awarded the Caldecott Medal. He has also received two Caldecott
Honors—for The Emperor and the Kite andSeven Blind Mice.
This latter book retells in verse the Indian fable of the blind men discovering
different parts of an elephant and arguing about its appearance. Young achieves
a three dimensional effect in the layered paper collage illustrations and
depicts the blind arguers as mice, who explore colours and counting as well as
the elephant.
Seven blind mice
Ed Young
New York : Philomel Books, 1992
National Children’s Collection
Quentin Blake b.1932
Blake, now in his 70s, and with over 300 books to his credit, is one of the
most influential, and instantly recognisable, British illustrators still
working. In 1999 he was appointed the first ever British Children's Laureate, a
post designed to raise the profile of children's literature. He won the 2002
Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration.
Like Richard Doyle, Blake began his career with Punch. His first
drawings were published when he was 16 and still at school. Blake’s
illustrations are full of movement and usually depict the developing action,
leaving the result to the reader’s imagination.
“Blake is beyond brilliant. He's anarchic, moral, infinitely subversive,
sometimes vicious, socially acute, sparse when he has to be, exuberantly lavish
in the detail when he feels like it. He can tell wonderful stories without a
single word, but his partnership with Roald Dahl was made in heaven. Or
somewhere. The diabolic ingenuity of Dahl came into its own only when he wrote
for children. In conjunction with Blake, there was a kind of alchemy. I've
never met a child who didn't love Quentin Blake.” Melanie McDonagh, Daily
Telegraph.
Roald Dahl’s Revolting rhymes
Roald Dahl with illustrations by Quentin Blake
London: J. Cape, 1982
National Children’s Collection
Gavin Bishop b.1946
A retelling of the traditional tale in which Chicken Licken sets off to warn
the Queen that the sky is falling in.
Chicken Licken
Retold and illustrated by Gavin Bishop
Auckland, N.Z. : Oxford University Press, 1984
National Children’s Collection
A retelling of the traditional story in which three billy goats outwit a
troll that lives under the bridge they must cross on their way up the
mountain.
The three billy-goats Gruff
Gavin Bishop
Auckland, N.Z. : Scholastic, 2003
National Children’s Collection
Lois Ehlert b.1934
Ehlert’s brightly coloured, bold collage illustrations ensure that her
books always stand out in a crowd. As a child, she used scrap lumber, shavings
and nails from her father’s workshop, and scrap materials from her seamstress
mother’s fabrics as they were brighter than the commercial craft paper of the
time. She also preferred collage to painting and drawing, as she found it was
easier to reposition features and only stick them down permanently when she was
happy with the illustration. For the illustrations in this book, where Fox and
Mole try to climb to the moon on a rope woven of grass, Ehlert’s was inspired
by ancient Peruvian textiles, jewellery and ceramics.
Moon rope : a Peruvian folktale = Un lazo a la luna : una leyenda
peruana
Lois Ehlert ; translated into Spanish by Amy Prince
San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, c1992
National Children’s Collection
Fred Marcellino 1939-2001
Marcellino’s career began with LP record covers, illustrating the albums
of rock musicians, and then he moved into book cover and dust jacket design.
Charles Perrault's Puss in boots, his first full-color picture book, won
a 1991 Caldecott Honor award. He won more awards for titles including The
Steadfast Tin Soldier, The Story of Little Babaji (a politically
correct version of Little Black Sambo) and Ouch! (adapted from the Grimm
tale, The Devil and His Three Golden Hairs).
This stunning cover focuses so closely on Puss’s face that the title and
credits had to be moved to the back.
Puss in boots
Charles Perrault ; illustrated by Fred Marcellino ; translated by Malcolm
Arthur
New York : Farrar Straus Giroux, 1990
National Children’s Collection
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