by Jen Campbell, Illustrated by Adam de Souza
5 stars
A delightfully dark collection of tales spanning the globe. From Korea and Japan to Norway and Ireland to Nigeria and South Africa. A nice selection, all with a gruesome or spooky leaning.
I especially enjoyed that Campbell’s selection highlighted many brave, creative, clever, and quick thinking women. Campbell adds her own spin to the tales, which she lays out in the Afterword. I enjoyed her twists such as adding a queer romance and women not always being married off or meeting a bad end as is so common in fairy tales. She also includes characters with hair loss, deafness, and ectrodactyly without making them scary or evil.
Adam de Souza’s artwork perfectly captures the haunting beauty of the stories. Each story includes at least one full-color page as well as black-and-white drawings along the edges of the text. Absolutely stunning. They fit the dark aesthetic well and the details are wonderful.
Among my favorites in the collection were “The House That Was Filled With Ghosts”, “The Kingdoms at the Center of the Earth”, and “The Woman and the Glass Mountain”.
My only teeny tiny critique is that I wish there was a list of the original titles each story was based on. There were plenty I wanted to read more about. It was helpful to have the country/tribe of origin but some are a bit tricky to track down. For those interested, here’s what I’ve found by way of the originals:
“The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers” (Korea) – “The Fox Sister”
“The Souls Trapped Under the Ocean” (Ireland) – “The Soul Cages”
“The House That Was Filled with Ghosts” (Japan) – unknown
“The Boy Who Tricked a Troll” (Norway) – “The Boy Who Had an Eating Match with a Troll”
“The Daughter Who Loved a Skeleton”(Nigeria) – “The Disobedient Daughter Who Married a Skull”
“The Princess Who Ruled the Sea” (Inuit) – Sedna mythology
“The Husband Who Cheated Death” (Egypt) – unknown
“The Adults Who Lost Their Organs” (Germany) – “The Three Army Surgeons”
“The Kingdoms at the Center of the Earth”(Russia) – “Prince Danila Govorila”
“The Wife Who Could Remove Her Head” (El Salvador) – unknown
“The Man Who Hunted Children” (South Africa) – unknown
“The Son of Seven Mothers” (India) – same name
“The Girl With the Horse’s Head” (China) – same name/ “The Silkworm Goddess”
“The Woman and the Glass Mountain” (Spain) – unknown