Our Children's Librarian columnist, Julie Booker, brings us a new view from the stacks every month.

*****

Jack the King of Ashes, by Andy Jones, illustrated by Darka Erdelji, is one of the famous Newfoundland “Jack Stories,” in which Jack sets out to seek his fortune, and through no particular skills except naïveté, ends up winning the hand of a princess in marriage. “Do good, be kind, be brave,” are the morals of the story. Because of the length of the text and the colloquial language, this one is good for Grade 1 and up.

And it must be read aloud. Case in point: Jack encounters a robber who says, “Give me all you got!” “You already took it,” says Jack. “I took nothing,” says the robber. “And that’s all I had," Jack replies. "So if you took nothing, then ya musta took it from me.”

Whimsical illustrations accompany humour-filled text in a twisty plot. When Jack is ousted from his family home he becomes a robber, takes on a sidekick dog that possibly talks (no one can be certain). There’s a princess rescue, a couple of corpses, a chase and a wacky puppet show that unlocks the memory of the spell-bound princess slated to marry someone else. It ends, of course, with the characteristic happy-ever-after marriage.

*

Little Book of Northern Tales: The Bear Says North, retold by Bob Barton, illustrated by Jirina Marton, showcases ten stories “saved from oblivion” by Barton, found in 19th and early 20th-century books from around the world. Lessons are taught through a wide range of characters, like the ego-driven Frostbite who learns he’s met his match in a peasant who’s suffered a tough life. Or Anders, who turns down a multitude of offers for the unique hat his mother has made him—including a king wanting to trade it with his crown. (His mother praises him, in contrast to other tales in which he’s scolded for such foolishness.) There are three stories with seemingly no lesson, in which the characters have experiences without further consequence: a goat leaves behind colourful jewels on a quest; a family of trolls help raise up a human family before moving on; a girl seeks the northern lights and feels content with the journey. Grade 3 and up.

*

Golden Goose, by Barbara Reid, is a somewhat modern take on the traditional Brothers Grimm tale. The King’s materialistic gifts do not appeal to his environmentally conscious daughter, Gwendolyn who is not your stereotypical princess. Potential suitors fail to appeal to Gwendolyn, until Rupert comes along, an environmentalist at heart, whose acts of kindness have garnered him a golden goose. Along the journey to the palace, however. someone has tried to steal the goose and a spell has been cast so that when Rupert arrives, unbeknownst to him, a slew of people trail behind him unable to let go of one another and ultimately, the goose at the end of it all. This makes the princess laugh, capturing her heart. They live happily-ever-after as two nature-lovers. The detailed Plasticine art will captivate readers from Kindergarten and up.

*

Published in 1984, Canadian Fairy Tales, by Eva Martin and Laszlo Gal, contain 12 stories collected from second and third generation French-English Canadian settlers. With a host of usual suspects—giants, daughters and princes—the twists and turns, tests and quests, are less predictable than the usual fairy tales. Themes of just rewards and comeuppance are ever present, along with a forest full of unknown creatures seen as threatening to early settlers. This one is recommended for Grade 4 and up because of the violence and possible discussions around the mores of the time. The word “tramp” appears, for instance, and so does the beating of a child, with stories often ending conventionally in marriage. There are also no Indigenous themes present. Three stories feature the well-known rascal Ti-Jean, the folkloric French-Canadian boy endowed with magical powers.

*

Ten Small Tales, by Celia Barker Lottridge, illustrated by Joanne Fitzgerald, is for the younger crowd (Kindergarten and up). They don’t all contain morals, and many have patterns that appeal to young ears. There’s a father, for example, who is too busy reading the paper to play with his boy. So the boy hides in a peanut, which gets eaten by a chicken, which is consumed by a fox, then a wolf and finally a fish. The father, suspicious of the fat fish, cuts it open, revealing each of the animals and finally, his son. The tale tells us the boy learned his lesson (not the dad, though!) Or there’s a fun one about a little boy who won’t go to sleep, awakened each time his grandma closes the bedroom door. As an (overkill) solution, she fills his bed with different animals. In the end, oiling his squeaky bedroom door does the trick.

*

The Name of the Tree: A Bantu Tale, retold by Celia Barker Lottridge, illustrated by Ian Wallace, will appeal to Kindergarten and up. Due to a drought, the animals of Africa, wander the savanna searching for food. All except the king—the lion. The animals come upon a tree that smells like the fruits of the world, but they can’t reach the food. The ancient tortoise tells them that, in order to access the fruit, they need to name the tree, but only the lion knows the answer. And so the gazelle and the elephant travel to ask the king, but each returns having forgotten it. Tortoise saves the day by repeating the name all the way back to the acacia, which then offers its fruit to the grateful creatures.

*

On her first day as teacher-librarian, Julie Booker was asked by a five-year-old if that was her real name. She's felt at home in libraries since her inaugural job as a Page in the Toronto Public Library. She is the author of Up Up Up, a book of short stories published by House of Anansi Press.