An Illustrated Treasury of Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales

Gr 4–6—Breslin retells 11 tales that she heard in childhood and researched in literary sources, featuring a kelpie, a dragon, a brownie, and other figures, some human and some magical. The collection begins with the repetitive tale of the wee bannock, cousin to the gingerbread man, running down the road and goes on to longer romances and quests. "Whuppity Stourie" is here, along with a Cinderella variant. Breslin seems particularly interested in independent women, and one story is an extended telling of "The Goshawk and the Brave Lady" from Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders. Well constructed for independent reading, the selections sometimes become lengthy with extended explanations, description, and conversation so they aren't well suited to reading aloud or storytelling. Each tale begins with brief commentary on its region of origin or the author's personal preference for it, but no specific print sources are provided. Leiper's drawings shaded in muted tones portray the characters handsomely in scenes placed variously on a full page, to one side of the text, or above or below it. The bold dragon on the cover suggests a scarier panoply than is actually found here, and the endpapers and matching pages to introduce each tale lend a dark and sophisticated tone with phrases in varying sizes of lavender text scattered across a purple background. Large and heavy in the hand, the book offers a contemporary introduction to Scottish lore that tends to be represented in libraries by much older, more informative collections or picture-book versions of individual tales.—Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston