I found this book very enjoyable. Yolen has collected around 155 stories from around the world, so I think just about everyone who picks this up should recognize at least a few.

And when I say around the world, I mean it. It has stories from 6 continents. If they found folk tales passed among penguins, maybe they could even claim Antarctica.

One thing I liked is that the stories are grouped thematically. There’s one section about trickster types. There’s another about heroes. Perhaps the most fun sections were the one on cheating the devil, or the one full of stories about death.

A bunch of the stories were pretty interesting, but I think my favorites were “The Magic Mirror of Rabbi Adam” and “Godfather Death”.

In the former, we have this wise man named Rabbi Adam, well versed in the ways of magic and committed to saving his fellow Jews from misfortune. He ends up remotely doing battle with an evil sorcerer trying to kill an innocent man. At one point, Rabbi Adam has the man submersing himself in a tub of water to dodge magical arrows sent by the sorcerer. Later, Rabbi Adam engages in a direct contest of sorcery with the villain, matching him trick for trick. This is probably the only story in the collection that really gave a sense of thrills and suspense.

I went looking around to see if there are other tales out there of Rabbi Adam, but I couldn’t find any. Too bad. He seems like he’d make a great recurring figure.

The other story that stuck out was “Godfather Death”, a bit of a dark comedy. At the birth of his 13th son, a poor man at the end of his rope resolves to go find him a godfather. He first meets God. But rather than select God, he instead chooses to bemoan God’s apparent unfairness, giving wealth to the rich and misery to the poor. He also meets the Devil, but knows him for the liar he is and rejects him. Finally, he meets Death. He decides that Death shall be his newborn son’s godfather, because Death is at least fair, taking both the rich and the poor.

The wealth of folk stories we have around the world is truly amazing. Some are variations on others, while some are quite unique. What’s really cool though is, what makes a story truly compelling transcends cultures and time periods.