A Year Full of Stories - Angela McAllister - ★★★.¾

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Author: Angela McAllister

Illustrator: Christopher Corr
Genre: Children's Fiction
Rating: 3.75 stars.

A lovely collection of 52 folktales and legends from various countries and cultures from across the world.

The books is organised in terms of months. So there’s a mention of the month, and some special days/festivals/celebrations that occur in that month. For each special day, there are one-two stories. Many of these tales are linked to the event. For instance, Friendship Day comes with the Roman story of ‘Androcles and the Lion’, while Human Rights Day connects with the tale of ‘The Bell of Atri’.

There are a couple of mythological tales, but most of the stories are folktales. As such, a few of them feel somewhat outdated due to their focus on the hackneyed ideas of princesses wanting a prince and girls looking for husbands/wanting babies and frogs wanting to be kissed and so on. They are entertaining, no doubt. A part of me feels that such content should be “retired” from children’s fiction. They have had a long enough run, and it is high time children’s fiction looks beyond old-fashioned thinking. 

The special days in the book are quite varied, ranging from festivals such as Easter, Diwali and Chinese New Year, to special days such as World Water Day and April Fools’ Day, to celebrations such as Midwinter and Harvest, to localised occasions such as Pirim, St. Swithin’s Day and Kwanzaa. A brief explanation of every single special event is provided at the end of the book. It would have been better had the details been provided in the same page as the name of the event appears on. The meaning would have come out clearly, and the related story would have also liked better in its theme.

The illustrations are charming and definitely match the spirit of the book well.

Angela McAllister is one of my favourite authors when it comes to children’s anthologies, but this wasn’t my favourite, though I did like it to a great extent.

The book is currently available to Amazon Prime subscribers.

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