An Ocean Full of Stories: 50 Folktales and Legends from Around the World - Angela McAllister - ★★★★.½

AUTHOR: Angela McAllister

ILLUSTRATOR: Sally Agar

GENRE: Folktale Collection.

PUBLICATION DATE:

RATING: 4.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A beautiful illustrated collection of folk tales and legends from around the world, with every story being connected to a water body. Amazing stories, great diversity, excellent illustrations. Angela McAllister delivers again! Much recommended to little story lovers.

I have been a fan of Angela McAllister’s folktale collections ever since I read ‘A Bedtime Full of Stories’ in 2021. Her books always feature appealing magical tales, legends and lore from across the world. And when I say ‘across’, I mean ‘across’ in every sense of the world. Unlike many story collections that claim to have global stories but end up with a majority of the stories being from USA and some parts of Europe, McAllister’s collections span every continent, and even contains stories from indigenous tribes. I have come to see her children’s compilations books as a reliable source of genuine folktales from across cultures.

Her latest offering, ‘An Ocean Full of Stories’, meets in every way the high expectations I had. The book contains fifty stories taken from multiple continents and cultures. Every story is connected to a water body, but there is no feeling of déjà vu. The stories reminded me of the folktale collections I used to read in my childhood, with every tale offering fun as well as a worthy lesson.

The fifty stories are divided across six theme-based sections. I appreciate how the tagline next to the title mentions the continent as well as the country/culture the story comes from. With the places being as disparate as Papua New Guinea, Isle of Mann, Philippines, Norway, Chile and Ghana, the book offers an amazing variety. There were two stories from India as well, but to my surprise, both were new to me. The sources of all the stories are presented in an appendix at the end.

The stories are written in an easy-to-understand narrative style. The official target age is 5 to 8 years, but because of some of the words and themes, this book would better suit kids aged 7+.

Every story is accompanies by some gorgeous full-colour illustrations. The graphics are always in sync with the tone of the story as well as the culture it is taken from.

Folktales are anyway among my favourite kind of children’s stories as they make me so nostalgic for my childhood storybooks. But with the strong narrative and cultural diversity of this book, it definitely stands a cut above. Most of the tales in this book worked excellently for me, so much so that I struggled to pick the ones I loved most. So the below listing is better read as a ‘best of the best’ kind of record.

My favourites from each section:

I. Fishy Tales:

🐋 Colapesce (Italy)

🐠 Honorary mention: Hippo’s Promise (A Bushman story from Africa.)

II. Crossing the Water:

🐋 The Land That Went To Sea (Fiji)

III. Pools, Lakes, and Rivers: The best section for me, with so many wonderful stories that I loved almost all of them. My top favourite of the twelve stories won by a whisker of a margin.

🐋 The Talking Fish (China)

🐠 Honorary mentions: Sina and the Eel (Samoa), and Why River Waters Are Never Still (North America)

IV. Tricks and Trials:

🐋 Why the Sea is Salty (Japan) – a story I have read before but I still love it.

🐠 Honorary mention: Pu-Nia and the King of the Sharks (Hawaii)

V. Ocean Gods and Water Spirits:

🐋 The Fish-Peri (Turkey)

VI. Beside the Sea, Beneath the Waves:

🐋 Māui and the Great Fish (New Zealand)

🐠 Honorary mentions: The Siren (France), and The Merman (Iceland)

All in all, this book fared exactly the way I expected it to, and probably even went a little beyond. While I have loved all of this author’s works, I think this one might just be my favourite so far.

Much recommended. If you want a truly diverse and entertaining storybook for your kids, you cannot go wrong with Angela McAllister’s folktale compilations. This book would be great at homes and classrooms, and would also make a wonderful gift.

My thanks to Quarto Publishing Group for providing the DRC of “An Ocean Full of Stories” via Edelweiss+. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.