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A review by greymalkin
Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World by Kathleen Ragan
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
A wonderful collection of fairytales, fables, and myths, many of which I have not read before. The erratic translation quality was a little bit distracting (clearly in some stories there was a lot of "translator re-writing parts to match their own belief systems") but I expect that some stories would not be available if not for at least this level of translation.
The author afterwords were a little too much like a high school analysis essay to be enjoyable. The messages were generally fine but the connections and conclusions and points they tried to make often felt like too much of a stretch. I didn't mind the analysis but feel like it might have benefited from grouping certain stories together either by theme (clever girl, surprise hero, disguising as a man, etc.) instead of by country of origin. I think some really interesting things could have been said by putting some of the stories next to each other and then discussing them all together. Not only would that help avoid some of the inevitable "and she also was very brave so it's important to be brave even when scared" repetition that happened when writing an afterword after Every. Single. Story. Grouping them and just having one essay would allow for talking about how there were similarities across completely different cultures, and of course the differences.
It also would have helped with the blur of sameness. I took forever to read this book (almost four years), not because they were challenging or too lengthy, but because if I read too many at once, they all blurred together and there was little point in reading more since I'd never remember any of the individual stories.
A warning to any parent, some of the stories are more fables and myths so they talk about dismemberment, disease, death, seduction, and topics like that. Nothing extremely explicit, but be aware of this if you choose to read these stories aloud to small children without vetting the story first.
The author afterwords were a little too much like a high school analysis essay to be enjoyable. The messages were generally fine but the connections and conclusions and points they tried to make often felt like too much of a stretch. I didn't mind the analysis but feel like it might have benefited from grouping certain stories together either by theme (clever girl, surprise hero, disguising as a man, etc.) instead of by country of origin. I think some really interesting things could have been said by putting some of the stories next to each other and then discussing them all together. Not only would that help avoid some of the inevitable "and she also was very brave so it's important to be brave even when scared" repetition that happened when writing an afterword after Every. Single. Story. Grouping them and just having one essay would allow for talking about how there were similarities across completely different cultures, and of course the differences.
It also would have helped with the blur of sameness. I took forever to read this book (almost four years), not because they were challenging or too lengthy, but because if I read too many at once, they all blurred together and there was little point in reading more since I'd never remember any of the individual stories.
A warning to any parent, some of the stories are more fables and myths so they talk about dismemberment, disease, death, seduction, and topics like that. Nothing extremely explicit, but be aware of this if you choose to read these stories aloud to small children without vetting the story first.