Father and Daughter Tales

Christine Linge is a past director of the Toronto & District Parent
Co-operative Preschool Corporation, a freelance writer, and a bookseller
specializing in children’s literature.

The cover of this attractive volume displays a colorful mosaic of
characters and designs found throughout the volume, enticing the reader
to explore its contents. Inside are 10 folk tales, primarily from
Europe, but also from the Middle East, India, Africa, and North America.
The common thread connecting these tales is their protagonists, girls
who determine the course of their own lives, acting within (and
sometimes stretching) the boundaries set by local custom and family
situation. In some of the stories, parental influence is significant
(the father’s laments in “Aluel and Her Loving Father” bring his
daughter back from the great beyond). In others, the father merely sets
the wondrous story in motion (the weak-willed father in “The Bear in
the Forest Hut” abandons his daughter in the forest to fend for
herself).

Josephine Evetts-Secker retells these tales of bravery, adventure,
love, and magic with simple elegance. A practising Jungian analyst and
English professor who has made a study of women in folk and fairy tales,
the author provides a foreword and notes that help adult readers
comprehend the underlying social and psychological forces that shaped
these tales.

Every page is illuminated by decorative borders, reminiscent of
hand-wrought folk embroidery or carving. Illustrations on every second
page accent the pulse-points of the tales, as Helen Cann’s beautiful
watercolors, abounding in ethnic detailing, portray with great
tenderness the powerful emotions that drive these stories. Highly
recommended.