geekylou's review
3.0
Nice light read, finished in one hour! Various folklore stories with meaning to some and downright funny with others.
Worth a read.
Worth a read.
kimberlyrose's review
3.0
A solid collection of a variety of art styles and story types, all retelling famous folk tales by combing manga-style art layouts with interspersed short American-style or European-style comic narrative language. The majority were wonderfully fun to read, others were rather mundane and mediocrely illustrated. My older daughter and I read them aloud together and had a great giggle, a few tears (for me), and a few bored "hmms."
Several were laugh-out-loud funny (the shock value and strong simple and expressive art of The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage, the talented contrasting of image-vs-words in The Three Feathers, and the cliche exaggeration of the manly-man hunter and sweet, "innocent" Red in Little Red Riding Hood), and others quickly brought a tear to my eye (The Snow Queen). One verged on trying too hard to be different by telling the tale mostly with images: a somewhat confusing and overly-simplified attempt at The Prince and the Pauper.
If you take the tales for what they are--simple tales told over the centuries to highlight basic human truths--and don't get caught up in the definitively poor social and image messages for contemporary society, this OEL is a fun reimagining of traditional folk tales.
Several were laugh-out-loud funny (the shock value and strong simple and expressive art of The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage, the talented contrasting of image-vs-words in The Three Feathers, and the cliche exaggeration of the manly-man hunter and sweet, "innocent" Red in Little Red Riding Hood), and others quickly brought a tear to my eye (The Snow Queen). One verged on trying too hard to be different by telling the tale mostly with images: a somewhat confusing and overly-simplified attempt at The Prince and the Pauper.
If you take the tales for what they are--simple tales told over the centuries to highlight basic human truths--and don't get caught up in the definitively poor social and image messages for contemporary society, this OEL is a fun reimagining of traditional folk tales.
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