Ruth Manning-Sanders, youngest daughter of an English minister, describes her childhood as “extraordinarily happy. . . with kind and understanding parents and any amount of freedom.” She read omnivorously, and she and her two sisters wrote and acted their own plays. A Shakespeare scholar at Manchester University, she later married Cornish artist George Manning-Sanders. They began married life in a horse drawn caravan, and traveled to all parts of the British Isles. Mrs. Manning-Sanders has collected folk and fairy stories from around the world and she published more than 90 books during her lifetime.
This was my very favourite book as a child. My paper back copy was read so much that it was held together by tape and love. I highly recommend this book to any child, parent, or person with a fantastic imagination who wants to be taken away to other worlds. Wonderful book!
A great collection of wizarding tales (pre-H.P) that is entertaining to read and takes the reader away into another world that will be enjoyed by young and old alike.
Fairy tales about the world, with country sources (but no more) and nice illustrations, retold for children.
A variety of tales. Included "Aladdin" -- the original -- but the rest are not the popular tales. We have a job for a wizard, a wizard who tricks a man into promising his son and the son's adventures, a wizard testing two women in the kind and unkind girls tale, and more.
I enjoyed this as a light book of fairy tales all surrounding wizards. It wasn't the most brilliant writing but an interesting enough sampling of wizard tales from around the world. I most certainly did not hate it but it's not a book I would particularly recommend, simply because the writing was not very polished. Entertaining but not altogether satisfying, as it were.