Breaking the Spell: Tales of Enchantment

by Sally Grindley (Compiler), Susan Field (Illustrator)

A magical collection of tales, filled with witches, fairies, princes, and princesses, includes seven enchanting stories, set in exotic and romantic faraway places such as Egypt, India, Spain, Japan, and more.

80 pages, Hardcover

First published March 19, 1997

About the author

I came into children's books originally as Editorial Director of a nationwide children's book club, though I had written and directed a children's play while a student at Sussex University, which was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe. I wrote my first two children's picture books in 1984 and was lucky enough that Anthony Browne wanted to illustrate the second - Knock Knock Who's There? It was published in 1985, is still going strong today and is one of my most successful.

Shhh! was published in 1991 and has known great success in France/Belgium in particular (close on 300,000 copies sold). It's success in the UK - it won the Children's Book Award - was hampered by the liquidation of its original publisher.

I became a full-time author in 1995 and now have some 150+ titles published, the most recent being L'Histoire du Soir in France, Belgium and Italy.

Feather Wars, published in 2003, was my first sortie into young fiction and was followed by the very successful Spilled Water, which has been published in some ten different languages and is very popular in schools as a class reader. It won the Nestle Smarties Gold Award (and I wound up being a 'Pointless' answer on the back of it!) Broken Glass came next and was a Sunday Times Book of the Week.

I'm currently working on picture books again and have plans to illustrate one of my own in the not too distant future - watch this space!

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a surprisingly diverse collection of stories, and likely has something for everyone, from the emperor who made a garden entirely out of paper, to the tragic, beautiful snake woman who dooms either her lover or herself, to the boy who can plays music so marvelous that it does things to all the people around him, to the earnest, kind youngest daughter of a king who enlists the help of animals, to the prince who knows how he is to meet his death, to the princess cursed with a terrible singing voice. The illustration are beautiful in their stylized fashion, making it seemed that all the varied characters inhabit the same odd world. Lovely.

[Jaide · Rating 2 out of 5]

Non-traditional tales by various children’s authors. Pretty illustrations, but the only story I really liked was “The Witch’s Ride” by Jane Yolen.

[Saffron Moon · Rating 5 out of 5]

1. The Paper Garden by Tony Ramsay
2. Dancing in the Air by Joan Aiken
3. The Prince with Three Fates by Ann Turnbull
4. The Queen of the Bees by Vivian French
5. The Witch's Ride by Jane Yolen
6. The Snake Princess by Jamila Gavin
7. Chantelle, the Princess Who Could Not Sing by Joyce Dunbar