Yorkshire Folk Tales for Children

by Carmel Page

Where in Yorkshire can you walk on a dragon’s backbone? Who goes dancing at the Spot Bottom Hops? Which very old story gives advice about loading a dishwasher? Which mischievous child invented Yorkshire pudding? And is it safe to offer a gift to a small-toothed dog?

Yorkshire has a rich heritage of fantastical folk stories, traditional tales and words of wisdom handed down through generations.

These tales are beautifully retold here for 7- to 11-year-old readers, written and illustrated by storyteller and artist Carmel Page –a southerner by birth but who has lived in Sheffield for so long that she now uses her backdoor as her front door and has started to eat her dinner at lunchtime.

192 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2018

Reviews

[Ape · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw Carmel Page do a talk this summer - and she is a very good public speaker and live storyteller. So I picked up a copy of her book and we have been reading it at bedtime over the last couple of months. They are retellings of some of the folkstories from Yorkshire. Some made a bit less scary and more child friendly such as The Drummer Boy. Although there was one where knights were making sexualised comments about a woman that seemed a bit out of keeping with the audience. Randomly she had taken the true story of the Cottingham Fairies but made up a story about giants that seemed a bit.... not actually a folk story. Anyway, it's a perfectly fine read although I have to be brutally honest and say I don't rate the illustrations.

[Caitlin Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

this was cute but mostly kinda mid! Some of the stories were more interesting than others—Jolly Jocunda was a personal highlight—while others didn’t really have a specific Yorkshire twinkle to them, I felt (namely the stories that were just retellings of “the alchemist” and “beauty and the beast”). Ending on “The Silent Drummer Boy” was also shockingly depressing for child readers, I felt. I liked that some of the tales had recipes attached to them, though, and generally had fun reading some lore about where I’m living!

[Owen Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tuesday The Fourteenth Of August 2018

My Book Review

Yorkshire Folk Tales For Children

By Carmel Page

Reviewed By Snowy The Polar Bear


First Of All, I Really Enjoyed This Book. On The Back Of The Book It Gives An Age Recommendation For The Contents Inside [ Seven To Eleven Years ] And Even Though I Am Older Than The Range States, I Personally Still Really Enjoyed Reading This Book.

I Liked The Way, That The Author Took A Range Of Different Folk Tales, And Added Her Own Little Twists To Them, And How She Added Her Own Opinion In To The Text. She Took Some Of The Tales That I Had Heard Before, And Gave Them A Taste Of Her Imagination, Meaning That When I Was Sat Reading Them, I Had No Clue When It Came To Most Of Them, To What They Had Been Based Upon, Until It Was Revealed To Me At The End Of The Chapter.

I Thought That The Way The Author Retold The Selection Of Stories, Meant That I Was Able To Get Involved With Them And To Guess What Was To Come [ Even If Those Predictions Were Not Always Correct When It Came To It.

I Would Definitely Recommend This Book

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a weird one. There are twice short stories. None of them are exact re-tellings of folklore but all variations, which is fine, but I can't see any sense to it. Some are sanitised, like the drummer boy who instead of ending up as a ghost ended up sleeping with king Arthur in his cave. But others leave our even add alcohol and sexual innuendo. The holy monk, who is a nun here, still gets drunk a lot. There's a story where a man makes a bawdy joke about what a woman will be like in bed. I don't really agree with sanitising for kids but if you're going to do it, do it. At least one story was made up completely by the author. A lot of them just had weird and arbitrary changes. Like it tells the story of the cottingly fairies but makes it about a boy and a girl photographing giants. Like, that one's an actual true story, why fictionalise it? It adds nothing to the narrative.

The stories were basically competently told but I'd have preferred a book of actual Yorkshire folktales presented in an age appropriate way to whatever this is meant to be.

[Zilla Novikov · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful series of stories--as engaging for adults as for children (source: I am an adult and I was engaged). And now I know how to bake a parkin!