WINTER TALES FROM POLAND

by Maia Wojciechowska ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 5, 1972

There is no overall tone or mood to unify the ten brief folk tales included here, and it's hard to know what to make of the unfolksy opener, with its pointed putdown of people who are greedy or who distrust what is different, about a Polish poet-angel with clipped wings. In the same moral vein is ""The Freak,"" about a ""baby"" who is born as an old man into an unheeding village that is soon destroyed by war -- but there are also conventional fairy tales featuring riddles and tests of love, a stepmother who appears as a mare and a prince in disguise who marries the princess. The flimsiest tale concerns an incompetent witch who falls in love; the one about a tailor so skinny he can only eat spaghetti is both funnier and more fully treated in Haviland's Favorite Fairy Tales Told In Poland (1964). Peripheral.

Pub Date: Jan. 5, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION