THREE-MINUTE TALES

A veteran tale-spinner offers about 80 retold traditional tales, with an occasional original slipped in, designed to fill the bill when times or attention spans are short. As in most of her umpteen other themed collections, MacDonald draws from a world-spanning array of cultures, Aesop to contemporary camp lore, recasts each selection with frequent line breaks to indicate pauses, and closes with very careful notes on sources, tale types, and variants. Here, she even indicates telling times, though rightly cautioning readers and tellers to take them with a grain of salt. Arranged in digestible sections—“Riddle Tales,” “Tales to Tell on a Museum Tour,” “Very Tiny Tales! Under 30 Seconds!”—this gathering of easy-to-learn stories supplies full measures of chuckles and grins, tears, chills, wisdom, and entertainment. (bibliography, suggestions for beginning storytellers) (Folktales. 7-10, adult)