Greatest Magical Stories

Magic is an important ingredient in fairy tales, folk tales, and children’s stories of all kinds. Michael Morpurgo, prolific writer of children’s books, invited several other writers to contribute retellings of magical fairy tales and folk tales to this collection. Each is illustrated by a different illustrator with a distinctive style. The dozen stories include some tried and true standards such as “Cinderella,” “The Pied Piper,” and “Jack and the Beanstalk,” but also some not as commonly told tales, such as “Twelve Dancing Princesses,” “East of the Sun, West of the Moon,” and “Yoshi the Stonecutter.” All have the common theme of magic, and each is beautifully written, though with as many styles as there are writers (eleven — only writer Pippa Goodhart has two stories in the collection). Each story has a short introduction followed by a title page and several beautifully illustrated pages with the story. Each could nearly be a picture book on its own. This is a delightful collection of stories that will satisfy the most demanding of young fans of good, old-fashioned stories as well as those who read to them.