Nordic Tales - Review

Genre: Folktales, Short Stories

Format: Hardback

Pages: 157

I need to start out by saying thank you to Chronicle Books for giving me a copy of this book to review. What follows it my honest review of Nordic Tales.

First off we have to talk about how gorgeous this book is. The front cover is even textured, the title and border are raised off the cover. It comes with a ribbon bookmark which both me, and the cats, love, but totally different reasons. Each new story had an illustrated page that was beautifully done. This isn't a book I'll keep on my personal shelves, instead I need to find a way to show it off in the main part of my home. Even the inside cover has a cute little design of long boats, dragons, and whatnot. It's all around adorable

The stories themselves are really good. Like in most books that have a collection of short stories, I found I liked some more than others. There are three sections inside Nordic Tales: Transformation, Wit, and Journeys, and each story is set around those three things. My favorite tale was in Transformation with little mouse and the horse. I also really liked that there weren't any princesses in tower. Yeah, there were girls who were tricked and in trouble, but the found their way out, not waiting for some prince to ride up. They solved their issues. Which is different from most of Western folktales and fairy tales.

I also really liked that before each story there was a little heading to let you know where the story originated from. Something that wasn't really necessary to enjoy each story, but was fun to know as you went along since these stories were collected from several different countries.

A few places the translation was little rough and I had to go back and re-read to make sure I read what I thought I read. Which might have been more a of me problem and than anything else but it didn't really pull away from any of the stories themselves. 

Personally, I think Nordic Tales is the perfect bedtime book. I could see myself reading this to my little brother before bed many moons ago if I'd had it. Between the sword fights and talking animals it's easy to hide the lesson to be learned with each stories. It's honestly I actually read the book myself.  A couple of stories each night to unwind from everything. They are a lot of fun and not something I normally pick up to read.

In fact I think I only had one real issue with the book. The font so small. The book itself is pretty hefty as a hardback due it's shape. So with the font so small it made it hard for me to settle the book where I could read the stories without going cross-eyed. Which could account for why I only read a couple of stories at a time. 

End of the day I'm really glad Chronicle Books gave me a chance to read this book, it was super cute.

Buy, Borrow, or Skip: If you have kids I say buy it. It's a fun book to curl up and read together. If you don't have kids, buy it. Because it's a fun book to curl up and read.

HAPPY READING!!