Customer Reviews

Mongolian Folktales

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The folktales themselves are interesting enough, but this book's outstanding merit is its illustrations, which, indeed, furnished the inspiration for it. The illustrator, Norovsambuugin Baatartsog, does his work not with brush and ink, but by cutting silhouettes out of black paper, freehand. They're intricate, and, aside from it being quite astonishing that anyone could do such work with scissors and no guiding drawing, they'd be striking in any medium.

The Artwork done for the stories is grand. The feel of the book paper is great. The stories told are folk tales, but the way it is put together with the pictures is just glorious.

While the plot lines are sufficiently simplistic to hearken from any Neolithic culture, it is the artwork that distinguishes this book. One can scarcely believe that those breathtaking silhouettes were crafted solely with a scissors! Buy this book, glance briefly at the trivial tales, and exult on the stupendous pictures with their uniquely Mongolian outlook on the natural world.

Although it is a nice idea to collect stories from all sorts of different people--variety makes the world go 'round--I find it disturbing that the author of this book insists on calling these unique and varied individuals "Mongolians"! What, are we still living in the 1950's? Haven't we gotten past all those old hurtful words?

I hope that the author of this book realises how outdated and mean her words are and changes the name of this book to "Special Person Folktales".