This book is technically for children but I could not resist keeping it for myself – after all, it’s a collection of 52 folktales and legends from around the world!

Beautifully illustrated, A Year of Stories contains one story for every week of the year. At first, I wasn’t sure if it would truly be global since most “global” collections tend to focus on Greek and Roman mythology (or Western ones) but I was pleasantly surprised by this! I saw:

• Iraqi stories
• Korean stories
• Japanese stories
• Buddhist stories
• Christian stories
• Jewish stories
• West African stories
• French stories
• Chinese stories
• Mexican stories
• Indian stories

And more! I really had fun with all the stories; some were familiar but many were new to me. I really did think that the author tried to choose a well-rounded selection of stories. Some of the stories were rather obscure too; for example I’ve never heard of The Buried Moon (wiki link), and I’m not familiar with her version of why there’s a rabbit on the moon (I know the Chang Er variation better).

Most of the stories come with very cute illustrations as well! The illustrations are by Christopher Corr and they match well with the tone of the stories.

Overall, I thought this was a very charming collection of folktales from around the world. I did wish the authors put in the sources/original titles somewhere because I would have liked to look some of them up, but I think parents/readers looking for a well-rounded collection of folktales will enjoy this collection.