Star Stories

April 8, 2019
The magic in these stories shines through despite a stolid narrative style and editorial selections skewed toward well-known Greek tales, including standard retellings of the myths of Andromeda, Heracles, and Pegasus. Beyond those, readers will encounter an Anishinaabe tale of a bold fisher who broadens a hole in the sky to let summer into a world of perpetual winter, a Navajo telling of a trickster coyote who scattered stars across the sky, Incan llamas seeking celestial high ground, and a Tongan myth of a girl and her parents who, in seeking a lost pet shark, are turned into the three stars in the belt of Orion. The stars sprinkled across the pages and Wilx’s detailed folkloric illustrations are accented with dull gold, adding some extra sidereal luster. Ages 7–12.

May 1, 2019
A collection of international stories about the stars, retold by veteran children's author Ganeri. In this unusual compendium, Ganeri gathers traditional stories about the cosmos from across six continents. Unlike other star-lore collections that focus solely on ancient Greek folklore and nomenclature, Ganeri features tales from Inuit, Incan, Maori, Sumerian, and other societies, occasionally highlighting the names of constellations as they are known from that culture's perspective. Each story is introduced by a brief contextualizing paragraph and is accompanied by illustrations from multidisciplinary artist Wilx, whose work employs bold outlines and rich colors. Laudable in its scope, the collection reminds young readers that the stars were not only observed from a Western vantage--for example, the three stars that ancient Greeks saw as Orion's Belt are known to Tongans as "Alotulu, 'three in a boat, ' " and Orion himself was known as Osiris to ancient Egyptians. However, Ganeri's narrative style fails to captivate over the 23 tales, and there are no appendices on further reading and reference materials. Many Indigenous oral traditions place high significance on the storyteller's sources and ability to contextualize tales; these aspects are notably absent. Like a meteor shower on an overcast night, this book's dazzling premise is ultimately obscured by a few fatal flaws. (Folktales. 6-11)

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