I learned about the Cautionary Fables & Fairytales series from a Facebook ad from Kickstarter. The current campaign is for their fifth volume, which is Native American stories. I looked up the first four books on Amazon and have ordered 3 of the 4. (I really want the 4th but it will have to wait until Friday.)
These graphic novels are anthologies containing a series of stories written and drawn by different people.
The first volume is tales from Africa. There are 15 stories over 203 pages, which is a good length for a $15 graphic novel. (Cheaper on Amazon.)
My issue with this one is that I read the Asian volume first and loved how it told where each story came from. The third volume of stories from Europe does the same. But the African volume doesn't and it's disappointing. The only story that obviously has a location is the one from Egyptian myth.
Still, the book is great. My favorites were "The Disobedient Daughter Who Married a Skull," "Snake and Frog Never Play Together," and "The Lion's Whisker."
I loved the art for the Egyptian myth, but they picked the one where Isis gains Ra's secret name by treachery, which has never been a favorite, because of all the gods, really only Seth is ever put in a negative light, while Isis in this story uses deceit to get what she wants and that's hardly ever talked about in a negative manner. Also, they gave Seth a snake's head and...a trident. Weird. But still, great book.
The second volume contains stories from Asia. I got this one last night so it was the one I read first and the other two pale in comparison. I think I would have felt the same had I read them in order.
This book has 21 stories in 283 pages. As I mentioned, they tell the stories' origin in the table of contents. There are 6 from Japan, 5 from China, 4 from India, and one each from Georgia, Laos, Myanmar, Turkey, Iraq, and Tibet.
The standouts are "The Lucky Teapot," "The Demon with the Matted Hair," "Frog Skin," and "Ghost Pepper." My overall favorite was "After the Rain," which is simply beautiful and drawn well. It's the story from Myanmar and I tried tracking down it's origin to read the original and came up blank. I need to try again.
All of the stories are wonderful in this one though. If you're interested in these, I highly suggest starting here.
The third volume was sadly a disappointment. There are only 9 stories in 206 pages and you know most of them. Since there are only 9, I'll discuss them individually.
"Jack and the Beanstalk" (England) was well done. The art is very cute.
"The Singing Bone" (Germany) was randomly about two rabbits and the art was not cute.
"Puss in Boots" (Italy) I enjoyed a lot. Great art, nice twist.
"Tatterhood" (Norway) was one of my two favorites.
"Rapunzel" (Germany) was okay, but turned into more of a tragedy than I've seen it done in other retellings.
"Kid Brother" (Russia) was pretty good. I'd never heard of it before and I liked the art.
"The Nixie of the Mill Pond" (Germany) was also pretty good.
"Bisclavret" (France) was my other favorite. Interesting werewolf story and I liked the art.
"Hamelin's Piper" (Germany) was done in art only, no words. Decent but not stellar.
This is easily the weakest of the three books and I hope the fourth and fifth volumes are more like the first two. I feel like they could have tried a lot harder to find less known tales. There are so many!
Overall though, I highly recommend these. They're pretty affordable on Amazon. All less than their $15 cover price and even that is affordable.
