Stories that Built Our World by Sarah Walden

Stories That Built Our World

When I was young – admittedly a reasonably long time ago now – my grandparents bought me a collection of fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm from Reader’s Digest. Bound in red leather, with gold foil titles, this was the most grown-up book I owned and the content transported me to magical worlds where mermaids walked on land, and witches fattened up young boys for their oven.

My grandparents followed up with Scheherazade’s 1001 Arabian Nights, Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, Aesop’s Fables and a collection of Greak and Roman myths! All beautifully bound in leather – I think my parents still have them on their bookshelves in my childhood home.

These were the tales I read as a child, that formed my cultural awareness. I knew the origin of the word ‘Open Sesame’ from Ali Baba, I understood the plot of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and that Icarus flew too close to the sun. All that reading of traditional tales and folklore stood me in good stead at school and university – and has a large amount to do with my career choices and what I do now.

Young readers of today don’t necessarily have easy access to this wealth of folklore, traditional tales and culturally significant stories. They may well know many fairy tales courtesy of Disney, but the Little Match Girl or Twelve Dancing Princesses or the Princess and the Pea perhaps not.

Realising that, and having had a dispiriting conversation with a young editor who hadn’t heard of Ali Baba, I decided that I wanted to produce a collection of retold stories from around the world for young readers now that provide the same foundation I had. Of course we included tales from the books of my childhood, but we also ranged freely across the globe to ensure key stories and myths from India, China, North America and Africa were also represented.

The writer, Caroline Rowlands, and I wanted each tale to fit on a single spread – and there are 52 tales in the collection – one for every week of the year. Alette Straathof, our illustrator, worked in watercolours to produce the most stunning illustrations for the tales. We have also included information about each of the tales at the back of the book and a map of where they come from.

We then ran a survey to see if my supposition was true – that children today and some of their teachers (younger rather than older) no longer know these core stories and tales. And interestingly, this is what we found…

Over half the primary teachers who responded recognised less than 8 of the 16 stories in the survey and had read even fewer. They went on to say that over 76% of the children they taught would know 3 stories or less, with 11% not knowing any of them. The younger the teacher the lower the recognition was too. Hopefully Stories That Built Our World will be a really useful resource in primary schools around the country – an easy way to teach children about the tales that inform our culture, language and understanding of other people.

I’m really proud of this book – I think the stories are fabulous and the illustrations beautiful and if knowing these myths, legends and tales encourages more children to read, explore and understand other people’s cultures, I will be extremely happy. Plus, we need some children to grow up to be publishers of the future!