“For a really nice idea wonderfully fulfilled, Yolen retells very familiar tales in versions lively, brief and energetic: Little Red Riding Hood, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella and a number of others. And every cook knows that a recipe changes according to the time of day, the weather, the altitude, the number of grains in the level teaspoonful, the ingredients found (or not found) in the cupboard or refrigerator, even the cook's own feelings about the look of the batter. A storyteller never tells the same story twice, because every audience needs a slightly different story, depending upon the season or the time of day, the restlessness of the youngest listener, or how appropriate a tale is to what has just happened in the storyteller's world. Jack's milk cow traded for beans, Snow White given a poisoned apple, a pancake running away from those who would eat it, Hansel and Gretel lured by the gingerbread house and its candy windows and doors.īut there is something more- stories and recipes are both changeable. So it is not unusual that folk stories are often about food. About the creation of the stories and the history of the foods they share fun facts and anecdotes designed to encourage future cooks and storytellers to make up their own versions of the classics.įrom the earliest days of stories, when hunters told of their exploits around the campfire while gnawing on a leg of beast, to the era of kings in castles listening to the storyteller at the royal dinner feast, to the time of TV dinners when whole families sit for dinner in front of a screen to watch a movie, stories and eating have been close companions. In it, Caldecott-winning author Jane Yolen and her daughter, Heidi Stemple, imagine their readers as co-conspirators. Fairy Tale Feasts is more than collection of stories and recipes.

Rounds about Rounds by Jane Yolen