Not One Damsel in Distress: Heroic Girls from World Folklore by Jane Yolen - OPTIONAL

Not One Damsel in Distress: Heroic Girls from World Folklore by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Susan Guevara, 116 pages.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.  $16.  

Content: Language: G; Mature Content: PG; Violence: PG-13.  

BUYING ADVISORY: MS – OPTIONAL  

AUDIENCE APPEAL: LOW  

This book contains fifteen different stories from around the world that feature strong girls who save themselves, their family or innocent others.  Some of the stories have quests, others are how the girls outsmarted the bad guy.  Each is illustrated with a black and white drawing.  

I wanted to love this book-how can you go wrong with Jane Yolen retelling folklore, but it seemed to be missing something-it felt rushed or as though she was trying to fit too much into each story.  The illustrations were bland and could have added so much more to the story.  Also, the violence is disturbing, making what could have been a book for elementary age kids, a middle school read and I’m not sure you will get a middle school kid to pick this book up.  The violence includes murdered and decapitated girls and cannibalism. The mature content is Mizilica flashes the sultan to prove that she is a girl.  

C. Peterson