Tales of the Seal People: Scottish Folk Tales
A collection of 14 selkie (half-seal half-human creatures) tales from the Orkney and Shetland islands off the northern tip of Scotland.\ \ A collection of Scottish folk tales featuring silkies, the seal people who can take human shape.\
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A collection of 14 selkie (half-seal half-human creatures) tales from the Orkney and Shetland islands off the northern tip of Scotland. Storytelling Festival ...the greatest living English-speaking storyteller.
\ Storytelling Festival...the greatest living English-speaking storyteller.\ \ \ \ \ School Library JournalGr 4 Up-- A collection of 14 selkie tales from the Orkney and Shetland islands off the northern tip of Scotland. Five previously appeared in Williamson's Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children (Harmony, 1985; o.p.), but this new volume has bare-bones retellings that state the plot lines with scant attention to characterization or atmosphere. A brief introduction and short prefaces tell how the veteran storyteller came across the tales, and sometimes offer details about their sources and the people who passed them along to him. A glossary helps with the dialect, although the tales do not depend heavily upon it. Illustrations decorate the start of each story; they are dark, almost silhouettelike in appearance. The big advantage to this book is that it collects, in one volume, stories that would otherwise require researching many indexes to locate. Also, there is a current curiosity about seal people; recently such writers as Mordicai Gerstein ( The Seal Mother , Dial, 1986), Susan Cooper ( The Selkie Girl , McElderry, 1986), and Sylvia Peck ( Seal Child , Morrow, 1989) have used the motif. Large collections may want this as a source of more material for interested students, teachers, and storytellers. --Kay McPherson, Central Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, GA\ \
