Fairy Tales: U is for Unique Uchida

For "U" I read four books by Yoshiko Uchida, a Japanese-American writer who created picture books of retold Japanese folktales as well as tales for Japanese-American children about seminal American events, from World War I to the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II.

I enjoyed the first three books I picked out--The Wise Old Woman, The Magic Purse, and The Two Foolish Cats--and later picked up another--Rokubei and the Thousand Rice Bowls--though none of them struck me as books I would collect for continual readings. As in manga and with illustrators like Trina Schart Hyman, the images match the text; they simply aren't my preferred type of illustration, being somewhat muted. The choice could have been deliberate--a desire to provide a wood-cut feel to match the settings and characters.

Of the four books, I found The Magic Purse the most captivating. The softer feel felt appropriate to the tale.

 

What impressed me most, however, was the text. Years ago, I examined written folktales for an English class. I concluded that the texts avoided lots of transitions and relied on FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) for conjunctions, primarily "but" and "and." In other words, the written fairy tales sounded like the spoken word. 

 

Uchida accomplishes such crisp and neat tellings and with relatively complex tales where characters go through multiple events. The writing relates and resolves conflicts with easy symmetry. 

 

An impressive storyteller!