Not one damsel in distress.

Yolen, J. (2000). Not one damsel in distress. San Diego, CA: Silver Whistle, Harcourt, Inc.

Jane Yolen has retold 14 stories from around the world, each involving tales of young women heroes from the Greek, Nigerian, German, Argentine, Chinese, Native American Sioux, Appalachian, Scottish, Polish Jew, Romanian, Japanese, French, and English cultures. Appropriate for intermediate readers and middle schoolers, this is a wonderful book, especially for girls, who might be interested in more complex cultural stories. 

In the introduction, Yolen described how when she played with her brothers, she was always Robin Hood because Maid Marian wasn’t a good shot. She didn’t know that maidens and princesses (girls!) could be heroes too. I love that her introduction is written for children—to her daughters and granddaughters. That was what most moved me about the book; I loved princess themed books as a child, but the ending for the female characters was always a bit of an anticlimax: swoon and your role is finished. It would have been much more fun to play Atalanta shooting the boar or winning footraces. 

Yolen creates a sense of place with each story, listing tiger fish, acacia and doom palm to set the scene for Nigeria, wonderful dialect for the Wild West folktale, fascinating vocabulary for the Sioux. Each retold tale does have a bit of a moral in it, such as pleasing the gods in the Greek tale, or staying true to oneself. And there are many aphorisms, each culturally based, such as “He who boasts much can do little” in the fairy tale of Nana Miriam. Some of the tales are very bloodthirsty, such as the Fitcher’s Bird German story, where a magician keeps cut up women in an old tub. Many have some element of magic in them, but lack the typical “saved by the handsome prince” element that makes so many fairy tales about women deeply tedious and misogynistic. These are stories of cleverness and valor, where women rescue, not only themselves, but their sisters, fathers, towns and villages.

Guevera added one black and white illustration per story, which adds some lovely cultural additions to the stories, such as costumes suited to each character’s native country. Her best illustrations are her action images, with Li Chi slaying a dragon or Nana Miriam tossing the hippopotamus. Frankly, her more static images fall somewhat flat, particularly when they are to compliment stories chosen for feminine adventure and action. For example, the drawing of Burd Janet standing on a step looking pensive is far less dynamic than Molly Whuppie stealing the giant’s sword and running across a tightrope made of a single hair.