I never thought I would spend the first day of November processing my grandfather’s passing. Despite a month of planning for NaNoWriMo, I immediately got behind by spending days traveling for a funeral instead of daydreaming behind a computer. So, in honor of both Grandaddy and NaNoWriMo, I thought I’d review a beautifully illustrated book rooted in Scotland. Let’s look at An Illustrated Treasury of Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales by Theresa Breslin and illustrated by Kate Leiper.
An Illustrated Treasury…
Grandaddy loved art. He painted, pieced together stained glass, and built wooden furniture. Similarly, An Illustrated Treasury of Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales unites beauty and reality. Kate Leiper turns magic and imagination into horses and flowers. Each story contains illustrations that evoke a specific mood. Further, Leiper uses slightly different color palettes to separate each story from the last one.
While the illustrations weren’t religious, they captured the beauty of God’s creation. Joy and melancholy sit side by side on the page just as in life. Even in stories of brokenness and pain, hope shimmers in the background.
Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales
Technically, though the stories in the Treasury are fictitious, the book lives on the Juvenile Nonfiction shelf. There may be dragons, water kelpies, and talking bannocks, but they all hold a core of truth. Otherwise, no one would have repeated the stories! This history of storytelling proves that even if a seal didn’t slip off its coat and turn human, it shows how a vast group of people viewed the world. For the Scottish, magic and reality lived together on the moors and borders.
What if we Christians believed that God’s miracles still floated in the world around us? To me, these Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales give us a glimpse of what that reality might be. Sure, we may not need to carry iron bridles around with us in case we stumble upon a kelpie. Yet, our prayers and our hope in God’s power might just turn this world into a brighter, more loving place.