Tales of Tricksters

by Pleasant DeSpain

Nine short traditional and very entertaining folktales about tricksters, featuring selections from around the world.
Trickster is a marvelous, mischievous, and energetic character found in various disguises in folktales from all around the world. Tricksters do things that are both foolish and wise, often at the same time. Best of all, a trickster's adventures can inspire us to use our own cleverness to outsmart the bullies of the world while creating some fun along the way. The nine tricksters in this volume come from all points of the globe, Persia ("The Smuggler"), India ("The Alligator and the Jackal"), Poland ("The Court Jester"), and France ("Reynard and the Fisherman").

80 pages, Hardcover

First published January 25, 2001

About the author

Pleasant DeSpain is a world traveler, storyteller and author of 18 published books,and more than 350 stories. He's currently living in Northern Thailand as well as the USA, while working on a collection of stories from his 70 plus years of life and adventures. The goal of the new work is to share his practical as well as spiritual journey. Pleasant does not have answers or truths for others, but he has many good stories to tell!

His many collections of folk and fairy tales, legends and original tales, most of which are published by August House Publishers, Atlanta, Georgia, continue to be in circulation and used in schools throughout the United States and other countries. These stories endure and will always be relevant in our various cultures and societies.

Reviews

[Teddy Pridemore · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was funny because this man had a donkey and then this person told a strong man and they carefully put the man on top of him and then he said "since you read I got transformed into a donkey for being bad and then when you read me books I turned back " and then he found his real donkey at the market and then he said "you got turned into the donkey again, I'm going to have to read you twice as many books!"

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very short book, but very useful if you want to read a few trickster tales from different cultures. I had encountered other versions of some of these stories, but these were very interesting, and the author provided excellent notes in the back of this tiny book.
My only "complaint" was that it WAS a tiny book, with only nine stories. Unfortunately, this was just the format chosen for this series of small folktale books. Because of that, the price is a bit high for what you get, since you're paying for a fancy binding and not a lot of pages per book.

[Eden Silverfox · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about stories that involve tricksters. Like DeSpain's other books I've read, they are easy to read and remember so you can tell the stories to others.
However, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I did the others and I'm not sure why. I still liked the book, but not as much.

[Meg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A small collection of trickster tales from all over.