The Painted Wall and Other Strange Tales

by Michael Bedard (Adapter)

Honor Book for the Society of School Librarians International’s Best Book Award - Language Arts, Grades K-6 Novels

Selected as one of four recipients of the 2004 Aesop Accolade

Selected by the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association as one of the PSLA YA Top Forty Fiction Titles 2003


At about the time the Grimm Brothers were gathering their famous collection of folk stories and fairy tales in Europe, in China a similar collection of almost five hundred stories had just been compiled by the scholar Pu Sing-ling. Drawing on oral and written sources, he called his collection of the strange and wondrous Strange Tales from a Studio of Leisure .

The fruits of his life’s work become immensely popular with storytellers who performed the stories in teahouses, where rapt audiences would sit for half a day drinking tea and listening to tales of ghosts, fox fairies, and other wonders.

Almost unknown in the West, the stories are given new life in this important work by the masterful Michael Bedard.

Genres: Childrens, Short Stories, Magic

120 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 2003

About the author

Michael Bedard was born and raised in Toronto. His novels include Stained Glass, A Darker Magic, Painted Devil, and Redwork, which received the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year Award for Children. He has also written several acclaimed picture books, including The Clay Ladies, which received the Toronto IODE Book Award. His biography, William Blake: The Gates of Paradise and his picture book Emily attest to his interest in poets and poetry.

Reviews

[Amelia Holcomb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated that this book was a quick read and would recommend it to any elementary school kid, I guess.

[Alan Bach · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories do feel like the Brothers Grimm's tales, but that is not necessarily a good thing, with the stories being quite a mixed bag. Some are just a few pages and are basically this bizarre thing happened, The End.

[Hilary · Rating 2 out of 5]

The best thing to be said about this anthology of "strange" Asian stories is that the stories are brief and the volume is slim.

[Vanessa Dargain · Rating 4 out of 5]

SITTING DUCKS was a funny cartoon . This book is full of the supernatural . Nice collection of amusing but odd trickster tales . Liked "Planting a pear tree best " Three🌟 !