As psychologist Bruno Bettelheim noted in The Uses of Enchantment, folk tales are important to the psychological well-being of children. Jungians have long shared similar views, so it is not surprising to find that Josephine Evetts-Secker, the anthologist of this collection and its predecessor, Mother and Daughter Tales, is a practising Jungian analyst. Six of these 10 tales are European, including Beauty and the Beast, The Frog Prince, and more obscure tales such as Cap O’Rushes (which provided Shakespeare’s King Lear with the theme of the loving but undemonstrative daughter). Four other stories come from Africa, India, North American Muskogee lore, and Arab tradition.

Evetts-Secker stresses the daughter’s drive towards adulthood in these tales. Thus, in The Frog Prince, the spell is broken by throwing the frog against the wall – the princess’s first truly independent action. (For those upset by violence in folktales, it could have been worse: the frog is sometimes beheaded.) In virtually every tale, the young woman moves away from her father, or father figure, to adulthood, albeit with a husband. The exception is the North American tale, The Girl Who Helped Thunder, in which a girl saves her village from enemy raiders and apparently marries no one. Helen Cann’s full-colour illustrations help to situate each tale within its original culture.

The writing is pedestrian at times. When Scheherazade is sent to the Shah and almost certain death, for example, she is “very alarmed.” Perhaps more importantly, Evetts-Secker does not indicate the sources of her tales or how she altered them in retelling. Variants of well-known tales can be easily discovered, but more obscure stories are difficult to trace. From the time they leave the mouths of their tellers until they appear in print, much is added to folk tales, and much is removed. Given the importance of familial relations to this work, it is odd that the stories themselves are presented as orphans. Notes on sources would have made it easier to fully explore the significance of father/daughter relationships in these tales.