Whatever happened to fairy tale collections? The 398.2 section of the library used to be crowded with fat dense books with titles like Fairy Tales Told in Spain and Grandfather Tales. Then picture book versions of fairy tales took over, and now the books in this section are mostly so skinny that the call numbers won’t fit on the spines. The downside to this situation is that it limits the audience of folklore to preschoolers and limits the material published largely to familiar nursery tales. I haven’t seen a recent picture book version of the gritty English folktale “Mr. Fox,” for example. It must be that the image of a bloody hand flying through the air puts off illustrators.

The tide might be turning, however. Jan Andrews’ recent collection, Out of the Everywhere, was a hopeful sign. The concept of the folktale collection does have to be remastered for today’s readers, of course. Dense is nobody’s idea of box office. In Song of the Sea, Ann Spencer uses the idea of a theme anthology, combining folk tales and folklore into an attractive, approachable, dippable collection for the middle grade reader.

The sea and stories. What is it about water and narrative? Why are we held in thrall by the ancient mariner rather than, say, the ancient tailor or even the ancient orthodontist? In this sea lore anthology, Ann Spencer provides bracing evidence of the richness and variety of stories that appear on the edge of a breaking wave.

The material in Song of the Sea is of three sorts. First are pick-and-mix grab bags of history and folklore – superstitions about sea witches, sailors’ expressions, mermaid lore, charms to raise or calm the winds, information about female pirates. In these sections Spencer reveals a collector’s delight in discovering good stuff. In “Lucky and Unlucky,” she tells us that mentioning the word “pig” on shipboard was bad luck. Instead of “pig” sailors spoke of “Mr. Dennis.” In “Salty Dog Talk,” she alerts us to the versatile expression “Hurrah’s nest” (meaning complete confusion) and the useful insult “in everybody’s mess and nobody’s watch” (a busybody). What did pirates steal when they raided a ship, you wonder? Gold and precious stones? Not always. Sometimes pickings were pretty slim. One raid in 1717 netted the rogues needles, twine, and a frying pan. The American poet David McCord once said that when reading information books, he wanted to sense that behind every fact he read lurked 10 others unsaid. Spencer creates this feeling of enthusiasm and plenty. We feel we’re getting the cream.

The stories in this anthology are presented in two distinct voices. Some are storytellers’ raw material. Arthur Grimble’s account of an attack by a giant octopus, the legend of the Kraken, and ancient Chinese “Dragon Kings of the Sea” – these are told in plain, economical, efficient prose. One well-chosen detail (the dragons eat pearls and opals) evokes an entire world. These are skeletons that we flesh out in our own imaginations.

In other tales Spencer pulls out all the fiction writer’s stops – description, detailed settings, dialogue, complex characterization, metaphor. Her retelling of “The Flying Dutchman” is wonderful blood and thunder. Here is the Dutchman’s curse: “From this moment on you shall ever be on watch. Should your eyes droop or try to close for sleep, the pain of a piercing sword and a thousand grains of sand shall make them open to keep vigil on the stormy sea.” In the Chinese story of Tien-Hou we feel the pain of a young girl being transformed into a goddess against her will. In “The Maiden of Deception Pass” we feel the grotesque joy of the maiden’s transformation into a sea creature as barnacles gradually cover her face, seagrass grows in her raven hair and she looks out to sea, her real element, with longing and “sand-encrusted eyes.” In “Jonah and the Whale,” we touch, hear, and, above all, smell with Jonah in the whale’s dark belly.

Spencer is a graceful, rhythmical writer. She knows how to convey essential information without explaining and she knows when context is enough. “Poseidon rode over the waves in a chariot of blue and gold, like sea and sun, drawn by his one hundred shining white surf stallions. Always at his side were dolphins, hippocampi, and all manner of sea creatures.”

This collection includes a wide variety of story forms and voices, from poetry to tall tale, legend to oral history, myth to song. There is also a nicely orchestrated variety of tone. The Flying Dutchman is mock-heroic, the story of Blackbeard is gory, the mermaid stories are poignant. The Greek myth material is particularly fresh, with Circe acting like some sulky, disaffected teenager. The lyricism of Sadko, who played music for the Tsar of the sea, the toughness of the Inuit legend of Sedna, the roustabout humour of magic gone out of control in “Why the Sea is Salt,” the gradually accumulating horror of “The Ballad of Captain Kidd” – there are enough stories here for all tastes and many an hour of stormy or becalmed seas.