Folktales are fair game for retellers since they represent the anonymous collective wisdom of the folk – the common people. As descendants of the oral tradition, they beg to be told and told and told again. For modern retellers who solidify their changes in print, there are additional advantages since the stories and illustrations are in the public domain: no permissions need be asked for, no royalties paid, except to the new reteller. Single illustrated retold folktales are produced in the hundreds each year, many of them adding to a feast of illustration rather than notable storytelling. Stretch, Swallow & Stare is part of this genre.

Czech-born author/illustrator Veronika Martenova Charles (Necklace of Stars and The Crane Girl) has taken a well-known fairy tale from her homeland and given it a twist by recasting its trio of male characters as females. In the original version (available in at least two English translations I found: Longshanks, Girth, and Keen and Tall, Wide, and Sharp-Eye), three male friends offer their magical abilities to help a prince free his bride from an evil wizard.

In Charles’s version, Stretch is very tall and can stretch her body even further. The illustrations show that she is also black and the villagers suspect that she is involved in the disappearance of their children. Swallow’s enormously fat body can expand like a balloon and she is first shown winning an eating contest; the villagers initially applaud but later scorn her. Stare has eyes so strong that they burn through anything she looks at, and people are afraid of her. The three are misfits in society. Added to the plot is a little boy looking for his sister, who has disappeared and takes on the role of the entranced princess bride in the original. The three women meet and decide to help the boy find his sister and the missing children. Then the plot unfolds very much like the original, except that in Charles’s version the wizard is defeated in one episode rather than the magical three tries – an abridgement probably stemming from the fact that large illustrations on each spread leave limited space for text. Unfortunately, the illustrations are not particularly noteworthy with the exception of the beautiful image of long-legged Stretch racing along with her two companions on her shoulders, an image that appears on the book’s cover.

Some retellers extend the basic outline of the plot as Walter de la Mare did in his collection Told Again and Arthur Ransome did with The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship. In such cases the use and rhythm of language is all-important. The most startling retellers are the revisionists who stand the tale on its head, as Eugene Trivizas did in The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig.

But Stretch, Swallow & Stare is hard to get a handle on – it’s neither a traditional folktale newly illustrated, nor an expansion. It’s largely a revisionist tale, but it’s so specific in its details that the folk quality is lacking. Charles is a moralist using the structure of the fable to send a message about being different: we fear and distrust those who are not like ourselves. It’s a worthwhile message and one fairly common in children’s literature, but here the story raises more questions than it answers. What did these women do to arouse such enmity? Why is there just one black woman in the village? And it was certainly a tasteless mistake to show Swallow in the jarring illustration of the eating contest.

In general, folktales are very moral indeed: wisdom is contrasted with foolishness, generosity with selfishness, truth with falsehood. But in being so specific and overt about her message, Charles has somehow destroyed the magic of the folktale. Her language also lacks sparkle, rhythm, and repetition. It’s not a good version for reading aloud.

It’s interesting to speculate how long a retold folktale will last in our collective unconscious. My own estimation is not very long. Many are humorous, some are cute, some are great for telling aloud. I think that retellings should show both the stamina and the depth of the original folktale. But one must go either gently or boldly with them. There is no in-between that works satisfactorily. For gentleness, try Walter de la Mare; for boldness, Angela Carter’s probings of the sexuality, horror, and psychology of these old stories in The Bloody Chamber and Other Adult Tales. After all, the original folktales were never told only for children. Let retellers beware.