posted on 21 Nov 2022

A trilogy of books in ‘The Story Collector’ series from Jane Ray

We are already self-confessed fans of the work of Jane Ray and you’ll find an appreciation of her work elsewhere on our site by clicking on this link. She’s also subjected herself to one of our author interviews that gives a further insight, in her own words, into her thinking about her art and her books (you can access that by clicking on this link). So, it was exciting to discover that three of her fabulous story collections have been reprinted and rereleased by Boxer Books in superbly designed card-covers.

The author/illustrator is a collector of stories – a fact she reveals at the beginning of her introduction to The Emperor’s Nightingale and Other Feathery Tales, the first volume in the trilogy we are reviewing here:

“People collect all sorts of things – stamps, cards or bus tickets, coins, shells or toy cars. Some people collect useful things like pieces of string and empty jam jars and buttons.

I collect stories.”

Originally publish in hardback in 2013, Ray has sourced stories from across the world, retells them and has added her own distinctive brand of illustration. The theme of this book is, as the title suggests, birds in all their different guises and in this volume you’ll find plenty of stories that you may be familiar with because they are classics – Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince, for example – and others that will be much less familiar but no less special. You will be aware of the work of the Brothers Grimm but have you come across the story of Jorinda and Joringel before? As Jane Ray says in her brief preamble to the story:

“I love the dark atmosphere of this story. I can imagine the forest, a place of beauty but also of fear, and the poor trapped birds, fluttering in their cages and longing for freedom.”

You’ll also find stories here by Hans Christian Andersen, Edward Lear and an unattributed Kenyan myth called Mulungu Paints the Birds.

The second volume published originally in 2014, The Little Mermaid and Other Fishy Tales turns our attention from things of the air to those of the sea.

“People are always drawn to the sea and I am no exception. I love it in all its moods and seasons. It’s full of mystery and danger – and full of life, both real and imagined.”

There’s something for everyone in this collection from the poetic nonsense of Lewis Carroll’s Lobster Quadrille to the beautiful Japanese story of transformation, time travel and turtles, The Kingdom Under the Sea.

If you like a good sea monster to send a shiver down your spine, check out The Kraken, Tennyson’s poetical recreation of the famous demon of the deep.

Finally, we have the 2015 collection entitled The Lion and the Unicorn and Other Hairy Tales – and as you might have guessed we’re dealing now with land mammals - real and imagined. 

In her introduction, Ray tells us:

“This time I have ventured into the forests and jungles, mountains and woods, to find stories about animals of all kinds – growling, snorting, spotted and striped, hairy and scaly, with teeth and claws.”

The three books are a delightful, sensory pleasure – great stories, wonderful illustration and books that have been produced to be loved and handled.

Great stuff.

You can order the books from your local independent bookshop – if they don’t have copies in stock – and you’d expect to pay £16.99 for each volume. 

 

Terry Potter

November 2022