Thursday, September 25, 2008

Tales From Silver Lands

I'll have to say I had quite a fun time reading Tales From Silver Lands by Charles J. Finger. This book is a compilation of tales that the author has collected from his travels in many countries of Central and South America. I find it really intersting reading a large diversity of old tales coming from this part of the world.
These are the kind of stories that would be fun to sit around the campfire and listen to. The tales are really short. Most are only seven or eight pages. I personally liked to read one or two at a time. I did not like the idea of reading all of the short stories at once. I wanted to just read a couple at a time so I could think about them and enjoy them more. I did like some more than others, but all of them were pretty easy to follow.
The stories talk about many different topics but I noticed some themes in the book among which are: that good triumphs over evil, men do not know what is best for them most of the time, and to be hard working and not remain idle.
I think my favorite tale in this book is one called El Enano. This book has an interesting viewpoint on how certain animals came to be: like monkeys, seals, armadillos, and huanacos. I thought that the stories were really entertaining hearing about giants, wizards, witches, evil birds, giant cats, magic spells, animal transformations and so on..
I think that these stories could be read and enjoyed by most teenagers and pre- teenagers but some of them might be a little bit graphic for a young child.
In all I think it was fun to read and is a good choice when you only have a few spare minutes.

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