Sister Tricksters: Rollicking Tales of Clever Females retells folk stories of the American South which feature female tricksters. As noted in the insightful introduction, these trickster tales should not be confused with morality tales: the tricksters don’t get their comeuppance for their amoral behavior, and they certainly are not repentant. That’s not to say that they always end up better off (in “Mistah Fox and Molly Hare Go Fishing” Mistah Fox gets revenge on Miz Molly for her successful trick in “Mistah Fox’s Funeral”). There’s some similarities in some of the stories to the Mother West Wind tales by Thornton Waldo Burgess.
The hardback book is a good read-aloud – each story is fronted by a full-color plate depicting the primary characters, and its 8.5″ x 11″ size and large text facilitates reading the book at a distance that allows for little ones to lap sit. The language and vocabulary is readily understood. Given the text heavy pages, younger kids are not likely to read this book by themselves.