Review: Tales From Beyond The Rainbow, collected and adapted by Pete Jordi Wood

Ten captivating stories of adventure and resilience celebrating LGBTQ+ characters, published as an illustrated collection of queer classics for the first time.

These are the fairy tales that history forgot – or concealed. Tales in which gender is fluid and where queer stories can have a happy ending.

My Review

Thanks to Bee at Kaleidoscopic Tours for organising this tour and to Puffin UK for sending me a copy of this book.

This little book is glorious! I really enjoyed the writing in these fairy tales; they’re a wonderful, positive interpretation of traditional stories that weren’t originally that positive about the characters who changed apparent sex or were in same-sex relationships. The relationships are often touchingly sweet and dedicated, beyond death in a couple of cases.

The ‘gender reveal’ in the originals is often a bad thing, resulting in a punishment, but in these, the gender reveal is a choice that the characters make and if someone else reveals the main characters’ ‘real gender’, then the person who does the ‘revealing’ is castigated rather than the main character.

The stories come from all over the world and have been sensitively re-written to keep the flavour of the originals and the cultures they come from while being accessible to young readers. This book is technically for children but I think adults will enjoy them too. I like fairy tales and mythology, so I really enjoyed the ‘Researching the Tales’ chapter at the back, and details on each of the stories.

The illustrations are amazing! I found them detailed and rich. The cover has a lot of little images from the stories that are fun to find when the stories are read. It’s so colourful and cheery.

So, in summary, a lovely little book, highly recommended.