Review by Booklist Review
Are trolls dangerous? No doubt about it: they're huge, they're strong, and they sometimes have multiple heads. Fortunately, their brains are tiny. In fact, children who understand trolls can easily defeat them. In this handsome collection of tales, Norwegian American storyteller Lunge-Larsen offers seven stories in which a troll is thwarted by a child who exploits a classic troll weakness, such as their inability to tolerate loud noises (especially bells), their tendency to burst when angry, and the fact that sunlight turns them to stone. The defense-manual framework works well, and the individual tales are told with clarity, energy, and charm. In an appended section, Lunge-Larsen identifies her published sources, discusses how she sometimes reworked the originals (including a Japanese folktale) to suit her purposes, and speculates on how trolls may have migrated to North America. Vick's engaging watercolor illustrations depict children, trolls, gnomes, and dwarfs in northern landscapes. Given the ongoing demand for illustrated folktales, and the dwindling number of books published in recent years, here's an appealing choice for libraries.--Phelan, Carolyn Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Horn Book Review
Seven Scandinavian folktales for reading aloud or independent reading. Carefully describing her sources and her own adaptations, Lunge-Larsen shares the traditional stories as well as tongue-in-cheek tips about fooling trolls and finding their remains. The watercolor illustrations depict all kinds of ugly trolls--hairy, stony, and vegetation-covered--in contrast to the cherubic young people who outwit them. (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A fresh gathering of trollish tales and lore from a veteran storyteller and folklorist.As in Lunge-Larsen's The Troll with No Heart in His Body and Other Tales of Trolls from Norway, illustrated by Betsy Bowen (1999), the sources are Scandinavian and the trolls generally come out second best in each encounter. Each story highlights or incorporates a particular troll "weakness," such as distractibility (Nils, a red-capped gnome, makes a "Narrow Escape" from two hungry trolls by announcing that he's too dirty to eat and sending them off after soap) or vulnerability to sunlight ("The Boys Who Met Trolls in the Woods" steal the monsters' single eyeball and walk off with buckets of treasure after tossing the eye up to catch a sunbeam). The author freely incorporates original and folkloric elements into the tales, relating them in a simple, forthright way that makes them as easy to tell aloud as to read. She closes with a clever suggestion that the remains of trolls can be seen in many mountains and rocky islands, if looked at in just the right way. Craggy, mossy, blunt-featured hulks reminiscent of Arthur Rackham's confront much smaller, light-skinned young folk in Vick's watercolor-style illustrations, adding both drama and a "Golden Age" flavor to the proceedings. It's not hard to sympathize with the trollsonce one gets past their personal habits and dietary preferences, anyway. (source notes) (Folk tales. 8-11) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
