Joan Bodger (1923–2002)

Bodger, co-founder of the Storytellers School of Toronto, and illustrator Lang knit together a tale of family love and responsibility with a number of traditional folk and fairytales such as Snow White and Rose Red, The Tiger’s Whisker, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Bodger uses the above tales to tell the story, as well as the story’s characters to tell the above tales. After the husband and father (Bernardo) leaves for war, Sylvania and her daughters work as forest gleaners to support themselves. But when Bernardo returns home angry and changed, Sylvania seeks the aid of the Green Knight of forest. Bodger reunites the forest family using the archetypal themes in a number of folk and fairytales, but without the book’s “Appendix” to describe each tale used in the story, readers less familiar with these tales may miss the rich narrative history that both Bodger and Lang use in The Forest Family. The book is recommended for children age eight to eleven.… (meer)