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Food Folklore and Children’s Books

Recently, I have been reading more children’s books and one trend I have noticed is the rise in books about food! Now, this may be because as a Canadian immigrant (and something most immigrants can attest to) food has always been a constant source of embarrassment, history and comfort. I know it’s hard to believe nowadays because food is no longer such a big deal and multiculturalism (at least when it comes to food in some places) is ‘cool.’ The number of fusion restaurants opening at any given time or trending recipes circulating social media can attest to it. However,…
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The Poor Prince: An Afghan Tale

Greetings, Travellers! Today, I want to share a story from Afghanistan with you! The story of the “Poor Prince” itself was retold by Adel Mahria with a translation from Dari by Sabzikar which can be found in Kabul’s former Ministry of Information and Culture bimonthly publication on folktales Volume 2, no. 2-3, published in 1974. It has been further retold by Afghan-Canadian Alaheh Amini. I discovered this tale while researching variants of the Polish Glass Mountain story we did a few episodes back. There are several clear links between this story and the Princess on the Glass Hill folklore type,…
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The Story Bag: Korean Folklore

The Story Bag. In the spirit of the Lunar New Year, our story will be from Korea! Lunar New Year has many different names and countries like China, Korea, Vietnam, and Malaysia all celebrated January 22nd, 2023! We do cover the story of the Moon Goddess from the Mid-Autumn festival so if you want more festive stories then do check out that story here. This tale comes from So-un Kim’s “The Story Bag; a collection of Korean folk tales.” He was a prominent storyteller and essayist who wrote many books detailing Korean folktales and fairy tales! His politics, however, were…

