Tale
Cuentos viejos
Not translated into English
María Leal de Noguera · 1923
Synopsis
Wondrous tales and animal stories, told in the peasant speech of Guanacaste. A little rabbit helps a poor boy in a tale in which the king's daughter appears; elsewhere there pass a prince with golden hair, a foolish prince, a frog princess, and a hairy hand that recalls the fable of Eros and Psyche. Uncle Rabbit has his own cycle: he shuts the boa in a sack, tricks the tigress and the fox, and sits as a justice of the peace before the Cadejos, a monster of the country's legends.
Context
The volume appeared in 1923 under the imprint of the Convivio de los Niños and contains fourteen tales. The author says she collected them from the mouths of peasants, and critics also note stories from the universal tradition, from the Bible to the Thousand and One Nights according to Carlos Rubio. The second edition, in 1938, opens with a preface by Joaquín García Monge, the publisher of the first, and with engravings by Francisco Amighetti; later ones are enriched with new tales. The tenth appeared in 2024 from Editorial Costa Rica and the University of Costa Rica press.
Who it is for
Short tales in Spanish, sprinkled with regional words; fourteen in the first edition, more in later ones. No French edition.
Prizes and reception
Regarded, together with the collection Carmen Lyra published in 1920, as one of the two founding books of the country's children's literature.
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The pages consulted to check this page.