My artist friend Inese Jansons died in February. I finally framed the piece of art she sent me a couple of years ago, and as a group of friends remembered her, I thought to look up the books she had illustrated. This is one that came up and that was available used through Amazon. Ineses illustrations are delightful, as usual, and since she is illustrating Baltic tales, all the characters are wearing ethnic clothes and feet shod in pastalas, kind of like moccasins, but laced up the leg like a ballet slipper. The main animal characters are also dressed this way. The book is from the 70's, so early in her career. She was so talented, I wish she had done more.
I have read a lot of folk tales in my day, and as a child, plowed through the 15 volumes of collected Latvian folk tales. These twelve tales felt familiar, but none of them was exactly like any Latvian tale I remember reading. There were tales of the sea, of justice, of fairies. One of my favorites was Six Hard-Boiled Eggs - about a man who hadn't paid for his hard-boiled eggs at an inn, and the innkeeper never forgot that debt. When years later the man returns to repay the innkeeper, the innkeeper declares he owes a thousand coins, for if those eggs had hatched, he would have many more hens and eggs to sell. On his way to court, the man meets a farmer, who promises to help him. The farmer rushes in late to the court, says he was planting peas, but had to cook them first. Dah! Cooked peas won't grow and boiled eggs won't hatch. I love these kinds of logic fairy tales.
