Tales of Giants from Brazil

Chapter 2: FOREWORD

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Children & Young Adult Reading Mythology, Legends & Folklore

About This Book

A collection of folkloric stories that center on giants and larger-than-life phenomena, blending European tale types with local oral traditions to reimagine origins, adventures, and moral lessons. Stories range from princely quests and clever youths outwitting monstrous figures to enchanted springs, giant women shrinking, and encounters between ordinary fishermen and immense beasts. Narratives emphasize scale, wonder, and folklore motifs—cleverness, transformation, and the natural world's abundance—presented in short, didactic tales suitable for young readers, accompanied by period illustrations that underscore the mythic atmosphere.

VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

FOREWORD

Brazil is the land of the giant among all the rivers of the world. It is the land of giant fruits and giant flowers. Of course it is the land of giant stories too.

Years ago when the Portuguese settlers came to Brazil they brought with them the folk-tales of the old world. Just as European grass seed, when planted in our Brazilian gardens, soon sends forth such a rank, luxuriant growth that one hardly recognizes it as grass, so the old Portuguese tales, planted in Brazilian soil, have grown into new forms.

The author gratefully acknowledges her indebtedness to the Brazilian story tellers to whose tales she has listened, and to the collection of Dr. Sylvio Romero, “Contos Populares do Brazil,” from which some of the “giant tales” have been adapted.