Folklore Thursday: Following Folktales around the World

Today is Folklore Thursday on social media! If you want to find out more, follow this link, or click on the #FolkloreThursday hashtag on Twitter! Hosted by @FolkloreThursday.

This spring I started a weekly blog series on my Hungarian blog, titled "Népmesék nyomában a világ körül" - "Following folktales around the world." It was my version of the famous A year of reading the world challenge, in which people read one book from every country in the world (or, mostly every country). Since I have always wanted to develop a storytelling repertoire that contains at least one story from every country, I decided that the 10th year of my storytelling career would be as good as any to start my journey.

Here is how it works:

1. I picked a starting country, and read a folktale collection from there (it was China, because I just happened to have a new book of Chinese folktales at hand)
2. I read the book, and wrote a blog post about it
3. I picked the next folktale collection from one of the countries that border China
4. REPEAT

Every post contains a short review of the book I read, connections to stories in other parts of the world, highlights of the best tales and the most interesting motifs, and a short note on what comes next.

This way, the reading journey is not only a list of countries - it is also an adventure in cultural geography, where I slowly work my way all around the globe. The Hungarian series has 10 posts so far, and I am currently island-hopping in Southeast Asia. The English series will pick up with the next post, in Papua New Guinea.

After some hesitation, I decided to bring this series to the Multicolored Diary, and start posting in English as well. It has been tremendous fun so far, and all the books I read have been in English anyway, so it doubles as recommendations for storytellers, folklore enthusiasts, and other folktale-minded people.

This is my official announcement: Following Folktales around the World is coming soon, to a Multicolored Diary near you!