The Glass Mountain: Favourite Tales from Poland

In the story of The Fern Flower, Bogdan searches in the forest for a rare flower that gives great riches to those that find it. When he does eventually find it, the ground opens up to admit him to a palace of wealth and luxury. Yet, after a time, Bogdan starts to miss his mother and his dog and resolves to return home – but finds that when he does return home, he is too late to ever see his mother again.

In the story of The Miller’s Daughters, one clever daughter manages to trick an evil magician that has turned her two sisters into birds and put them in cages.

Jan Pienkowski was born in Poland, a land replete with folk tales and with a cultural tradition of paper cutting, which he has utilised in his artwork for this beautiful book of Polish fairy tales.

The fascinating foreword to this book of darkly wonderful folktales (that often do not have happy endings) also describes something of the young Jan’s childhood and how he first became aware of both the Polish folk tales that are told here, as well as the techniques of papercutting he later learned himself.