I started this book with high hopes and expected to like it. But, I found that it was not for me personally. Instead of possibly giving a bad review just based on my preferences, I choose to not review this book. I am giving it 3 stars because a rating is necessary and I don't want to mark it as a bad book per se.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

I have enjoyed Jane Yolen's past work. I was expecting to like this book more but since the Night Circus has really ruined all other circus books for me, I just didn't enjoy this as much as I wanted to.

Personally I'm not a huge fan of short story collections and always have hard time with deciding how I will rate them cause some stories amazed me and some I just wanted to skip. This once again showed true for me cause here I found some books that made me want to buy the book and read those stories to my future children but also maybe 2/3 were just fine.
My favorites were Andersen's Witch and The Bird, which was a wonderful surprise for me cause at first I expected just to see a retelling of fairy tales. My least favorites were The Gift of the Magicians, With Apologies to You Know Who which felt very silly and Lost Girls which tried to push feminist message but ended being a bit boring and unbelievable.
Still, all in all this book deserved at least 4 stars and I would recommend it to my friends who love collections of short stories and seeing well known tales from different angle.

I love short stories, and I love the retelling of classic fairy tales. I'm a big fan of this book! It has an interesting premise that I enjoyed, especially having never read this author before.

Enjoyable collection of stories. This was the first time I had read any of Jane Yolen's work, and I am definitely planning to read more. Her take on fairy tales was an absolute delight, but standouts for me were Blown Away and Lost Girls.

This collection of short stories, despite being varied in length, tone, and plot, unfortunately did not hold my interest. This is most probably a case of “it’s not you it’s me”, since I started this right at the beginning of a reading slump and have only just finished it now I’ve crawled out of said slump.

This is a collection of mainly retellings of fairytales, legends, and folklore. I found the beginning of the collection very strong - I enjoyed Andersen’s Witch in which (haha) we discover the reason for Hans Christian Andersen’s great success. Lost Girlswas perhaps my favourite in the whole collection, following a young girl who is swept into Neverland and finds it deeply disappointing before she incites a revolution.
Blown Away was a really fun reimagining of Dorothy and Oz, and A Knot of Toads changed the tone from previous stories by telling a creepy, mysterious tale of witchcraft in Scotland.

Unfortunately, I found many more of the stories hard going. Some, like The Quiet Monk dragged like all hell. After a few pages, I skipped The Confession of Brother Blaise entirely. Other shorts held my attention but didn’t leave me feeling satisfied - Tough Alice, The Bird and Belle Bloody Merciless Dame were unmemorable enough that I had to reread them. I liked Evian Steel because compared to many other stories there was some real world building and characterization. A story I should rightly have adored, The Gift of the Magicians, made me feel a little disassociated because of the lack of personality coming through from characters or setting.

Overall, the style was not quite to my tastes despite the abundance of imagination.

“Welcome to Neverland,” Peter said, as if this were supposed to be a big surprise. Darla took her hand away from his. “It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” she said. This time she looked right at him.”

“She would not let herself get lost in the past, making it somehow better and lovelier than it was. She'd never liked that in old people when she was young, and she wasn't about to countenance it in herself now. The past was a lot like Wonderland: treacherous and marvelous and dull in equal measure. Survival was all that mattered - and she was a survivor. Of course, in the end, she thought, there is no such thing as survival. And just as well. What a clutter the world would be if none of us ever died.”

Such an amazing book.

I am not normally a short story reader, but this collection included stories from some of my favorite childhood reads, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Overall this was a mixed hit for me. Some of the stories I really enjoyed, and others were more meh. They range in genre and style and each refer back (albeit vaguely) to some fairy tale, legend, myth, or fantasy story. Some of them are very clever, and I was left impressed by the author's creativity; others were just ok.

I would say that if you like short stories, and you like myths and legends turned on their heads, you will probably enjoy this book.

I don't have the best of luck with short story collections. Starts out great, ends with a little whisper. This was no exception. Some stories were awesome, others I didn't care less about.

I keep coming back to this book!

I have put it down a couple of times, but I always pick it back up. To me, that's the best part about a collection of short stories. You can absorb them in small doses, and you can always come back without feeling like you've put it down for too long.

It was so easy to jump back into after a break. I love fantasy, and I love circus tales. This collection checked off both of those boxes, so I was sold pretty quickly. The retellings are imaginative and captivating. I am always willing to give re-tellings a lot of leeway and don't necessarily need them to be solidly tied to the original. I enjoy creativity, and Yolen did a great job. I will definitely be revisiting these stories over the years and sharing them with my friends/audience.

I absolutely love short stories and the fact that Holly Black did the intro was enough for me. Each and every story was SO GOOD!!! Such new takes on fairy tales. A breath of fresh air for sure.

Jane Yolen is a genius and each of these stories is it's own kind of jewel. I wish I had read her notes and the accompanying poems in the back after each story instead of all at once at the end-- "Note on a Dried Cod" is short and almost a non-sequitur, but it a) tore my heart out and b) was worth the price of the book --but either way, I appreciate the context they provide. I love the little bite-sized wonders that are Jane's stories and poems. And that cover.

I've loved Jane Yolen's books since I was a kid which is when I read a lot of them and this is why I chose to request this one.

I'm a sucker for fairy tales and old folklore stories so I was attracted to this book immediately. Thankfully it did not disappoint. I absolutely loved Jane Yolen's style and the re-tellings of the stories. It's charming, adventurous, and enjoyable for not only YA but older readers as well. It's the perfect book if you're looking for magical short stories that are able to take you to another land in less than 30 minutes.

There’s no need to introduce Jane Yolen, writer of children’s and young adult books whose name was pretty much all over my childhood book shelves. She is most famous for writing folklore and fantasy, reinventing classic tales and often paired with illustrators whose work will look immediately familiar to any child of the 90’s. This latest collection is certainly composed of typical Yolen material, but, after reading “A Knot of Toads,” a story featuring a long dormant evil forces brought to life in a small Scottish town, I realized that The Emerald Circus is not for kids at all. (By which I mean kids who don’t have nightlights. Because I definitely needed one.)

The stories are hit-or-miss. Some follow a pattern that, for Yolen, is almost formulaic by now, taking a classic tale and subverting its original intent with adult themes or feminist reprisals. The story “Lost Girls,” about Wendy arriving in Neverland and then trying to unionize a collection of “lost girls” is a great example of this.


My favorite was perhaps the title story, which follows Dorothy Gale, picked up in a twister — as in the original narrative — but instead of landing in Oz, she finds her way into a circus. Yolen has a distinct form of sarcasm that, rather than turning its nose up in cynicism, seems to twinkle its eye in a kind of delightful inside joke.

If you love Jane Yolen, you’ll love this book. No doubt. It is clever and funny and it definitely has its beautiful moments. There is also the fairly interesting feature of Yolen’s notes on each story — how they came about, both creatively and pragmatically — combined with a related poem.

My recommendation is to pick up a story every once in a while, rather than reading them all at once. ‘Round about the story called “The Gift of the Magicians,” which is a Beauty and the Beast vs. Gift of the Magi mashup, the whole project started to feel a bit gimmicky, which isn’t quite fair to Yolen’s well established talents. Yes, she has a certain schtick that she follows, and yes, that schtick can get a bit stale, but picking up the book from time to time with fresh eyes (which is, honestly, the way all short story collections should be read) would circumvent some of the formulaic feeling.

Could not really hold my interest, I was really hoping that it would be better but I really lost interest quickly.

Loved how whimsicle and weird these stories were. This is the kind of book I can see returning to again and again, because each time you'll pick up something new. So many nuances hidden in each tale.

An anthology of short stories including some inspired by my favorite childhood tales? Hand it over. Some proved to be more of a hit than others, but overall, The Emerald Circus is a highly enjoyable collection. In all honesty, I initially only requested it because I saw Holly Black's name on the cover but as I got more and more into the book, I came hugely appreciate Yolen's writing skills. The Emerald Circus is a lovely book that I'm glad to have read.

Eh, I am always hit or miss with Jane Yolen, and combine that with a book full of short stories this is a solid three. There were elements and stories I liked and ones I didn't. The cover is beautiful, makes me wish I had this is a physical copy.