Customer Rating: 
Summary: extremely impressive
Comment: While the plot lines are sufficiently simplistic to hearken from any Neolithic culture, it is the artwork that distinguishes this book. One can scarcely believe that those breathtaking silhouettes were crafted solely with a scissors! Buy this book, glance briefly at the trivial tales, and exult on the stupendous pictures with their uniquely Mongolian outlook on the natural world.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious ignorance - or perhaps not so funny
Comment: I could hardly believe my eyes when I read "malfouka"s review! We mustn't use the word "Mongolians," say "Special Persons" because "Mongolians" is not nice!
Mr/Ms No-Geography person, the book has nothing at all to do with persons afflicted with the genetic disorder that used to be called "Mongolism," now generally known as Down Syndrome.
There is a large country out there called Mongolia - one of the many of which you have perhaps never heard. The people are an Asian race with that region's typical slant eyes and roundish face. The "Mongol hordes" that terrified Asia at one epoch, with their deadly horse-riding archers, are actually quite FAMOUS. Did you ever hear of Genghis Khan?
Because Down Syndrome gives those afflicted a certain resemblance to that general appearance, it was at one tine called "mongolism" and one heard terms like " a mongol child." NOT the same, then or ever, as "Mongolian!" The book gathers together the folk tales of a far away but very historic nation.
Sad that Americans today know so little about their world. (Was it 24% or 47% of young adults who couldn't find India on a world map? India, of all places - huge, obvious, with more than three times our population, and possibly destined to surpass us economically within a few decades.) As I say, it's sometimes funny, as in the totally off-kilter review, but also sad. . and in fact dangerous, because people are open to accepting any malicious nonsense they are told about other countries - the lie about Iraq being involved in 9/11 comes to mind. It's really too bad.
Later addition: Well, now I wonder if I've been suckered in! Perhaps "malfouka" knows all about Mongolia and just thought it would be an amusing con to pretend ignorance...No way to tell...but I don't really think so! It wouldn't have really been all that funny.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice Idea but We Call them "Special Needs" Nowadays
Comment: Although it is a nice idea to collect stories from all sorts of different people--variety makes the world go 'round--I find it disturbing that the author of this book insists on calling these unique and varied individuals "Mongolians"! What, are we still living in the 1950's? Haven't we gotten past all those old hurtful words?
I hope that the author of this book realises how outdated and mean her words are and changes the name of this book to "Special Person Folktales".
Customer Rating:
Summary: The papercut artwork is worth the price of the book.
Comment: The Artwork done for the stories is grand. The feel of the book paper is great. The stories told are folk tales, but the way it is put together with the pictures is just glorious.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very striking artwork.
Comment: The folktales themselves are interesting enough, but this book's outstanding merit is its illustrations, which, indeed, furnished the inspiration for it. The illustrator, Norovsambuugin Baatartsog, does his work not with brush and ink, but by cutting silhouettes out of black paper, freehand. They're intricate, and, aside from it being quite astonishing that anyone could do such work with scissors and no guiding drawing, they'd be striking in any medium.
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