Books with title The Tattooed Potato And Other Stories

Oscar Wilde was once asked why he wrote stories for children (for example, The Happy Giant). His answer: "I no more write for children than I write for adults. Rather, I write for those who find in simplicity a subtle strangeness." So, too, writes Samuel Jay Keyser in The Pond God and Other Stories. The stories were inspired by a Navajo shaman who once said that he had seen a god walking across the horizon. Keyser is both humorous and profound as he explores the foibles and insights of the very human "gods" who inhabit his primordial world. The stories include “How Clouds Came to Be," "How a Thief Stole the Horizon," and "How the Sun Tricked a God." Each reader of these 43 parables will bring a different perspective to the stories. Robert Shetterly, acclaimed for his illustration of William Blake's Proverbs of Heaven and Hell, captures and compounds the "subtle strangeness" of Keyser's tales in the simple, evocative line drawings for The Pond God.

George MacDonald (10 December 1824 – 18 September 1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. He was a pioneering figure in the field of fantasy literature and the mentor of fellow writer Lewis Carroll. His writings have been cited as a major literary influence by many notable authors including W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien,Walter de la Mare, E. Nesbit and Madeleine L'Engle.C. S. Lewis wrote that he regarded MacDonald as his "master": "Picking up a copy of Phantastes one day at a train-station bookstall, I began to read. A few hours later," said Lewis, "I knew that I had crossed a great frontier." G. K. Chesterton cited The Princess and the Goblin as a book that had "made a difference to my whole existence". Elizabeth Yates wrote of Sir Gibbie, "It moved me the way books did when, as a child, the great gates of literature began to open and first encounters with noble thoughts and utterances were unspeakably thrilling." Even Mark Twain, who initially disliked MacDonald, became friends with him, and there is some evidence that Twain was influenced by MacDonald. Christian author Oswald Chambers wrote in his Christian Disciplines that "it is a striking indication of the trend and shallowness of the modern reading public that George MacDonald's books have been so neglected". In addition to his fairy tales, MacDonald wrote several works on Christian apologetics including several that defended a view that has been described as Christian Universalism.