What is better than money?

Well, according to a youngster from West Virginia, the folktales fround in this book are just that. Selected from the repertoire of master storyteller Joe McHugh and wonderfully illustrated by his wife, Paula, thiese simple yarns of giants and wizards and ghostly visitations represent oral literature at its very best. Faithfully handed down from one generation to the next, they are the currency of the imagination that help us better understand the mysterious and magical journey of life.

In Better Than Money you will meet Zola Hutchinson and her “slappy jack” doll, a troublemaking old woman and the wizard who puts her straight, an irish storyteller who needs a new story to tell, Willie, the horsetrader - “the wickedest man who ever was,” the boy with a gift to talk to the animals, the greedy General who makes an unwise bargain, lazy Jack and his “granddaddy” of cornstalks, a worried father and a supernatural white deer, an old-time country doctor out on a stormy winter’s night on an errand of mercy, and a Civil War soldier unjustly accused of murder.

Table of Contents

The Boy with No Name
The Wizard and the Old Woman
Doc Anderson
The Wicked Man
Jack and the Cornstalk
Zola and the Sappy-Jack
The General's Bargain
The White Deer
A Shanachie's Tale
The Accused Soldier