Review by Jack Merry: All Jacks are storytellers and I’ve been known to weave many a tale late at night by the roaring fireplace in the Robert Graves Memorial Reading Room in the Kinrowan Estate Library. And I’ve used many a Folkmanis puppet including what I call The Rodents of An Unusual Size and the lovely red fox as they are perfect for storytelling — durable and creatively made!
It’s an Ent! Well sort of. What Folkmanis calls this incredibly interesting creation is an Enchanted Tree Puppet but it really could be a small version of one of those creatures to be used in telling the story of them as they are a race of beings in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings who closely resemble trees. They are similar to the talking trees in many traditions around the world with their name being derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for giant.
It certainly looks like an Ent — though it is what they call a character puppet with a moveable mouth, a bristly mustache and branches. You can also move its blue eyes. There are a few oversized green leaves on the top branches, and a red topped toadstool in one of its hands. This puppet is about fifteen inches tall, not as big as I’d might have liked it to be, but big enough to entertain listeners in a circle around a teller of tales.
If you combine it with one of the small Wolf puppets that Folkmanis has released, you could tell the tale of Ygggdrasil and Fenris, the wolf that tries to destroy that World Tree in the Norse myths. Or perhaps you could tell the story of the Indian Tree of the Sun and the Moon that told the future. If you’re good at voices, you can be the two aspects of the tree trunk, which depended on the time of day; in the daytime the tree spoke as a male and at night it spoke as a female. Did you know that Alexander the Great and Marco Polo are said to have consulted this leafy oracle?
Whatever you use it for, it is indeed a wonderful puppet — certainly one of the most imaginative creations from a company that has done many, many fine puppets down the years! I’ll certainly tell many a fine tale with it!
Jack Merry — I’m a fiddler, contradance caller, and a teller of tales. I like Guinness poured properly and served warm of course, red heads, and short stories with a touch of the fantastic in them. I like The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings for my winter reading.