Spirited Away

Fairy Stories of Old Newfoundland

By: Tom Dawe

Narrated by: Tom Dawe

Length: 1 hr and 42 mins

Publisher's summary

A young school teacher learns about strange lights in a foreboding marsh; a nurse in a remote outport visits the baby she delivered weeks before to find a devastating change; a woman meets a mysterious funeral procession late one evening; a musician falls thrall to a group of strange little people and can’t stop playing. The stories in Spirited Away are populated by the fairy-led, by changelings, by people who stray onto fairy turf and experience unnerving events.

These literary renderings of stories and anecdotes that author Tom Dawe has collected from across Newfoundland offer an accessible and engaging introduction to one of the Newfoundland and Labrador’s most powerful and peculiar folk traditions.

Recipient of a 2018 Aesop Accolade from the Children’s Division of the American Society of Folklore

©2019 Tom Dawe (P)2022 Running the Goat

Critic reviews

“Tom Dawe tells some disturbing stories in Spirited Away, enhancing the atmosphere with the flavour of Newfoundland and coastal Labrador. From the music to blueberry picking and the vocabulary much unknown to me ... these are the stories of the people of Newfoundland. Veselina Tomova's woodcut illustrations, in dark tones and snatches of light, reflect the very setting in which the fairies appear. These are not your Disney fairies. They are frightening, and Tom Dawe ensures that we know that they are real.” — Helen Kubiw, CanLit for LittleCanadians

“Dawe is a poet, which is reflected in his simple, but lyrical, text. Tomova’s sinister woodcuts, with their muted colours and grotesque figures, draw the reader deeper into the unsettling world of these dark fairies. Together, they’ve perfectly captured the sweet terror that comes when sitting by a flickering light and listening to unearthly tales.” — Charis Cotter, in Quill & Quire