In legends spanning China to Canada, Sea Girl lays out a new mythology in which women and girls prove they’re more than capable of saving the day.

The feminist folktales collected in Sea Girl upend any notion that women are doomed to be sentimental, meek, or submissive. In these classic tales, heroines unflinchingly wade monstrous rivers, escape ogres’ nests, and outsmart desperate sharks and hungry tigers. And while defending their families and villages, they always determine their own fate.

Feminist Folktales is a four-volume series of folklore showcasing traditional stories from around the world with courageous and heroic girls at the center of every tale. Often having existed only as oral histories, Ethel Johnston Phelps collected and anthologized these tales into two volumes, Tatterhood and The Maid of the North. This series features Phelps’s stories set against new illustrations, with introductions reflecting the enduring cultural significance of these folktales in the present day.