The perfect Fairy Tales Book for Children

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After discussing with Fred about the possibly negative effects of reading Grimm's Fairy Tales to my daughter, I've been wondering: according to you, what fairy tale (the classics I mean) should be in the perfect book of fairy tale for children and why?

― misshajim (strand), Thursday, 27 October 2005 10:08 (twenty years ago)

to start with, I've always been fascinated with "Beauty and the Beast" so i'd put that on in it for sure...

― misshajim (strand), Thursday, 27 October 2005 10:09 (twenty years ago)

http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/180/

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 27 October 2005 11:11 (twenty years ago)

This one was my favourite when I was a kid >
http://www.allbookstores.com/book/0688094163

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 27 October 2005 11:23 (twenty years ago)

Negative effects?!? WHAT negative effects? Criminy, all I ever read was fairy tales and I turned out just fi -- err.

East of the Sun, West of the Moon is one of my favorites, with all its many versions & offshoots. Plus I love the title.

― Laurel (Laurel), Thursday, 27 October 2005 13:12 (twenty years ago)

Ha! Laurel, I was thinking the same thing :) I loved the Greek and Roman myths and had a watered-down book of them (no idea of title).

― Jaq (Jaq), Thursday, 27 October 2005 14:54 (twenty years ago)

I found this story amusing when I was a kid >
http://hca.gilead.org.il/emperor.html

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 27 October 2005 14:58 (twenty years ago)

The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/lang1k1/tale15.htm
(grimm brothers and little red riding hood etc should be avoided at all costs.)

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 27 October 2005 15:01 (twenty years ago)

Try the folk-lores of Transylvania

― Bilal, Thursday, 27 October 2005 15:06 (twenty years ago)

I got nuthin' against the Bros Grimm, honestly, I just always preferred the originals to the modernized, even MORE watered-down story-book versions; I'm fond of quoting the end of Snow White, the end of The Goose Girl, all the gory ones. Likewise the Cinderella version in which the sisters try to cut off their toes & heels to fit into the shoes, and the birds in the tree sing "Look back, look back, there's blood on the track." I think if you just case a wide net the biases will all even out.

Also fond of the Old Mother Holle version in which the bad step-sister grows a donkey's tail out of her forehead and is covered in pitch.

― Laurel (Laurel), Thursday, 27 October 2005 15:15 (twenty years ago)

Wilde's Stories for Children are so gorgeous, gorgeous. I had this magical giant edition with big wonderful pictures, I wish I cld find it now... they're not really very Grimmish though.

― Gravel Puzzleworth (Gregory Henry), Thursday, 27 October 2005 16:43 (twenty years ago)

If you had read "what do you say after you say hello" (which I recommended you long back) you would know why I'm against Grimm's fairy tales.

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 27 October 2005 19:59 (twenty years ago)

Fred, you recommended it to me? Sorry, I seem to have forgotten -- link, pls?

― Laurel (Laurel), Thursday, 27 October 2005 20:02 (twenty years ago)

Nevermind, found a reference.

― Laurel (Laurel), Thursday, 27 October 2005 20:03 (twenty years ago)

I was talking to misshajim.

― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 27 October 2005 20:53 (twenty years ago)

thanks everybody, East of the Sun, West of the Moon is one of my favourite too (I'm desperately looking for an edition illustrated by Kaj Nielsen), but there is no Italian version and it is interesting how many foreing classical fairy tales very famous have never been translated into Italian...

xpost to Fred: I will, promise! :) In the meanwhile I've stopped reading Grimms to her and am reading Gianni Rodari instead (a surreal great Italian writer for children)

― misshajim (strand), Friday, 28 October 2005 08:12 (twenty years ago)

I would also suggest Panchatantra > http://members.tripod.com/~srinivasp/mythology/panchatantra.html
more info can be found here > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchatantra

― Fred (Fred), Friday, 28 October 2005 08:46 (twenty years ago)

For those who like East of the Sun, West of the Moon, here is the original Norwegian version. There used to be sound files of it somewhere else on the web, but the link I have is now broken.

I also recommend De tre bukkene Bruse aka Billy Goats Gruff

― k/l (Ken L), Friday, 28 October 2005 12:26 (twenty years ago)

Only tangentially related but Misshajim, there's a huge book of Italian folktales compiled & retold by Italo Calvino, I found it used for 50 cents but it must be out there somewhere. Tales are sorted by location of origin and once you start working through it you can see how the mores and conventions differ from place to place -- wonderful piece-y reading!

― Laurel (Laurel), Friday, 28 October 2005 12:58 (twenty years ago)

I know it! My father used to read those to me along with Pinocchio (his lifelong obsession). But somehow, if you are Italian, they do feel too much like home and very little like the imaginary world where as a child you believe things like fairy tales really happen (ie: I can't imagine any Princess would ever live in or even nearby places with unlikely, too familiar, names like "Roccacannuccia")

― misshajim (strand), Wednesday, 2 November 2005 10:50 (twenty years ago)

Not Italian fairy tales, in any case. I started reading Biancabella to a six year old once, only to stumble across the part where she has her hands and feet cut off and her eyes put out. Not a good experience.

― SRH (Skrik), Sunday, 6 November 2005 15:37 (twenty years ago)

Chris, have any fairy tales, Italian or otherwise, ever flowed from your pen?

― k/l (Ken L), Sunday, 6 November 2005 16:11 (twenty years ago)

Hans Christian Andersen should be well represented. Especially "The Emperor's New Clothes," which is best piece of political education a kid could have.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Sunday, 6 November 2005 21:52 (twenty years ago)

Yeah but SRH, that's what I mean about the gory versions -- I don't think you can get at the often-primitive beauty of fairy tales unless you can stop taking them literally. These are stories about worlds in which magic happens! If violence also happens, it's soon mended in magical ways and not to be taken as fact. It's a different kind of thinking, may have something to do with the set-apart-ness of myth. This is why there are fairy-tale conventions like the opening line "Once upon a time..." and the closing, "...happily ever after", or whatever the local folk traditions might be...traditional lines like these are a signal to the reader that you have to enter into a different kind of thinking to get the message of the story.

No one ever had to tell me not to treat the violence seriously when my literary diet consisted almost entirely of fairy tales from the time I learned to read, and in fact the language of the tales helps -- unless they've been re-written and gored up for an older audience, the violence is always VERY matter-of-fact, no details given about blood or suffering, just the sheer fact of decapitation or whatever -- you're not MEANT to identify with any particular character or to internalize the pain, it's a convention!

God, did that make any sense? Sorry, I get VERY excited about these things.

― Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 7 November 2005 17:20 (twenty years ago)

That "Chris" wasn't directed at me, was it?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 7 November 2005 19:14 (twenty years ago)

Sorry buddy, I just recently learned that piuma means "feather" or "plume" or "pen" in Italian, and I started thinking of the phrase "From the pen of Chris Piuma," and then I saw this thread and posted to it and then looked at my post and realized it had come out wrong.

― k/l (Ken L), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 01:51 (twenty years ago)

Laurel, I agree with the way you look at it, and as a matter of fact this thread came out of a similar discussion as I read somewhere that reading of deaths, abandonement, loss, etc, in the context of fairy tales helps kids cope with their deepest fears, as they are in a way exorcised.
Still, that is also what I mean when I say that I don't feeling like reading Italian fairy tales, because they do not feel like "a magical world apart".
Still yet, I also believe that your life is what you say it is, and the way you tell it, and this is particularly important when you come to children, whose "tellers" are usually the parents. So, as far as the parent is the reader, maybe I will choose less gory tales, whereas I would leave the child free to explore when she will be the reader for herself.
mmmm...maybe this was a little confused

― misshajim (strand), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 09:09 (twenty years ago)

kids' deepest fear is that their parents will leave him.
Yes let her explore anything she wants and give a sincere answer when she asks you something.

― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 09:55 (twenty years ago)

Oh when young, I had this collection of various traditional fairy/folk tales from different countries. It was really very good but forget what it was called and there are probably similar collections now.

Maybe if you start off on the traditional European fairy tales and then branch out? It was so interesting to find new ones after the old stories became boring -- ie in the Rapunzel et al vein.

― salexander / sofia (salexander), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 10:07 (twenty years ago)

I can agree with everything written here, but the look of that sweet six-year-old girl's face when Biancabella had her hands and feet cut off will remain with me forever. She had obviously never feared losing limbs before.

But anyway... if anyone would like to fund my translation of the complete Norwegian fairy tale collection (never been done before) let me know. (Sample here.)

― SRH (Skrik), Tuesday, 8 November 2005 13:58 (twenty years ago)

who thinks don quixote is a great book for children?

― Fred (Fred), Friday, 11 November 2005 00:08 (twenty years ago)

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