Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (original 2012; edition 2012)

A copy of Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version was provided to me by Viking Adult/Netgalley for review purposes.

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version are 50 of Philip Pullman's favorite tales from the original Brothers Grimm. These are 'retold' but still mostly maintains the original version of the stories. Being fully aware of the well-told stories of 'Little Red Riding Hood', 'Cinderella' and 'Snow White' I found the lesser-known stories to be the most entertaining.

I'd been incredibly excited for this one for a while now after having finished Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy; I definitely wanted to read more of his writings. I'm not sure this would be a good one to start with if you were looking into trying Philip Pullman out for the very first time though.

I have a passing knowledge of the original Grimm Fairy Tale stories, having read only a few of the originals. With that said, I was interested to see just how original this new English Version by Philip Pullman actually was. It doesn't appear that much was actually changed, however, this is still an enjoyable collection and one that I believe many fairy tale lovers will enjoy.

( )

Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version
by Philip Pullman
Classic tales and some very uncommon unknown ones as well.
1. The frog King, The cat and mouse set up house, the boy who left who to find out about the shivers, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, etc
Like reading about the tales again as an adult. Realize a lot of them are not the
versions I had read as a child. These appear to be more mild and at the end of each one it states what country and who first recited the story to the authors.
Also explains in today's world why this version is preferred, etc.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device). ( )

Philip Pullman is one of my favorite authors. If you haven't read His Dark Materials trilogy you better correct that mistake soon. The first book [b:The Golden Compass|119322|The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)|Philip Pullman|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333617993s/119322.jpg|1536771] has also a movie based on it. (You can check out the trailer here.)
I was very excited when I saw that Pullman did a retelling of Brothers Grimm fairy tales, I knew that he would do them justice.

This anthology consists of 50 fairy tales handpicked by Pullman from a larger collection of stories that Brothers Grimm collected. Currently, there is one free story from this book on Penguin's website, "The Fisherman and his wife": you can read it here.

I must shamefully admit that I liked Pullman's retellings even more than the original. He did not edit out strange and odd parts of the stories but his versions are much easier to read, without archaic language constructs. Also, one thing that I most appreciated, he shortened out sometimes boring repetitious parts.
At the end of each story we have notes where Pullman explains what changes he made to the original story. He even treats us with a little bit of historical background: when it was first published and a list of similar stories and adaptations. These notes were very interesting to me, but if you don't like them you can always skip them with no harm done.

This book has something to offer to everybody. It can be savored a tale a day or devoured in one afternoon. You can read it to your kids before bedtime or you can read it alone.
Whatever pace you set or audience you choose, if you are a lover of classic fairy tales you will definitely enjoy this book.

Disclaimer: I was given a free eBook by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a honest review. This text is also posted on Amazon and my blog (here you can find the longer version with some of my rambling not related to the book). ( )

I was hoping for Pullman to be a bit more audacious with this, I think. Instead, most of the stories are simply and directly retold from the Grimms' versions: some of them are slightly tweaked and clarified, but Pullman seems to actively pull back from putting his own fingerprints on the stories.

That, combined with the repetitive nature of such stories and the fact that I have read them all elsewhere in similar collections, made this a less than impressive read. ( )

Good retellings of some classic and obscure Grimm's tales. Needed more commentary and a wrap up chapter would have been nice but the ARC I read may have been incomplete. ( )