Tracy Arah Dockray

So yesterday I sat down to read for a bit after coming inside from cutting wood. But alas, I couldn't find the book I was reading, not sure where I put it or if someone picked it up and moved it without my knowledge. Disappointed I began to look for something else to read. I wasn't ready to give up on that other book and start something long and involved, then I stumbled across this book sitting on my shelf and thought that it might be a nice interlude between other books.
Pleasantly show more surprised, two hours later I wrapped up this collection of fairy tales and had a whole new outlook on those fairy tales we knew so well as children. Gone were the stories where everyone lived “Happily ever after” and here we were back to the originals, where the evil step sisters have their eyes plucked out by crows, a father chops off her daughters hands to satisfy the devil, a mother kills her stepson and chops him up for stew. This was an interesting look back at what the children’s stories used to be and it’s fun to see how much our modern, sensitive culture has stripped from these classic tales.

This collection only scratched the surface of what the Grimm brothers collected and according to the well written introduction, even they sanitized the original folk tales some for inclusion in their books.

Great reading for those interested in seeing how far our modern fairy tales have strayed. Recommend this one and am looking for other collections of Grimm’s originals. show less

Fairy tales are not always nice. There's some veri evil people dwelling here. And some torture... and death...

This is NOT the Disney version. This is more the Scorsese version.

This is a great collection of Grimm tales, presented as they originally were by the Brothers Grimm (as opposed to modified to be read to children as moral stories at night).

Easy, quick read. It had a few tales in it that I've never, somehow, come across. Aimed to highlight the "darker" and more vicious fairy tales in their original formats before they were edited to be more child friendly.