Grimm's Fairy Tales

In 1812, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published a collection of German fairy tales. A second volume was published in 1815. After various revisions, a total of 211 stories were collected.

My English hardcover contains 55 of these stories, taken from both volumes. Many of the stories are very familiar: The Frog Prince, Rumpelstiltskin Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Snow-White and the Seven Dwarfs to name a few.

The violence in these stories is shocking. The brothers received criticism for it even in their day. In 1825 they printed a Children's Edition which included some of the safer stories. Walt Disney has rendered even the safer stories innocuous.

Take the original Cinderella, for example. When the prince came to find the sister who fit the golden show more slipper, the eldest tried first:

Her great toe prevented her from getting it on. Her foot was too long.

Then her mother handed her a knife and said, "Cut off the toe. When you are Queen you won't have to walk any more."

The girl cut off her toe, forced her foot into the slipper, stifled her pain, and went out to the Prince. ...

Then he looked at her foot and saw how the blood was streaming from it. So he turned his horse round and carried the false bride back to her home, and said that she was not the right one. (162-3)

She was the lucky one! The second sister had to pare down her heel. In the end, Cinderella was married to the prince. As they walked into the church, a dove plucked one eye from each of the false brides. On their way out of the church the dove picked the other eyes. "And so for their wickedness and falseness they were punished with blindness for the rest of their days" (165).

I suppose that's one way to get children to behave!

These stories are part of our culture. They have staying power that is rarely seen. Enjoy them—just watch out for vindictive doves. show less

Ever since I was a child all snuggled up under the covers with my stuffed bear, I have either been read or pursued on my own the imaginative fairytales written by a host of authors over the centuries. The Grimm brothers are perhaps the best-known. Their tales are short and unique and without any barriers on creativity. I wonder if they were the first to make inanimate objects come to life? Young or old, there is much enjoyment to be had in these treasured Fairytales.

I myself always appreciated Grimm's Fairy Tales when I was younger, that being said it is definitely a collection one should really be wary of when suggesting to students. The language is not always as clear as some students may need, and despite the allure of fairy tales, some students may not appreciate the darker and more graphic representations. This book is something I would suggest more for older readers, perhaps 6th and on, as the material within the stories may again put some younger readers off. However, for students who are interested in folklore and the like, this is a collection they would likely be interested in ,and enjoy seeing some of the the original versions of widely known tales.

Reading Level: 4.8

Since Marisa Meyers bases her Lunar Chronicles books on the tale of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White I thought that I re-read these classic fairy tales so I am not in the dark so much about who some of the characters are supposed to be in the books.

My version has twenty-five fairy tales which are
The Goose-Girl
The Little Brother and Sister
Hansel and Gretel
Oh, If I Could But Shiver!
Dummling and the Three Feathers
Little Snow White
Catherine and Frederick
The Valiant Little Taylor
Little Red-Cap
The Golden Goose
Bearskin
Cinderella
Faithful John
The Water of Life
Thumbling
Briar Rose
The Six Swans
Rapunzel
Mother Holle
The Frog Prince
The Travels of Tom Thumb
Snow-White and Rose-Red
The Three Little Men in the show more Wood
Rumpelstilskin, and
Little-One-Eye, Two-Eyes, and Three-Eyes

I recall watching most of these stories as a kid on Nickelodeon's Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics.

Opening Theme to Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, my link text

They actually for the most part kept pretty faithful to the majority of the stories. My favorite of these cartoons was definitely "Bearskin" though, my link text

So I read all of these stories and for the purposes of this post I plan on just focusing on Little Snow White, Little Red-Cap, Cinderella, and Rapunzel.

Characters
I think my main comment for each of these stories are that many of these young women (except for Cinderella) do not seem that intelligent.

Snow White does not seem that bright. After being told repeatedly by the seven dwarfs to not open the door to anyone. There are two incidents that happen until The Queen finally in her mind does away with Snow White.

Little Red-Cap gets eaten up by the Wolf even though one wonders how great her eyesight was that she totally did not realize a Wolf was sitting in her Grandmother's bed.

Cinderella I was happy to see that actually is more close to the live-action Disney movie more than I thought since we get her mother telling her to be good and kind.

Rapunzel chose to marry a guy after he climbs her hair and she realizes he is handsome.....yeah.

Plot
The plot for Snow White is a young Princess trying to escape a Queen who is fixated on being the most beautiful in the land. One wonders why it is so important for the Queen to be deemed the fairest. Snow White escaping and living with the seven dwarfs does make one wonder how her taking care of seven dwarfs was better than going someplace else to hide away from the Queen. Snow White hides away from the Queen and is cautioned against going out and talking to anyone in case it is the Queen looking to harm her.

Little Red-Cap in the first half of the story is just on her way to her Grandmother's house and comes across the Wolf who decides to make a meal of her and her Grandmother. There really is not a lot of meat to this story at all. There is one version that is told and another shorter version that we hear about after the unhappy ending to the first version.

Cinderella is told by her dying mother to be a good girl and that she will watch her from heaven and watch over her. Unlike with the Disney version Cinderella's father does not die. Instead the guy lives and watches how his new wife and two stepdaughters treat his daughter. In my head that is actually worse, so at least if her father was not around you would hope that he would actually step in and stop having people treat his only daughter like a servant. Cinderella is so good and kind she plans a hazel tree and due to her tears it grows and a little bird comes and lives in it.

Rapunzel is taken away as a baby to live with an Enchantress after her father was caught stealing rampion from the Enchantress's garden to feed his pregnant wife. Apparently her father deemed it okay to give away his child to someone who was quite willing to murder him for stealing some herbs. In case you didn't notice it, I am not that fond of the parents in any of these fairy tales. Rapunzel grows up and is locked away in a tower when she is 12 years old. Two years later a passing Prince (why are Princes always passing through?) comes through and sees the Enchantress calling up to Rapunzel so he lies in wait and does the same thing.

Writing and Pacing
The writing for all of these stories is pretty simplistic. They are children's stories so it is written for them to read and understand. The pacing for all of them were pretty much straightforward since all of the stories, except for Cinderella were very short.

Setting
Honestly there is not much details to any of the settings. The stories are pretty short so you don't get a lot of detail about that.

Endings
I think you have to decide for yourself what constitutes a happy ending.

For Snow White she wakes up and finds out that a Prince has carried her off who tells her that he loves her more than anything in the world. She consents to be his wife. The Queen after hearing about a new-made Queen that is more beautiful goes to see her becomes ill with passion and becomes choked and dies afterwards. Could this be a potential spoiler to the Lunar Chronicles?

Little Red-Cap was quite grim actually. In version one she and her Grandmother are eaten and a passing huntsman shoots the wolf in the head and both Little Red-Cap and the Grandmother presumably die. I think that the Brothers Grimm realized that was not really a happy ending and had another version where the Wolf falls off the wolf into a trough and drowns.

Cinderella really does have the best ending. She has a magical tree that provides her with gowns and shoes for a ball and eventually after her stepsisters disfigure their feet goes off and lives with the Prince. You don't really hear about Cinderella's father or the stepmother so one imagines they did not live happily ever after.

Rapunzel also had a bleak story-line until the happily ever after. Rapunzel "marries" the Prince when according to the story-line she had to be about 14 years old. Rapunzel makes a not intelligent comment about how heavy the Enchantress is compared to the Prince's son. Due to that the Enchantress flies into a rage, cuts her hair, and leaves her in the desert. The Prince is blinded by thorns when he throws himself out of a tower window. After wandering the desert for years he finds Rapunzel again who heals his eyes with her tears. I I totally prefer Disney's Tangled.

All in all these were fast paced stories that I do have to wonder how appropriate some of them were for children. Most of them had stories about children being treated horribly by their parents or just ignored. Heck Hansel and Gretel had a father who didn't want to leave his kids to starve to death in the woods, but does so since he is henpecked by his second wife. He does feel bad though (eyeroll).

A lot of the stories barely resemble the Disney counterparts. For example, Briar Rose made me laugh since there is no dragon in this story. Instead the thirteenth fairy is just angry she was not invited and throws a curse that Briar Rose would die upon her fifteenth birthday. A twelfth fairy changes it so that everyone will fall asleep for 100 years. So a Prince passing through on the day of the 100th year is there at the right place and time for Briar Rose to wake up and they marry. That's it. No epic fight with a dragon. show less

The introduction tells the history and some conclusions of the brothers' research; better than the stories themselves.

My copy used to belong to my mother, who gave it to me one day when I complained about having read all my books. And now that I see what Barbie and Disney have based their princess stories off of, It makes me like them even less.

This is a very edition- the first 35 pages are missing and some at the end as well, and the rest are loose in places. Nonetheless, it is good reading, the stories are good, as always, and it is neat to have such an old copy. I'm not positive how many stories it has (what with the table of contents missing), but it has quite a few and they are very readable.