Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #200150 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-03
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 445 pages

Synopsis
This beautiful volume celebrates the best-loved stories of childhood through the vision of Maria Tatar, a leading expert in the field of folklore and children's literature. Challenging the notion that fairy tales can be read for their morals and used to make model citizens of little children, Tatar guides readers through the stories, exploring their historical origins, their cultural complexities and their psychological effects. Maria Tatar shows that by providing children with powerful models for navigating reality, these tales help children survive in a world ruled by adults. Twenty-six classic stories are presented - including "Beauty and the Beast", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "The Little Mermaid". Maria Tatar has also assembled over 300 mostly four-colour photographs, paintings and illustrations, some very rare, creating a volume that will rank as one of the finest fairy tale collections in many decades.

Customer Reviews

Dinsey fans beware...
You thought the Brothers Grimm were a bit bloodthirsty?

This superb book not only retells the classic fairytales but also gives any number of variants on each theme. Even seasoned mythologists are likely to find something new and surprising, and in many cases the alternative endings are better (I always thought that Goldilocks was a rude little housebreaking so-and-so... in at least one of the versions she gets eaten by the bears. Go bears!)

the real thing and more magical than Disney
What a delight to have a quality book for my children. I love the paper, the print, the illustrations, not to mention the stories that, for once, appear in real English--not the stitled, unreadable versions that I've bought by mistake several times now. I'm having great fun learning about the stories as I read them to my 6 and 9 year old, who can't get enough of this stuff. I just ordered the Annotated Alice, and I hope it's as good as this volume.

For those who truly love fairytales
The fairy tales that many of us heard as children are but the most recent versions of far older and less gentle stories. Designed, often, to make a pointed moral comment, their themes encompass all of human life: romance, betrayal, jealousy, revenge and even death. For those who began their interest as children and would now value a book that they could use both as a basis for for storytelling and a source for more in-depth study, this is essential reading.

These stories are written in the style of "foundational text" which means that you can take each as a basis, retelling the tale, in your own words, to suit the particular listener. Every one has an introduction which explores sources, details of some of the other versions of the story and offers a modern interpretation. The annotations also provide some very interesting insights, if you are keen to go deeper; however, these are more suitable for adult study than as a basis of discussion with children.

The only real disappointment are the pictures, which are rather old-fashioned and very small.