Book: The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Author: The Brothers Grimm
Pages:
Publisher:
Reviewed by: Amanda
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Purchase: Here

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are two of the worlds most well known story-tellers. During their lives in the 1800s, the duo collected hundreds of tales of the fantastic from amongst the people of Northern Europe. Many of the stories have today been transformed from their original telling, such as the hundreds of adaptations of the classic "Cinderella", and many more have appeared amongst other volumes of collected fairy tales. I have an older version of the book, but the newest collection from Amazon.com features 32 previously un-translated tales for readers to enjoy. There are more than 240 known fairy tales by the Grimm Brothers.

I happened to receive an older copy of the book for Christmas one year from a relative. At first, I was a little surprised. I love to read, but I had, after all, read my last fairy tale when I was a very little girl. With all of the reinterpretations of fairy tale classics occurring in modern films and novels though, I set out to read the titles that were familiar to me. Very few of the titles turned out to be ones I recognized. Of the ones I did, I discovered these stories were not your little sister's fairy tales.

In their original telling, the stories are much darker than Disney's animated features would have us believe. Frogs are thrown into walls instead of kissed, and step sisters are pecked by birds as punishment for their wicked ways. While twists on these old favorites may leave you surprised, you may also find a new favorite, like "The Riddle", a tale of a princess who attempts to avoid marriage by discovering the answers to her suitors' riddles before a given deadline. I soon found myself devouring every tale in the book, some of which are only a few paragraphs long, and loving every single one of them.

While you may be skeptical at first, as I was, having outgrown stories of princes and witches, I challenge you to look beyond the glass slippers and poisoned apples you may be expecting to explore the world so many of us have forgotten. As my relative inscribed in the front cover of my book, no one is too old for fairy tales.