The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales

by Maria Tatar (Editor), Alexander Afanasev, Hans Christian Andersen

In this illuminating work, a leading expert in the field of folklore guides readers through 26 fairy tales, exploring their historical origins, their cultural complexities, and their psychological effects on children. 350 full-color photos, paintings & illustrations.

Genres: Fairy Tales, Classics, Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories, Folklore, Childrens

445 pages, Hardcover

First published October 17, 2002

About the author

Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. She is the author of Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood, Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood and many other books on folklore and fairy stories. She is also the editor and translator of The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, The Annotated Peter Pan, The Classic Fairy Tales: A Norton Critical Edition and The Grimm Reader. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a glorious handsome opulent edition of 26 famous stories festooned with notes by Professor Maria Tatar who is your perfect companion, full of insight and knowledge but not freezing – in fact she is slyly playful at times (Snow White in the glass coffin “becomes something of a tourist attraction”….and later : “fairy tale women seem to be unusually tolerant of the hedgehogs, pigs, snakes and other beasts that steal into their rooms at night, perhaps because the animals usually manage to make the transformation in to human form before getting between the sheets”).

Reading this slowly over the last six months was like gathering pebbles from the beaches of my own childhood, some intimately familiar, some goldenhued and strange. Two of them I knew just from Danny Kaye’s songs “The King’s New Clothes” and “The Ugly Duckling”. Some I thought I knew but didn’t (“Puss in Boots”, “Rapunzel”). Most I knew but have no memory of how.



There are surprises. I was expecting atrocities, dismemberments, rapes and cannibalism and I got that in spades, but my oh my, there are a few very alarming stories in here. Perhaps the most extreme-horror tale is “The Juniper Tree”. In this one the step-mother one day gets so irritated at her despised stepson that she beheads him by slamming down the lid of a chest while he is reaching in to get an apple. So then she gets nervous, wondering what her husband will say when he comes home and finds his son beheaded.

She went to her room and took a white kerchief from her dresser drawer. She put the boy’s head back on his neck and tied the scarf around it so you couldn’t tell that anything was wrong. Then she sat him down on a chair in front of the door and put an apple in his hand.

Then she tells her daughter to ask the kid for the apple and if he doesn’t answer, she should slap him on the face. So she does that and of course the head flies off his neck. This ruse enables the mother to blame the daughter! Now what?

“Little Marlene,” said her mother, “what a dreadful thing you have done! But don’t breathe a word to a soul, for there’s nothing we can do. We’ll cook him up in a stew.”

So the father comes home and eats the stew and then the story takes an unexpected turn which is far too crazy to summarize.



I wasn’t expecting an oddity like Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Match Girl”. In this short tale there’s a little match girl from a very poor family. Barefoot, she wanders the streets on New Years Eve. Because she hasn’t sold any matches she can’t go back home. So she freezes to death. The end. She gets taken to heaven. So it seems that the moral of the story is very sucky – the meek will be saved, God is counting every hair on your head, don’t worry about being outcast and despised, it will all be okay in the end. But wait. She has a pocketful of matches but she freezes to death. There is a different point here from the meretricious fake ending this slight story has. The real point is that with her matches she could have burned down a rich person’s house and not frozen to death. The real point is that the poor and oppressed have the power in their own hands to change their situation should they only realise it. And further, that conventional piety exists to divert them from this dangerous truth.

I was also not expecting “Donkeyskin”, which I didn’t know. This is a tale explicitly about incest. The dying Queen makes the King swear that he will never remarry unless he finds a woman more beautiful than she is. Some years pass and he realises that their daughter is more beautiful than her mother. So her proposes marriage! The rest of the tale is all about how she escapes that fate.



Maria Tatar weaves many mythologies and folklores together in her notes as she explores the many profound cultural motifs and the psychosexual bedrock from which they spring

[From a note on Rumpeltiltskin] In ancient religions naming the gods compelled them to respond to worshippers, hence the taboo against invoking their names. Knowing the name of your antagonist represents a form of control…in numerous myths and folktales, there is a prohibition against asking the name of the beloved, and violation of the taboo often leads to flight or transformation into an animal.

In tales of three sons, the youngest and often the stupidest of the three is the one singled out for good fortune.

So skipping from heavyweight ponderings to wry humour and always adding a note precisely when the reader thinks “wait, what the hell did I just read?” Maria Tatar could not have served up this bejewelled confectionary any better, not if she had seven league boots on and was attended by twenty frog princes.

Highly recommended.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually love the Norton Annotated books, but this one was a disappointment. The first let-down was that Tatar also annotated The Annotated Brothers Grimm and The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, and many of the same fairy tales -- with the same or nearly the same annotations -- are included here. Only about 1/3 of the book is not available elsewhere, mostly Charles Perrault fairy tales. In addition, usually the art reproductions in these books are excellent, but in this case many of them were so small that it was impossible to see any detail (basically, they were thumbnail size), and the reproduction was very dark. Frequently the annotations would mention details in the illustrations that were difficult or downright impossible to see!

This is a fairly good collection if you haven't already read the Grimm and Andersen books, but otherwise it's definitely not one I would recommend purchasing. I really wish Tatar had just done an "Annotated Charles Perrault" or "Annotated French Fairy Tales" instead of this somewhat lazy and slapdash volume.

[Ayesha (Seokjin's Version) ☾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't mind me, just reading all of the stories that I missed out on in my childhood.

[JG (Introverted Reader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love retold fairy tales but don't often go back to the original sources. This was a nice refresher and even an introduction to some classic European tales.

Some annotations and introductions were more helpful than others, as is always the case with these kinds of books. I would have been perfectly happy if any contributions from Bruno Bettelheim had been eliminated. In the introduction to "The Story of the Three Bears," Tatar writes,

"For Bruno Bettelheim, 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' fails to encourage children 'to pursue the hard labor of solving, one at a time, the problems which growing up presents.' Furthermore the story does not end, as fairy tales should, with 'any promise of future happiness awaiting those who have mastered their oedipal situation as a child.'" Say what? *eyeroll*

I did like annotations that explained archaic words, practices that have disappeared, cultural archetypes, or tidbits about the authors' lives that were relevant to their stories.

But by far the best part of this volume for me was the inclusion of old full color (when available) artwork for each tale. I was already aware of Arthur Rackham as a fantasy artist (Charles Vess, whose work I love, lists him as an influence) and marginally aware of Maxfield Parrish, but I also discovered Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen, Edward Burne-Jones, and more. Their work is absolutely gorgeous! I would love to have fairy tale collections illustrated by almost any of the artists included in this edition. I just wish there had been room to make each print bigger! They're small enough to fit about six paintings per page. As it is, it's hard to make out details that the author specifically mentions in her analyses. But bigger art would have made the book longer and driven the cost even higher.

An appendix includes alternate versions of a few of the tales, which is always interesting. One inclusion that puzzled me was an alternate of "The Three Bears." Dr. Tatar emphasizes in her introduction that some versions of the story make the little girl (Goldilocks) an old woman. As far as I can tell, the alternate version is exactly the same story, word for word, but with "little old Woman" substituted for every mention of "Goldilocks." I thought it was an incredibly redundant inclusion.

I recommend this for those who love fairy tales across many European traditions. The artwork, while small, is definitely worth a look.

[Candy]

As repositories of a collective cultural consciousness and unconscious, fairy tales have attracted the attention of psychologists, more notably the renowned child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. In his landmark study, The Use of Enchantment, Bettelheim argued that fairy tales have a powerful therapeutic value, teaching children that "a struggle against severe difficulties in life is unavoiable." (introduction, xiii)

Over the past decades child psychologists have mobilized fairy tales as powerful therapeutic vehicles for helping children and adults solve their problems by meditating on the dramas staged in them.

Each text becomes an enabling device, allowing readers to work through their fears and to purge themselves of hostile feelings and damaging desires. By entering the world of fantasy and imagination, children and adults secure for themselves a safe space where fears can be confronted, mastered, and banished. Beyond that, the real magic of the fairy tale lies in its ability to extract pleasure from pain. In bringing to life the dark figures of our imagination as ogres, witches, cannibals, and giants fairy tales may stir up dread, but in the end they always supply the pleasure of seeing it vanquished. (xiv)


Disseminated across a wide variety of media, ranging from opera and drama to cinema and advertising, fairy tales have become a vital part of our cultural capital. What keeps them alive and pulsing with vitality and variety is exactly what keeps life pulsing: anxieties, fears, desires, romance, passion, and love. Like our ancestors, who listened to these stories at the fireside, in taverns, and in spinning rooms, we remain transfixed by stories about wicked stepmothers, bloodthirsty ogres, sibling rivals, and fairy godmothers.

For us, too, the stories are irresistible, for they offer opportunities to talk, to negotiate, to deliberate, to chatter, and to prattle on endlessly as did the old wives from whom the stories are thought to derive, And from the tangle of that talk and chitchat, we begin to define our own values, desires, appetites, and aspirations, creating identities that will allow us to produce happily-ever-after endings for ourselves and for our children. (xix)

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had a thing for fairy tales since I was a child, when I read those Coloured Fairy Books edited by Andrew Lang. They inspired Angela Carter, too, so I count myself in good company. Maria Tatar has written many works on fairy tales, both scholarly and in a more popular vein, so she knows her stuff. This volume presents a collection of fairy tales many readers will be familiar with, from Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and others, translated by Tatar and full of interesting annotations and beautiful artwork, most from the early twentieth century.


Going to Grandmother's house. Jessie Wilcox Smith (1863-1935) "Little Red Riding Hood", 1919. Source.

Here are the tales: The Grimm Brothers' "Little Red Riding Hood", "Snow White", "Sleeping Beauty", Rapunzel", "The Frog King or Iron Heinrich", and "Rumpelstiltskin"; Charles Perrault's "Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper", "Bluebeard", "Donkeyskin", "Master Cat, or Puss in Boots", and "Tom Thumb"; Joseph Jacobs' "Jack and the Beanstalk", "Molly Whuppie", "The Story of the Three Little Pigs", and "Kate Crackernuts"; Hans Christian Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Match Girl", "The Princess and the Pea", "The Ugly Duckling", and "The Little Mermaid"; Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's "Beauty and the Beast"; Philipp Otto Runge's "The Juniper Tree"; Alexander Afanasev's "Vasilisa the Fair"; Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe's "East of the Sun and West of the Moon"; and the anonymous, well-known "The Story of the Three Bears".

Each of these twenty-six tales gets its own mini introduction, summing up its history and providing some gems of literary insight. The annotations explain symbols and context, compare variations on the plots over the centuries, or make observations on the storytelling, often with humor. For instance, we're told "how good fortune often trumps heroic feats in fairy tales," like when the prince who awakens Sleeping Beauty just happens to arrive as the hundred-year curse is ending. Lucky timing.


The prince that wakes Sleeping Beauty gets through the deadly thorn hedge due to showing up at the right time. The previous would-be suitors didn't fare so well. The Briar Wood panel, part of the Briar Rose series of paintings (1870-90) by Edward Burne-Jones, Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, England. Source.

Tatar wraps up her informative book with two biography sections, one for the authors and collectors of these tales, the other of the illustrators. (It was interesting to note that many of these authors faced criticism for using colloquial styles, or simply publishing bawdy tales considered "inappropriate".) Two appendices look at Walter Crane and George Cruikshank's artwork more closely, and another two give us Robert Southey's version of "The Story of the Three Bears" (1837), and two different French versions of "Little Red Riding Hood".


A scene from Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête (1946) that emphasises the apprehension of meeting the beast in his mysterious castle. Source.

This is probably not the best book for reading to kids. The footnoted annotations can be a distraction in that context, not to mention that some of these tales have violent and disturbing parts. "Vasilisa the Fair", "Donkeyskin", "Bluebeard", and "The Juniper Tree" especially may not be suitable for younger children.

"My mother, she slew me,
My father, he ate me,
My sister, Little Marlene,
Gathered up my bones,
Tied them up in silk,
And put them under the juniper tree."

The Grimms and Perrault were collecting and editing for young audiences—Parrault tacked morals onto every story—but others were not. Most were collecting folktales that were disappearing with modernity, or to promote cultural pride and nationalism.

But hey, for all I know your kids might love the way the wicked stepmother in "The Juniper Tree" beheads her stepson with the lid of a wooden chest, puts the beheading blame on her daughter, then disposes of the body by cooking him into a stew for the father's supper. They may even find the footnotes informative and interesting. You know them best.


Baba Yaga, flying on her mortar, with her pestle and broom, as illustrated by Ivan Bilibin for "Vasilisa the Fair" (1900). As Tartar says, "there is no mistaking her for a kind old granny figure." Source.

See also:
Angela Carter was very inspired by fairy tales. She not only put together a collection, Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales, in the spirit of Andrew Lang's colored fairy tale books, but she translated The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, as well as penning her own versions in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. My review of The Bloody Chamber is here.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for learning and I love annotated editions of pretty much anything. I'm the dork who reads all of the editor's comments and even sometimes I look up their citations. Obviously I was the annoying child who always asked why. So when I found this annotated edition of classic fairy tales on Amazon I had to buy it.

The editor is Harvard Professor Maria Tatar. She's a historian, author, and an expert on languages and literature.

The best part about this edition is that you get all of the classic fairy tales plus some you've never heard of, like Bluebeard, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Valisa the Fair, and Donkeyskin. I didn't know I was missing out on so much.

The second best part about this edition is the illustrations. The books combines all of the classic illustrations done by the masters - Harry Clarke, Kay Nielson, Edmund Dulac, Gustave Dore, Arthur Rackman, and others. These illustrations make our modern interpretations look like child's art. These illustrations are magnificently detailed and lovingly drawn.

If you'd like to know the story behind the tale I think you'd really enjoy this edition of The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. Tatar does a fantastic job giving you the historical background and interpretations. 5 Stars.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're interested in fairy tales, and want to understand their true import as explicators of the state of ancient societies and their discontents, lessons, and mores -- then this is the edition you must have. Tatar's introductory essays are thoughtful and balanced, presenting Bettleheim's psychological analyses, more modern gender-based explanations, and her own thinking in good measure. The illustrations are gorgeous, the thinking profound, and the fairy tales themselves truly terrifying when stripped of their 19th-century moralizing.

[Abbi Dion · Rating 5 out of 5]

SUCH a freaking treasure. I love this book for the stories, the annotations (1), the critical introductions (2) and THE PLATES; my God, they are amazing. Kay Nielsen and Arthur Rackham are mind-blowing in their style and technique.

1.
"he put on her clothes and her nightcap." Anne Sexton referred to the Grimms' wolf as a "kind of transvestite" in her verse collection Transformations.

AND

Cinderella. Aschenputtel is the name the Grimms used for their Cinderella. The term was originally used to designate a lowly kitchen maid, a servant who had to tend the ashes at the hearth.

2.
"The polyphonic quality of every fairy tale adds a powerful dimension of complexity to tales that are often seen as simple stories, so transparent and accessible that they have become the matter of our childhood primers. Yet the Grimms' stories do not escape the interpretive challenges posed by narratives that blend multiple voices and discourses. To what degree, for example, do their tales reflect the local and the particular? [...]"

"In a letter to a friend, Jacob Grimm noted that the Children's Stories and Household Tales had never been 'written for children' but that he was pleased to discover that the book appealed to them and to their parents."

[Kushnuma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this annotated edition of some of the classic fairy tales. I liked how their were different versions of many of the stories, with bits and pieces being changed. I also liked the many illustrations by various people, which was nice to have alongside the stories.

[Eliza · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book to have if you're obsessed with fairy tales (like me) and love hearing about how they started, and about the psychological effects they have on children.

This was a very interesting read. The pictures are nice too!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. This book was so cool because it had a bunch of different illustrations and I really liked the different annotated notes from Tatar. Sadly, we breezed through this book (she'd assign 6 fairy tales at a time) so I don't think I could've enjoyed the book quite as much as I would've liked, but otherwise, I absolutely adored the book and all it contained.

[H. Anne Stoj · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really adore annotated books. It just calls to the book geek in me. Particularly when it concerns a topic that I love. It helps, as well, when the introduction is by someone that I really enjoy reading, like Maria Tatar who, like Jack Zipes, is amazing when it comes to knowledge about faerytales.

So, what are the classics? Most of us probably know a good many, but perhaps not all that Tatar includes here. But they are, in order:

Little Red Riding Hood - Brothers Grimm
Cinderella - Perrault
Hansel and Gretel - Brothers Grimm
Beauty and the Beast - Beaumont
Snow White - Brothers Grimm
Sleeping Beauty - Brothers Grimm
Rapunzel - Brothers Grimm
The Frog King or Iron Heinrich - Brothers Grim
Rumpelstilzkin - Brothers Grimm
Jack and the Beanstalk - Jacobs
Bluebeard - Perrault
The Juniper Tree - Runge
Vasilisa the Fair - Afanasev
East of the Sun, West of the Moon - Asbjornsen and Moe
Molly Whuppie - Jacobs
The Story of the Three Little Pigs - Jacobs
Donkeyskin - Perrault
Kate Crackernuts - Jacobs
Master Cat, or Puss in Boots - Perrault
The Story of the Three Bears - Anonymous
Tom Thumb - Perrault
The Emperor's New Clothes - Andersen
The Little Match Girl - Andersen
The Princess and the Pea - Andersen
The Ugly Duckling - Andersen
The Little Mermaid - Andersen

So, there are the stories. I think before I had this collection I was familiar with most of them in some shape or another. What I constantly find ironic is the idea that faerytales fall under the realm of "children's stories". Take a good look at what's going on, and remember that some like Perrault "tided" up older versions. In Cinderella, the stepmother cuts off the heel of one daughter and the toe of another to make their feet fit in the slipper. Oh, and the stepmother danced to death in red hot iron shoes at the wedding. Snow White has the apple, sure, but she also got duped twice before that with a poisoned comb and corset laces. The Little Mermaid feels like she's walking on knives and no, she doesn't get the prince, so she dies and becomes part of the air and maybe if she's good she'll make it to heaven. The Frog King (we'd know it better as the Frog Prince) is crushed against a wall by the princess. Disney, I believe, didn't show any of that.

The annotations within bring light to why the stories are the way they are. Or were. Donkeyskin is horrific with it's theme of incest (I don't see Disney doing that any time soon, but Robin McKinley's book Deerskin is excellent). Bluebeard is one of my favorites, but again, another horror story. East of the Sun, West of the Moon is simply beautiful (there's a fantastic retelling in novel called East, but I'm forgetting the author's name) and one of the rare stories where the girl isn't in need of rescue but does the rescuing.

I think this is simply an excellent book for someone who would like to know more about faerytales and perhaps doesn't know where to start or how to start looking into their history as there are a good many books out there. What's also rather lovely is that Tatar includes information on some of the best illustrators which are featured through the book as well: Arthur Rackham, Edmond Dulac, Maxfield Parrish and others. It's just really delightful.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading these fairy tales that I remember from my childhood... and some new ones to go along with it. Tatar's annotations make these stories even more interesting now that I'm an adult. I only had to read a couple of them for class, but I just decided to read all of them to learn about some new tales and refresh my memory on some old ones. My two favorite from this collection were "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" I thought it was beautifully written, and "The Ugly Duckling" because I think everyone at one time can identify with the duckling. I also really enjoyed "The Little Match Girl" and "The Little Mermaid" but they were both really sad and brought tears to my eyes. All the same, though, they were still beautifully written and reading them was a pleasure. There were only two things about this collection of fairy tales that I would have changed: 1) I think she could have made the illustrations way bigger... I loved all the illustrations, but they were pretty difficult to see sometimes, so if they had been bigger, that would have been nice. 2) I think she could have had even more annotations... but I'm not an expert on children's lit, nor do I really know when an annotation is necessary or not, so the annotations she does have are a huge help.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tatar's selected a nice cross-section of tales from all over Europe and I love her introductions to each one. She talks about the culture that the stories originated in and contrasts the values of those cultures with modern attitudes. It's great context.

I wish there were more annotations though, especially around historical details that are no longer familiar. Tatar is again more interested in making cultural and social observations, some of which she'd already covered in the intros.

I'd also prefer larger reproductions of the classic illustrations included in the book. There are some decent appendices at the end showcasing the work of a couple of particular artists, but most of the art is so tiny that it's impossible to see the details.

Still, it's a very good volume simply for the essentiality of the stories it contains.

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This marvellous collection does exactly what it says on the tin. Some of the most well-known fairy tales, from Little Red Riding Hood to Snow White to The Little Mermaid, are gathered here with lesser-known tales such as Kate Crackernuts, each with introductions explaining their genesis and history, notes for themes or other points of interest in the text (glass or fur?), and plenty of annotated historical illustrations from artists such as Arthur Rackham, Walter Crane, Edmund Dulac and Edward Burne-Jones.

There's even a section with short biographies on the original authors/collectors of the tales and artists, with a list of further reading for more detailed biographies. The appendices contain some alternate versions of tales and an extensive bibliography.

A refreshing review for anyone who's interested in this genre but hasn't read any for a while!

[Christie]

This is not a good book to fall asleep cuddling. It is exactly the sort of book that will give you a black eye when you hop back into bed too quickly after hitting the snooze button on your alarm.

But it is exactly the sort of book that has all of your old favorite fairy tales. It is exactly the sort of book that has really interesting and well researched information on each of these stories. It is exactly the sort of book that happens to have a wide assortment of beautiful classic illustrations of each of these stories. It is the sort of book that you will fall in love with.

Therefore it's really, really important that you remember the first part of my review: Don't fall asleep cuddling this book.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enjoyable collection of classic fairy tales with some annotation. This book excels in having engaging, readable versions of the classic fairy tales in a single volume. Especially fascinating to me were the lesser-known tales included like Donkeyskin and East of the Sun West of the Moon. The translations of the non-English tales are especially notable for readability. While Tatar definitely wants to examine the tales as more than moralistic literature, it is hard to argue that they do provide an excellent framework for children (and even adults) to embark on "thought experiments" about what appropriate responses are to incredible situations. Also worthy of note are the exceptional collection of artwork gathered for this book. Definitely a worthy resource to have on the shelf!

[Joseph Pinchback · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories here are classic, of course, it's right there in the title. The annotations are fascinating; Tatar gives tons of illuminating little details. All of this is great. However, the real draw here is the illustrations, taken from classic sources. To call the illustrations beautiful is to understate the situation. I read a lot, and lemme tell you, it's nice to read such a great collection of stories while looking at a bunch of pretty pictures. I think it's about high time that we expanded this concept. If they had a version of, say, Moby Dick with a bunch of pictures in it, I'd have probably read it by now.

[tam tam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found a gorgeous copy of this (with pristine dust jacket) at a used bookstore called, I think, BookMan BookWoman in Nashville. I was there at Xmas time, with family, on a trip to watch my niece compete in cheerleading nationals at the Opryland Hotel. Sorry (no offence to spirit teams), but horrifying. At the time I was writing my senior thesis on contemporary reworkings of fairy tales (heavy on the Angela Carter) (I have read SO MUCH about Bluebeard) and to find this was divine. It is just a lovely book. A jewel in the collection, really.

[Marcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a interesting look at the history of the fairy tales we know and love. Originally told between adults, they were often lascivious--in one version Little Red Riding Hood performs a strip tease for the wolf (the common symbol of the predatory male.) As the stories made their way to the nursery, they were cleaned up. and often changed to impart a moral. The psychological reasoning shared in the annotations is fascinating. The book includes many of the original illustrations which are mesmerizing. A fun book if you are interested in folkloristics.

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my Christmas present from my very best friend and I love it! I read the entire thing through cover to cover. It introduced me to different versions of fairy tales told in different areas, different stories all together, artists, how tales began and then were changed either intentionally or through spreading. Especially the artwork was so touching for me. I am now in love with Edmund Dulac. His illustrations for the Little Mermaid-my all time favorite fairy tale-were simply perfect.

[Irene Lázaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

La verdad es que es un libro que tiene de todo: biografías de los escritores, compiladores e ilustradores, ilustraciones de varios artistas para cada cuento, anotaciones interesantes referentes a otras versiones del cuento... poco más se puede pedir. Quizá me hubiera gustado profundizar más en el aspecto psicológico de los cuentos de hadas, pero la autora ofrece bibliografía complementaria a la que acudir y además ese no es el objetivo de este libro. He aprendido mucho sobre los cuentos de hadas clásicos con esta lectura.

[Amy Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good gift book, and with its greater variety I think overall more appealing than Tatar's Annotated Brothers Grimm, with which it is somewhat redundant -- though like that one, it's meant to appeal to a broader audience. Scholars should instead consider her academic texts, like the Norton Critical Edition of the Classic Fairy Tales. I do love her approach on fairy tales, a cross between anthropological and literary, not too caught up by the limitations of either.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeous volume. The illustrations are all done by famous, classic children's artists and should be savored. The source notes are wonderful and enlightening, and the annotations are good, but I sometimes wanted more information, maybe on symbolism within and between cultures. I guess sometimes they just seemed obvious to me, but the rest of the information is so good that this is a small point. So glad to have this in my collection!

[Sinar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though the title says "... classic fairy tales", this book is not really for children. In fact it is for those (say, adults) who love the classic fairy tales and want to learn about the history of those fairy tales.
Very surprising and eye-opening to read the facts and reasons behind why some of those stories were made/told. Some even so dark and gory that I agree with the editor that such stories were not really for children:)

[Cheryl]

I think one's appreciation of this is related to how much else by Tatar and other analysts one has read, and how recently. I certainly can't appreciate it right after reading her "Off with their Heads." I really don't like how small and dark many of the pictures are. I did learn though that Goldilocks is a fairly new character, that the Three Bears story started with a nosy old woman intruder and three bears who were just brothers or friends.

[José Miguel Tomasena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una maravilla: los mejores cuentos clásicos (los hermanos Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, etc), bellamente ilustrados y con un aparato crítico increíble para comprender cómo muchos de estos relatos pasaron de la tradición oral a la fijación por escrita. Hay múltiples referencias a otras variantes, etc.

[Angi Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

The real fairy tales the way they were originaly written. Not so happy endings!
It's nice that they go into detail and explain the back story and some of the terminology from the stories as well as original illustrations.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tatar not only includes good annotations to the tales, but also brief bios about the writers and the artists. It is a wonderfully illustrated collection. A word of warning, the annotations for the Grimm and Andersen stories appear in those editions as well as here, so there is some overlap.