Fairy Tales

Quote Originally Posted by bendk

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein

I bet if I were shown Kay Nielsen's amazing illustrations accompanying East of the Sun and West of the Moon, a collection of Scandinavian fairy tales, when I was young, then I would have had even more fantastical dreams:

http://www.brainpickings.org/2012/08...t-of-the-moon/

[Speaking Mute]

The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales was a great collection of late 19th and 20th century works that appears to be out of print. Tanith Lee's "Red as Blood" and the sequel "Redder than Blood" are in the same vein as Angela Carter.

I'd recommend Basile's Tale of Tales and Straparola's The Facetious Nights of Straparola over the Perrault or Brothers Grimm retellings. The folk ballads of Reynard the Fox technically aren't fairy tales due to their length and format, but I'd recommend them as such- the Terry translation is an excellent verse rendition, but I think it's censorship of the cruder humor interferes with the plot, whereas the recent Simpson translation is a prose rendition that many find stilted, but is loyal to the source material.

[Acutely decayed]

Quote Originally Posted by bendk

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein

somewhere i read, and this may be an incorrect anecdote, the enquirer asked again "but what if you want them to be REALLY intelligent?" and AE said after some thought, "read them MORE fairy tales"

I really like Ed Young's illustrations in Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China. It's a Chinese version of Little Red Riding Hood but retold by Young, and the artwork is quite dark and ethereal. It definitely deserved the Caldecott medal:



Ed Young's Cat and Rat: The Legend of the Chinese Zodiac also possesses a dark style. I will edit with more thoughts later.

[Ibrahim]

Recommended: the fairy tales of Louis Couperus, Dutch writer of Indonesian descent who had his occasional vaguely decadent phases.
Don't know if anything of his beyond 'Eline Vere' or 'De Stille Kracht' has ever been translated into English, though.
Well, if i ever have time for a hobby...

[bendk]

I enjoyed this book of fairy tales very much. The criticism from readers tends to be that it is "a downer" or "depressing". They obviously have no idea who they are dealing with. Some algorithm recommended it. Nice.

https://www.amazon.com/Bone-Mother-David-Demchuk/dp/1771484217/ref=sr_1_2?Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=50&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=2&qid=1575944006&refinements=p_27%3Ademchuk&s=books&sr=1-2&unfiltered=1

 

https://www.amazon.com/Bone-Mother-David-Demchuk/dp/1771484217/ref=sr_1_2?Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.x=50&Adv-Srch-Books-Submit.y=2&qid=1575944006&refinements=p_27%3Ademchuk&s=books&sr=1-2&unfiltered=1