The better to hear you with, my dear.

The Book of Old-Time Fairy Tales, beautifully illustrated by Margaret Evans Price was on the bargain shelf at Barnes and Noble bargain last time we visited. I recognized the cover illustration instantly, from another story collection I read when I was young.

Two of the fine young gents share a room, soon to be joined by the third. My guys are best friends, much to my delight, and sometimes to my dismay. My visions of tucking my sweet darlings peacefully in to bed were dashed by much giggling and jumping and Hot Wheels flying from bed to bed and so forth. And so...bedtime stories. Storytime started as a survival tactic, a positive alternative to "Quit-stop-don't!" and has since become one of my favorite times of day. I rock in the rocking chair with a book or my sewing. We chat for a bit and I read while the gents drift off to sleep. Sometimes it's my reading, like The Reformation, and sometimes it's fairy tales.

from Cinderella

These old-time fairy tales aren't the sanitized Disney-ized versions, where the bad guys disappear never to be seen again. They're full of blood. Hop 'o My Thumb tricks a wicked ogre into slitting the throats of his own wicked ogre daughters, Jack the Giant Killer bashes giants in the head and cuts their heads off with a magic sword. Interesting, though, Sleeping Beauty magically wakes, sans kiss, as her prince reaches her bedside, and they talk for hours before joining the world that's awakening around them. The gents seem to be unphased by the gore and death. Maybe they take it as a matter of course that the bad guys die. Or maybe it just sails right over their heads, just another plot device that keeps the stories moving along neatly-- really, what else can logically stop a wicked giant?

from The Frog Prince

This particular collection of fairy tales has some grand old favorites, like Cinderella and Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty. And there are some not-so-common tales, including Furball and King Hawksbeak, The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Hop o' My Thumb. I grew up steeped in these fairy tales, reading version after version of the same stories. The three princes, good daughters, clever youngest sons, wicked ogres, disguised fairies. Wickedness and foolishness punished, virtue rewarded. Women are beautiful and sweet and kind, or ugly and wicked and petty. Men are either clever adventurers or the princely accessories necessary for the wedding that ends the story.

from Diamonds and Toads

It's been a treat to re-discover these familiar tales through the eyes of my boys. They're drinking them in. At the end of each tale, they like to re-tell it back to me, asking questions, trying to resolve for themselves the ins and outs of the story. For fairy tale fans young or old, this site, SurLaLune Fairy Tales, has annotated versions of many fairy tale favorites that include "the tales, their histories, similar tales from other cultures, bibliographies, and modern interpretations." Sometimes the annotations can be just as interesting as the tales themselves.

from The Twelve Dancing Princesses