The fairy tale books we favour are those that at least have wonderfully dramatic illustrations. Kids know when something’s being sugar-coated and the modern versions are just so slack and pale. I tried to find an original Grimm’s fairy tales book for them (my mother having given away all the books of my youth!) but in these PC times, all you can find are extremely edited and saccharine versions. I read one story aloud to my daughters and they loved it too, so I might have to buy this (I confess I got this from the library) so they can read for themselves. Philip Pullman (author of The Golden Compass) has re-told these stories, keeping in the gore but editing for clarity and concision. In a world full of unfairness, it was satisfying to read stories in which everything came out right and the bad guys got their just desserts. Plus, the villains were usually punished in appropriately graphic fashion. No bowdlerization there! When you’re a kid, you’re always suspecting that something’s being kept from you – because it is – so when I encountered a book that held nothing back, I was delighted. Of course that instantly became my favourite book of fairy tales. They were the dark, original versions full of gore, people being killed and rising from the dead, Cinderella’s stepsisters having their eyes pecked out. When I was young, someone gave us a book of fairy tales.
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