Customer Reviews

The Green Fairy Book (Dover Children's Classics)

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Andrew Lang's colored fairy books are justifiably famous, and this (along with "The Red Fairy Book") is one of the best of the series. As in all the volumes, the prose is clear and swift, moving the tales along. Since this was the third book in the series, he was not yet scraping the barrels of world fairy tales for the leavings; contrariwise, however, the first volume (Blue) has all of Ye Olde Stand-byes, while this and Red have tales just as wonderful that are less well known.

Despite Lang's flaws -- most notably, his heroines have a way of turning passive -- there are far worse ways to introduce a child to the spirit of wonder tales than this volume.

In the late 19th century, historian, scholar, and anthropologist, Andrew Lang, began publishing collections of fairy tales from around the world. The first volume was `The Blue Fairy Book' published in 1887. Lang was not a true ethnologist, like the German Brothers Grimm. He was far more the `translator' than collector of tales from the source, stories transcribed from being told by people to whom the tales were passed down by word of mouth. In fact, many stories in his first volume, such as Rumpelstiltskin; Snow White; Sleeping Beauty; Cinderella; and Hansel and Gretel were translated from Grimm's books of fairy tales. Some of his `fairy tales' were even `copied from relatively recent fantasy fiction, such as A Voyage to Lilliput, the first of the four episodes in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
My inspiration for commenting Lang's series of fairy tale books is for the sheer quantity of tales, the wonderful woodcut illustrations, some few of which may have become almost as popular as the tales (although not quite in the same league as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations for Lewis Carroll's great fantasies), and the fact that I had these when I was young.
With twelve of these books, with between 30 and 36 stories in each book, this gives one about 400 different stories. If I were to recommend anything as standard equipment at a grandparents' house, it would be a complete set of these books.
Needless to say, there are a few `warnings' to accompany books assembled over 100 years ago. You will encounter a fair number of words with which even an adult may be unfamiliar, let alone a five year old. For example, on the second page of The Princess Mayblossom in The Red Fairy Book, a character puts sulfur in a witch's porridge. This requires at least three explanations. What is sulfur, what is porridge, and why is sulfur in porridge such a bad thing. More difficult still is when a prince entered the town on a white horse which `pranced and caracoled to the sound of the trumpets'. In 19th century London, caracoling (making half turns to the right and the left) was probably as common and as well known as `stepping on the gas' is today. But, if you're a grandparent, that's half the fun, explaining new words and ideas to the young-uns.
There is another `danger' which may require just a bit more explanation, although in today's world of crime dramas on TV, I'm not sure that most kids are already totally immune to being shocked by death and dead bodies. In these stories, lots of people and creatures get killed in very unpleasant ways, and lots of very good people and creatures suffer in very unpleasant ways. It's ironic that the critics in Lang's own time felt the stories were 'unreality, brutality, and escapism to be harmful for young readers, while holding that such stories were beneath the serious consideration of those of mature age'. The success of a whole library of Walt Disney feature length cartoons based on these stories is a testament to how well they work with children. But do be warned, Uncle Walt did clean things up a bit. Lang's versions hold back on very little that was ugly and unpleasant in some of these stories.
The down side to the great quantity of stories is that even when some come from very different parts of the world, there is a remarkable amount of overlap in theme, plot, and characters. But by the time you get to another story of a beautiful young girl mistreated by a stepmother, it will have been several month since you read Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper in The Blue Fairy Book. The other side of the coin is that you can play the game of trying to recall what that other story was with a similar theme.
There is one very big word of caution about buying these books through Amazon or a similar on line outlet. I stopped counting when I got to twelve different editions of The Blue Fairy Book, or a volume including several of these books. Not all of these editions have the original woodcuts and even worse, not all have a table of contents and introduction. The one publisher which has all twelve volumes is by Dover. Other publishers, such as Flying Chipmunk Publishing (yes, that's it's name) also have all the original illustrations, table of contents, and introduction, but I'm not certain that publisher has all twelve volumes. Dover most certainly does, as I just bought all twelve of them from Amazon.
While I suspect these stories may have been `old hat' for quite some time, it may be that with the popularity of Lord of the Rings, the Narnia stories, and the Harry Potter stories, all of which have their share of suffering and death, that these may be in for a revival. Again, the main attraction is that for relatively little money and space, Grammy and Grandad get a great resource for bonding with children.

The Green Fairy Book has stories from Spanish and Chinese traditions and a few written by the Comte de Caylus. Also stories by Sebillot, Fenelon, Kletke, Mme. de'Aulnoy, and the Brothers Grimm. Includes The Bue Bird, Sylvain and Jocos, Prince Narcissus and the Princess Potentilla, The Three Little Pigs, and The Half-Chick. 42 stories.

Andrew Lang's "The Green Fairy Book" is a definite must-have simply because of the variety of the stories. Many are comfortable, familiar, and traditional while others had definite writers and are a little less well-known. It's a great and enjoyable mix of tale titles; however, I was a little dissapointed that too many of the tales were essentially the same. I realize that this happens often in fairy tales, but it's still preferable to keep them out of the same book.

Other than that, this is another fairy tale masterpiece for fans of the Lang collection.

Andrew Lang (1844-1912) wrote a number of books of fairy tales and differentiated each from the other by color; for example, this one is green, and others are pink, blue, grey, brown, and lilac. This is his third book "of many colors." The first was blue and the second red. He drew his tales from many countries. He believes that the first fairy tales were written in Egypt "about Joseph's time, nearly three thousand five hundred years ago." He contends that the authors of the fairy tales were made "by men who were childlike in their amusement, so they amuse children still." Some were written to teach morals. But people read them to be amused and diverted rather than to learn lessons. He includes very old tales as well as some written only about two centuries before his time in France. Only one of the dozens of tales is well-known: The Story of the Three Bears. Lang is an excellent writer and children should enjoy his tales.

Nevertheless, since they are all fairy tales, they have many of the usual items found in other fairy tales. The Blue Bird is an example. It is a story of love. It has a cruel stepmother and an ugly step sister and a husband who does not want to go against the wishes of his second wife. There are fairies and an enchanter. A ring plays an important part as well as other jewels. Clothes and being dressed up and looking beautiful is part of the tale. There are tricks in the tale and deceit and unjust imprisonment. There is also a princess, actually two of them, and a handsome prince, called King Charming. There is a magic spell that seems to ruin the chances for the lovers to get together; a transformation from a human to an animal, in this case a blue bird; and the magic number seven. And the beautiful princess is as usual very young, here age fifteen.

Not all of the dozen tales have all these ingredients, but they are generally all very good.

My children and I use the Fairy Books series as part of our homeschooling program. We just love them.

We've replaced this book several times over the years as it is a family favorite and gets a lot of use. Delightful stories. Enjoy!

The Kindle edition, as of 8-21-2011, has no table of contents, which it desperately needs, and horrible formatting. The html version at Project Gutenberg is better than this one. Hopefully some day these will all be fixed. It really sucks having to click though page after pager after page just to find the story you're looking for, when simply clicking it in the index would bring you there in no time.

It's free. Download it and check it out for yourself.

*edit*
Someone in another color book review mentioned that there is a collection of all of these that is much better anyways. Check it out.

Andrew Lang just continues to spit out one greatr book after another. His stories are vivid and follow the plot they were meant to follow. This book contains 42 stories and 98 black and white pictues. Some of the stories in this book include:Prince Narcissus and the Princess Potentilla,The Three Little Pigs,The Enchanted Ring,The Magic Swan,The Crystsal Coffin, The Riddle,The Three Musicians, and more.