Customer Reviews

Grimm's Fairy Tales (Barnes & Noble Classics)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is one classic that will put a grin on your face over and over. It's a delightful collection, and not just for kids, but for anyone who wants a little light escapism. Much is made of the violence, but it is so cartoonishly over the top and karmically justified that I doubt it seriously disturbing to even children, who can see worse on t.v. in an hour's time anytime. What is amazing to me is how much of the basis this book is for Disney's classics and other animated films. This is a book that has truly lived in various forms on screen and other entertainments for ages. Nice to read something that is just plain fun, full of little twists and turns. As classics go, it is timeless.

I bought this for a course on German Fairy Tales. Several people in the class had this edition, although it was not the one specified by the professor.

The professor was continually surprised by the poor quality of the translation (he is a native german speaker and studies these stories).
As just one example, Rapunzel is named after the variety of lettuce that her parents stole. For some reason this book decided to translate that plant into "radishes" without changing her name.
There are other stories too, that are just... missing something.

The stories are great, but you can find better translations of them (even for free online). Don't buy this edition.

This was a book requested by a dear old lady in a nursing home: she enjoyed it and it made her happy.

I must have been the only person who didn't realize that many of Disney's stories were straight from the Grimm brothers. I found many of the stories contained throughout the book to be similar. Three brothers, princesses, people turned into animals, after a while everything blended together. After you've read the first five stories you can just stop, because everything else is very repetitious.

Unlike Hans Christian Anderson, the Brothers Grimm did not invent new fairy tales but collected old ones, with the intention of preserving the oral tradition of the German peasantry. Whether in fact they fulfilled that intention has been questioned. Their tales do afford a glimpse of a world of castles and forests, nobles and peasants, superstitious beliefs and primitive practices that suggest origins at least as old as feudal Europe, and often much older. Some of the tales have been traced back through the centuries by way of earlier versions until they disappear into prehistoric times.