Customer Reviews

Violet Fairy Book

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For some reason, this is one of my favorites of the Colored Fairy Books edited by Andrew Lang. Once again, Lang includes tales from many cultures including The Boys with the Golden Stars, The Envious Neighbor, The Fairy of the Dawn, The Finest Liar in the World, The Story of a Gazelle, The Girl Who Pretended To Be a Boy, The Grateful Prince and many others. I am also a fan of H. J. Ford's illustrations. Be sure to admire them and wonder at the power of black and white. END

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.

While I love all of Andrew Lang's collections, I think this has to be one of my favorites. This is a collection that pretty much goes out of its way to collect every strange, exotic, and unknown tale on the face of the planet. Far from the simplicity of other tales, these are complex and detailed. Which probably means they were not passed down quite as much, but are wondrous and inspiring just the same

As always Andrew Lang's books continue to be great, this book being no exception. This book contains myriad great fairy tales, great for all ages, my mom read them when she was younger and know I am reading them. The Violet Fairy Book contains 35 fairy tales and 65 black and white illustrations. Fairy Tales include: The Finest Lair in the World, Schippeitaro, The Lute Player, The Grateful Prince, Stan Bolovan, The envious Neighbor, The Enchanted Knife, The Fairy of Dawn, The Nunda, Eater of People, The Headless Dwarf and many more. This book is a great bed-time-story book.
I would recommend this book.

I really loved this book. Myth and folklore are timeless, even though all of the tales are somewhat old fashioned. Stories collected from such various locations such as Russia, Japan, Africa, Romania and Germany give insight into the culture where the stories originated, as well as just being a fun read. I look forward to reading all the other collections of stories.

I seriously cannot believe how long it took me to find and read Andrew Lang's Fairy books! Growing up, my mother read to me the original Grimm's fairytales, just as my grandmother had done to her, and my great grandmother before her. It is a family tradition. But the Fairy Books might have to be added to that if/when I have children. The stories are all lovely, and I only wish they could be more mainstream, as many could be perfect Disney films. I have the Kindle versions, so I haven't experienced much of the artwork, but what I have seen is gorgeous. Most of the stories are okay for children in that they are not too scary, although some of them do involve lots of death. My favorite part is how they tell you where in the world the stories came from. I love traditional fables, and hearing unusual ones is just a treat. Seriously, they are free and beautiful! I highly recommend!

Submittted by Pamela Kekst: I thought that the Violet Fairy Book was very well written and fun to read. The book is made up of many different short stories, all of them are fairy tales. Each has its own problem and solution. They all had their own setting as well. One of my favorite stories is called The Finest Liar in the World. It takes place at the edge of the wood. It is about a boy telling a story to an old man for a lying face-off. I liked the book because each story was different so you could never get bored reading the book. It was also very interesting because of all the strange pictures in the book. I would only give the book a 4 star rating, however, as sometimes the stories could be hard to follow. I recommend this book for any one that likes fairy tales.