The Values that Transcend Fairy Tales by Jaclyn Adomeit

When I began to look at the way different cultures told fairy tales, I came to the task with a fair amount of bias. I was fully expecting to find that ingenuity was cherished in western tales, and obedience favoured in the east, but that was not the case. Fairy tales from all cultures have…

Fairy Tales My Father Never Told Me by Dimitra Nikolaidou

“Why won’t you read me Cinderella?” “I have another story, one you’ve never heard…” Long after I had learned to read myself and stopped requesting bedtime stories, my dad let slip the reason he never bought me Cinderella or Snow White or any other classic fairy tale: he was angered by the fact that the…

The Language of Fairy Tales by M. T. DeSantis

It’s often said of Shakespeare’s classics by many modern readers—his stories are timeless, but the language is inaccessible. The same could be said for the original versions of fairy tales. Writing, like any other part of a culture, has evolved. If the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen picked up a modern novel, they’d share…

Don’t Cross Tinkerbell by Lillian Csernica

The loving, helpful fairy godmother is largely a figment of Disney’s imagination. If you take a good look at the original fairy tales, fairy godmothers appear most often in stories written by the French précieuses, the best-known being Madame d’Aulnoy. These fairy godmothers are not the grandmotherly rescuer of Disney’s Cinderella, nor are they the…

Fairy tales: the good, the bad, and the ugly by Claire Davon

Enjoy the today’s tales but explore their pasts. It’s fascinating. You never know what you’re going to find.

Of Retellings by Rohit Sawant

There is no one right version of these fairy tales.