The Green Fairy Book by various authors (edited by Andrew Lang)
THE GREEN FAIRY BOOK
A review by Jeana To
★★★★☆
★★★★☆
A beautiful peasant girl gasps in surprise
as magic swirls around her, transforming her rags into a ball gown. Her small,
perfect feet slip into crystalline slippers, and that night she falls in love
at first sight with a handsome prince.
Sound familiar yet? That's right: this is
the story of Cinderella, a classic example of a fairy tale.
Today, the phrase “fairy tale” may not
necessarily correlate to a book of stories. Instead, what might be brought to
mind is a comfortable seat in the movie theatre, dramatic music playing and a
sparkling castle flashing across the screen. I'm not saying that Disney movies
are horrible; I enjoy them just as much as anyone else. But it's impossible not
to admit that sometimes, an animated princess on a screen can’t compete with
being able to read for yourself about how the evil witch was defeated by the
power of true love. Reading a book, compared to watching a movie, gives you the
freedom to imagine how the scene may have played out in your head rather than having
everything dictated out for you on a movie screen.
And that brings us to this book. The Green
Fairy Book is the third of the Fairy Books of Many Colours (the other two are
the Blue Fairy Book and the Red Fairy Books), and each book is basically a collection
of a bunch of fairy tales from many different countries and cultures. It was
definitely interesting to see the differences and the similarities between the
fairy tales that I grew up reading versus fairy tales from different cultures.
Anyone willing to take a dive into a world of fairy tales slightly different
from the ones you probably grew up with, this is the book for you! The blend of
the new and the old in this book will interest you and keep you reading ‘til
the end.
Revisiting such an old genre after so many
years helped me to see things with more clarity than I had when I was younger
and more naive. Something clearly visible to my eyes was the almost childlike
cruelty that many of these fairy tales portrayed. Almost every “happy ending” was
accompanied by the untimely demise of some other character, and there was a
disturbing correlation between outwardly ugliness and wickedness. For example,
one fairy tale told the story of a beautiful princess who lived with a wicked
stepmother and an ugly stepsister. A king from a neighboring kingdom fell in
love with the princess at first sight while visiting her kingdom. However, her
stepsister fell in love with the same king. But because she was ugly where her
sister was pretty, the king paid absolutely no attention to her at all. He
ignored her and even claimed that he could not bear to look at her face,
instead choosing to shower her sister with his affections. At this point, I was
feeling really bad for the stepsister and even thought for a second that the
king sounded more like a villain -- except for the fact that the stepsister’s
fairy godmother decided to turn the prince into a bird for four years because
he wouldn’t marry the stepsister, and then the stepmother found out that he was
visiting the princess every night as a bird and thought it was a great idea to
have knives and other various sharp objects stuck on the trees around the
kingdom so that when the prince tried to land on a tree he was basically almost
stabbed to death.
To me, this sounded a bit violent and gory
to be a children’s story, and I didn’t really understand what kind of moral or
lesson little kids would be able to learn from this kind of story. Then again,
the point of the Green Fairy Book was to represent different fairy tales from
different cultures, so I can understand why they included stories like this.
However, it has made me curious about the original purpose of fairy tales and
what they were supposed to do or teach us.
I definitely think that this book is a worthy
read. Not only does it take me back on a road of memories, but it was also
interesting to see the connections between different cultural fairy tales. I
was also able to see fairy tales in a new light and in a different context
compared to when I was little. In fact, I may even want to try checking out the
other two books in this series.
I really enjoyed the creative way you introduced the Green Fairy Books. I especially like the original stories because they tend to be slightly scarier and more enjoyable (mostly because everyone doesn't end up getting a happy ending). Being someone who likes reading fairy-tales, I probably will check out this book in the future.
ReplyDeleteI think this book is definitely the type of book I would want to read. I have always been interested in how our modern Disney fairy tales have evolved over time because I know that some of them originated out of more precautionary type stories that have evolved into something much nicer. I think it would be fascinating to read old stories that are the originals of the fairy tales we see today. Your hook in the beginning made the summary much more interesting and I think you did I good job at making all your points clear!
ReplyDeleteGreat review! You laid out a really good argument for why it's worth reading stories like these in their original form, while also explaining some of your reservations about the original stories' messages and gory content. How much we can or should whitewash content for kids is still a big question, especially as kids can often gain more access to "adult" content through the Internet than they previously could. Overall, this was a really well-thought-out, interesting review, and I'll be sure to check this book out soon!
ReplyDeleteGood review! This book seems like a really interesting collection. You made a great case for why people should read old fairytales. I agree that the complicated morals and gore of many stories, especially when they were originally created for children, are difficult to understand, although they are fun to discuss. Great job!
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