Friday, April 3, 2015

My Five Favorite Fairy Tales

Thank you so much The Book Rat & A Backwards Story for hosting this.

Originally, this was going to be about my favorite fairy tale retellings (of course) but...well, this is a little embarrassing, but I feel like I haven't read enough to even have a top five list. *Cough cough*




Without a doubt, my very favorite fairy tale is Beauty and the Beast. Seriously, if you want me to read a retelling, just say that this is the story it retells and I am so there. To be completely honest, I don't know why I love this story so much. It wasn't the first fairy tale I was exposed to, but it's the one that resonated with me somehow and has stuck with me the most over the years. I think part of it is how they don't fall in love immediately and... I think even when I was a kid, I liked the idea behind interracial romances. (And, at the time, this was about the most interracial as it got. Especially for a kid that truly had no idea what 'interracial' even meant...)


There's actually many different takes on the story of Little Red Ridding Hood. While my favorite retellings are the ones where the wolf is the love interest, I adore one of the original stories. One of the versions, I don't remember which now, had Red, as the hero of her own story, defeat the wolf by killing him. No woodcutter need apply. While it is one of the more gory of the takes on the story, I love it because the girl, without any help, defeats the 'evil'.


The Honest Woodman is quite a short little story. I really don't even remember where I first heard of it, but it is one that stuck with me - unlike all those that I read as a child and cannot even remember. I really liked it then though, and I still really like it.



I'd actually half forgotten about this story. Not all of it, but the name. Diamonds and Toads. I like it, mostly because both the 'gift' and the 'curse' sound perfectly awful. There's also a retelling of this out there that I need to read. (I believe it is called Toads and Diamonds?)


While I do know a few of the stories in A Thousand and One Nights, this is really one the list because of Scheherazade and her story. Ever since I first heard it, I've loved the idea about a smart, intelligent woman holding her own against a man that had decided to kill her. Each night she ends the story on a cliffhanger and the Sultan has to keep her alive to know how the story ends. I love it!


There you go, my five favorite fairy tales. What are yours?

I own none of the pictures. Total credit and kudos go to the amazing artists.

Comments (6)

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GREAT list! I don't know The Honest Woodman, though. I love The Snow Queen and East 'o the Sun, West o' the Moon for the same non-insta-love reasons as cited for Beauty and the Beast. I'm also always curious about fairytales from other cultures (we hear a wee bit about Asian ones, but I know virtually nothing about African folktales/fairytales).
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3 replies · active 517 weeks ago
I've actually not read either of those two. I really want to read one of the retellings of East o' the Sun, West o' the Moon - and the name of it absolutely escapes me right now! I know a little about The Snow Queen, though obviously not enough. With all the fairy tale fans and retellings out there, it's a little surprising that more from other cultures haven't been explored. It would be really great if they were.
One of my favorite retellings is East O' the Sun. It's Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George. East by Edith Pattou is good, too, but S&M, I&S holds a special place in my heart.
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That's the one! Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow. I think I actually heard about it at your blog. There's so many good sounding book by Jessica Day George though that I don't quite know where to start. I've got three of them on my TBR - including Silver in the Blood - and don't know which to buy first.
Diamonds and Toads!!! I feel like every time I bring up that story, no one ever knows what I'm talking about. There's a really good short story retelling in the anthology SIlver Birch, Blood Moon (which I can't recommend enough) that inverts the tale, so that the diamonds are a curse, and the toads are a blessing. Really cool little tale.
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1 reply · active 517 weeks ago
Yeah, I know exactly what you mean - but that story is really...cool. And just a little creepy, but that's for the best.. Ooh, I think I'm going to have to go and try to find that anthology because that sounds awesome. The retellings that twist the story around are always my favorites.

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