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    Classic Starts®: Grimm's Fairy Tales
    Classic Starts®: Grimm's Fairy Tales
    Classic Starts®: Grimm's Fairy Tales
    Ebook110 pages43 minutes

    Classic Starts®: Grimm's Fairy Tales

    By Jakob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Arthur Pober and

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Once upon a time… there were two brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who gave the world some of the best-loved fairy tales ever written. From “Cinderella” and “Rumpelstiltskin” to “Snow White” and “The Brave Little Tailor,” this charming anthology offers young readers a wonderful introduction to 12 of the Grimms most popular stories.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUnion Square Kids
    Release dateJun 7, 2011
    ISBN9781402789069
    Classic Starts®: Grimm's Fairy Tales

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    Reviews for Classic Starts®

    4/5

    1,355 ratings44 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Grimm fairy tales read by some of my favorite audio readers? Yes, please!

      This collection is a joy. It features the voice talents of many of my favorite readers, including Jim Dale, Simon Vance, and Jayne Entwistle. (Flavia de Luce reads a fairy tale? How amazing is that?!?) This particular edition is all about the performance, and each reader tackles a different story and breathes new life into it.

      As for the stories themselves, I just love them. I admire Jacob’s work with linguistics, and of course, I am impressed by both brothers’ efforts to preserve folklore. I don’t know from which edition these tales were taken, but I think it must have been from one of the later ones. The stories have been edited to make them more appropriate for children: the sex has disappeared from the stories, and the tales carry the reassurance that the evildoers won’t get away with their crimes. As a result, these are, in many respects, the same fairy tales that many of us knew as children. Childlike delight nostalgia = story magic!

      If I could make one criticism of this collection, it would be that it’s too short. It only contains a selection of stories. I suppose a complete Grimm audio would be too much to ask for, and I’m still quite impressed with the level of quality here. Moreover, they did a fantastic job of making their selections. This audio performance includes many of my favorites, including “Snow White and Rose Red,” “The Goose Girl,” “The Six Swans,” and “Hansel and Gretel.” Pure delight.
    • 2/5
      Although this was one part of a two book set, there was a great contrast to Andersen’s Fairy Tales. At times it seemed as if this were the Cliff Notes of fairy tales, rather than what I would have expected from the Ugly Duckling, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel and others. I suppose that over time the details of these stories have been embellished by others all the way up to Walt Disney. The lesser known tales have the usual heads chopped off, people transformed into animals, parents abandoning their children, wicked stepmothers, and so on. A surprising number of these tales repeat themselves. For example, several evil characters are cut open and filled with stones, then sown up again. Quite disappointing. You should read the revised versions.
    • 5/5
      With love from Mummy and Daddy Xmas 1959, I was three and the words and pictures have never left me. A rock on which the rest of my life was built. The book records a moment in time and place, defined by stories, marked on every page by the history of the world, cousin to other stories in other places all over the world and full of the expectancy of the ever changing future.
    • 4/5
      So many stories in this version! Quite a few I'd read before, but most were new to me. Read the ebook version, seemed to never end.
    • 5/5
      The original versions not Disneyfied. Lots of deaths. Tricksters. Fools. Kindness rewarded. Cleverness rewarded. Some have morals. Some are just for fun to laugh at the foolishness.
    • 4/5
      I loved these tales (in German) when I was a child. Now I'm reading this book to our almost 5-year-old and he loves the stories also. I'm realizing how odd some of them seem in translation, and there sure are a great deal of religious references. But the main stories (Ashputtle, The Bremen Musicians, etc. ) are still classics!
    • 5/5
      The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm with illustrations from Arthur Rackham is indeed, as the Rock Point series says, a timeless classic.

      This is specifically a review of the Rock Point edition in their Timeless Classics series. It uses the 1897 Margaret Hunt translation as its source and the Rackham illustrations from a 1909 edition. Reviewing the tales themselves doesn't make a lot of sense here, we have all read at least some of them, whether in this form of one of the many variations. The introduction in this volume does a nice job of introducing the tales and gives a very brief overview of what exactly these stories represent both culturally and historically. If you want to learn about all of the questions and issues around them you will not want a collection of the tales for that, you will want a book devoted to the topic, though a collection like this one will be necessary to fully understand those issues.

      This edition is packaged wonderfully and will serve as both a nice addition to a library as well as a book you can read from, ideally to your children, then pass down to them when the time comes. The addition of the illustrations in beautiful plates adds to both the pleasure of reading and the pride of ownership.

      There are some writers that deserve a "complete works of" volume in most libraries and the Brothers Grimm are among those writers. This particular edition will serve that function very well.

      Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
    • 4/5
      These were hit and miss tales. Yet, there was so much to gain from reading some of the better ones that it augmented the rating significantly. These are classics, through and throughout, and they touch on the simpler, more moralistic sense of storytelling and manage to convey so much with so little. Overall, it was well worth reading and I feel I am all the better for it.

      4 stars!
    • 5/5
      (Original Review, 2005-11-16)


      In Genesis there is suddenly this sentence/observation about giants walking the Earth in them days... I always see those elderly male Jews in Babylon, staring glumly at some campfire, thinking about the good old days and thinking up revengeful plans to smite the enemy. They tell the stories of their tribes but there is that one quite senile idiot always going on about 'them giants' - so in the end they say, "Okay, we WILL put them in. Now shut up already!" I can see myself being the Giant Guy (if more all over the place) and I'm not sure the good campfire folks here need the distraction... I don't know if it is only about 'folk tales' per se, but I am with most people on the campfire and howling wolves. For me the atmospherics are very, very important. Our culture no longer has much in the way of campfires and wolves so our writers have had to incorporate them, figuratively, into the fictions themselves. The rest is literary history.

      I don't see fairytales simply as children's stories; that's a relatively recent- and, of late, receding- viewpoint. There is a vast quantity of material around beyond Grimm and Andersen and little of it aimed at children. Perrault or Marie Catherine d'Aulnoy were writing for the amusement of adults, and the Arabian Nights were not exactly suitable bedtime reading for under-5's, while Karen Blixen/Isak Dinesen achieved almost occult-like effects in her wondrous tales, which float somewhere between Baghdad and Copenhagen.

      Fairytales are most powerful when they access the taboo, the suppressed, or the deepest fears and desires within us. And they do so often. Your "children's rituals" and "simple messages" are really only the tip of the iceberg. For that matter, “The talented Mr. Ripley” (LINK) fulfills a similar role - a very wicked and challenging little tale full of deliciously gratuitous moments, the enjoyment of which made me at least think long and hard about my own morality.

      I was raised on the standard stuff: Grimm and Andersen mostly. There is obviously darkness there - and taboos, yes. (It's interesting that in the stories where children are imperiled the original versions had 'mother' and the later versions 'stepmothers'.) The ones I and probably most children end(ed) up with are the simpler, safer ones though, don't you think? I love Angela Carter's “Bloody Chamber” but most kids will be more likely to see Disney as the centre of the fairytale universe - which truly is a disservice to fairytales, of course.

      I am no longer that interested in stories where the characters are merely there to move things alone. Like standard puppets that can be used and reused for all kinds of similar types of stories. As I mentioned elsewhere, that goes for all kinds of stories, including movies. What I find fascinating about the early stories passed along (mutating on the way) is more that they give us some kinds of fleeting glimpse of the origin story of stories. Because most of the early part of that origins stories is/was in an oral form we can never really know how stories began and evolved. There are no helpful fossils - or not enough to have more than (slightly) informed theories.

      Did stories start as parts of religious/ceremonial chants? Were they like cave paintings: meant to magically influence the outcome of the hunt? Where did fiction start to make an entrance, if the earliest stories were mostly a sort of remembering (the deeds and wisdom of) dead tribe members? All endlessly fascinating to me - and no more than useless musings in the end.

      Back to fairytales for a moment. They may no longer really work for me as entertainment but the reason they don't is in a way part of their strength. That they are predictable is partly why they work so well as stories. They warn us about the evils of the world but they are also almost like a church service: a repeated ritual to explain the world. They bring order to what basically is a chaotic system. Which is of course also why they are so enduringly popular with children, who like rituals and the idea of safety-through-repetition. I like my stories, like “Grimms Märchen,” more complex but it is easy to see how stories that carve simple messages out of the complex narrative of the world will be as enduring as the world. In that way they are exactly like religion (for me at least). The Grimms, despite their initial attempt to be "invisible" curators of folklore, began increasingly to modify and colour the tales they transcribed. Italo Calvino discusses this phenomenon at length in the introduction to Italian Fables, his own attempt to replicate the Grimms' work in Italy.
    • 1/5
      Absolutely horrible. I would have been more entertained reading a dictionary. I found myself yelling at this book in my head asking why in the world anyone considers these stories good. I am convinced that all the high ratings people are giving this book are based on the Disney stories that were loosely based on the pure garbage contained within this book.

      I don't care if it's "good for its time" or "loses something in translation". Unless it was translated by house cat with slightly below average intelligence or written at a time when people considered gouging their own eyes out a leisure activity there is no reason for it to be this bad.

      Do not read this crap to your children, they will become entitled racists who play the lottery.
    • 4/5
      This collection is a load of interesting little stories. These originals are way more twisted than fairytales of my childhood. In these versions, the repercussions are more bloody and less forgiving.
    • 5/5
      Diese und weitere Rezensionen findet ihr auf meinem Blog Anima Libri - Buchseele

      Märchen, Märchen, Märchen… Ich sollte dringend mal die Kategorie/Genre-Darstellung auf dem Blog reparieren und passend einrichten, sodass man einen besseren Überblick über all die wunderschönen Märchenbücher bekommt, die ich in letzter Zeit so rezensiert habe…

      Da wären „Grimms Märchen“ von Phillip Pullman, „Die Märchen der Brüder Grimm“ und „Die Märchen von Hans Christian Andersen“ aus dem Taschen Verlag, „Grimms Märchen ohne Worte“ von Frank Flöthmann und „1001 Nacht – Tausendundeine Nacht“ oder auch Hörbücher wie „Es war einmal und wenn sie nicht“ oder „Es war einmal: Autoren auf Grimms Spuren“.

      Zugegebenermaßen, meine Märchensammlung ist derzeit auffällig Grimm-lastig und mit diesem Buch kommt noch eine weitere Ausgabe der Grimmschen Märchen hinzu: Die „Kinder- und Hausmärchen“ der Brüder Grimm aus der Reclam Bibliothek sieht nicht nur wirklich gut aus, sie ist auch tatsächlich einmal eine vollständige Ausgabe aller dieser Märchen.

      Ja, ich besitze bereits eine vollständige Ausgabe der Grimmschen Märchen, eine wunderschöne dreibändige Ausgabe, die allerdings auch schon ein paar Jährchen auf dem Buckel hat und sich nur bedingt zum „einfach mal drinrumlesen“ eignet. Daher habe ich mich wirklich gefreut, als ich diese Ausgabe gefunden habe, denn die wurde wirklich sehr gekonnt zusammengestellt und besonders der Punkt „weitgehend an der originalen Sprachlichkeit orientiert“ hat es mir angetan.

      So sind die Märchen in dieser Sammlung zwar z.B. grammatikalisch auf dem neusten Stand und auch sprachlich nicht mehr im „Originalzustand“ aber sehr nah dran. So kommt der ursprüngliche „Zauber“ der Grimmschen Märchen nach wie vor rüber, während sich die Märchen trotzdem etwas angenehmer und flüssiger lesen lassen als in der Originalversion.

      Alles in allem ist „Kinder- und Hausmärchen“ der Brüder Grimm aus der Reclam Bibliothek eine Ausgabe dieser Märchensammlung, mit der man kaum etwas falsch machen kann. Die Umsetzung ist sehr gut gelungen und inhaltlich bin ich ja sowieso ein riesiger Fan dieser Märchen. Von daher definitiv eine dicke, dicke Empfehlung für dieses Buch.
    • 5/5
      Classic stories. It is interesting how these stories have been altered through the years. Another reminder that life isn't always a "happy ending."
    • 4/5
      The one thing I would change about this book is to add more color to the illustrations in the stories. This way it would be more appealing to the students than just a black and white illustration.
    • 5/5
      Ever since I was a little girl, fairy tales have always made a way into my heart. I will never forget staying up late reading stories about Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and The Little Mermaid. The more I read these fairytales the more I wanted. Then I found my way to the fae. Another realm of stories I fell into. Then I learned about The Brother’s Grimm. I was immediately consumed with learning about all these stories and fascinated that even existed. I wanted the beginning. I wanted the truth of how and where this stories began. So I began searching for the perfect book to open that door. I found it in my local indie bookstore. I ask if they have a collection of the “real” Grimm’s brothers stories. They said yes and brought me this beauty…

      Can I talk about how BEAUTIFUL this book is? Cause it truly is. Leatherbound, eerie and smelling wonderfully (yes I sniffed the book). It has gold pages laced with the real stories of Cinderella, Rapunzel, etc. I have it sitting by my bedside in which I read a story each night. And each story has brought me so much satisfaction.

      The stories themselves aren’t anything new. Most of us all heard of the Grimm’s stories either by movies (Disney has turned many Grimm’s stories into movies) or tv shows. I personally love reading the real thing. I feel like I stepped into a whole other world when I open this book. And maybe there is hope that something, maybe something strange will happen…you know, just like in stories. (WINK, WINK)

      If you are a fairytale lover like me and enjoy reading, go pick up this beauty. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I adore this book. I’m not even half-way through it (as I’m reading it slowly) but it is truly a wonderful collections of stories. I will warn you that these stories don’t all have happy endings. These stories were meant for children as lessons for life. Some end in happy endings while others not so much. With each story, I think about the life lesson that the Brothers Grimm are portraying. The way the capture it so beautifully in just a mere couples of pages always leaves me in awe.
    • 4/5
      These are Stories I have read and loved as a child and Adult.
    • 4/5
      There are alot of good fairy tales, but alot depends on the editor or the edition, and going for "The Complete" isn't always the best choice. Repeating a story simply because it was told in the past isn't always a good idea-- it's a bit like turning on the TV and watching something simply because it's being aired. After a certain point, editing is required, whether you admit it or not, after all, there are infinite possible variations to every story, some of which have even made it into writing. So calling any collection "The Complete" is an illusion, and a damaging one, I think.

      If they simply mean that it's a translation of the "original"-- in terms of the written word-- Brothers Grimm collection of the 1810s, they could simply indicate that in some way. Perhaps-- 'Grimm's Fairy Tales-- Children's and Household Tales', or something like that. I suppose that even of this type of translation there are different versions, and the edition I have (Arthur Rackham as [mediocre] illustrator), doesn't have an introduction (which can be good as well as bad), and doesn't really explain the name-jokes when they come up-- "Fair Katrinelje and Pif-Paf-Poltrie"..... I mean, if you're not going to do something like that well, then maybe you shouldn't include it at all.... should you stuff it in there, just because you have this illusion that there can ever be a "complete" book of fairy tales?

      In the end this is to me more like a mine from which good stories can be picked, rather than a really good version in itself; my favorite collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales at this point is a google book's version with Edna Henry Lee Turpin as editor, from about a hundred years ago, although there are probably also other good versions, actually meant to be read by, I don't know, children and householders. (I don't want to get into specifics, but if you glance at the list of stories, even, you'll find at least one that clearly you wouldn't read to people of today.... which is why it only makes sense to edit it, as any story-teller modifies what he or she receives from the past....)

      In the end, the *average* quality of *all* these stories is simply that-- average. It could be better, although it could be worse, too. That's my take.

      (8/10)
    • 5/5
      Classic book of many traditional fairy tales and more. I would use this for upper level elementary students when discussing how the same story can be told in different ways.


      This is really a great read for third grade on up.
    • 4/5
      Indeholder "Katten og musen", "Eventyret om en, der drog ud for at lære frygt at kende", "Den tro Johannes", "De tolv brødre", "Pak", "De tre små mænd i skoven", "De tre spindersker", "Hans og Grete", "Fiskeren og hans kone", "Den tapre lille skrædder", "Askepot", "Gåden", "Mor Hulda", "Rødhætte", "De Bremer stadsmusikanter", "Djævelens tre guldhår", "Lusen og loppen", "Den kloge Hans", "Den kloge Else", "Bord dæk dig", "Tommeliden", "Tornerose", "Kong Drosselskæg", "Snehvide", "Ranselen, hatten og hornet", "Rumleskaft", "Guldfuglen", "Hunden og spurven", "Kongen af det gyldne bjerg", "Det lille æsel", "Ferdinand Tro og Ferdinand Utro", "Jernovnen", "Enøje, Toøje og Treøje", "De seks tjenere", "Jernhans", "På rejse", "Historien om en roe", "Den stærke Hans", "Bonden i himlen", "De to brødre", "Den lille bonde", "Guldgåsen", "Historien om seks, der kommer gennem verden", "Nelliken", "Den kloge Grete", "Bedstefaderen og sønnesønnen", "Bror Lystig", "Lykkehans", "Den fattige og den rige mand", "Den kloge bondepige", "Djævelens snavsede bror", "Bjørneskindsmanden", "De klge folk", "Den fattige møllerdreng og katten", "De to vandringsmænd", "Det blå lys", "Kongesønnen, der ikke var bange for noget", "De tre håndværkssvende", "Salatæslet", "Levetiden", "Bonden og djævelen", "Alfernes gave", "Haren og pindsvinet", "Ten, skytte og synål", "Marsvinet".

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    • 3/5
      It's hard to read and repetitive. Every story is a variation of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty. There's lots of long paragraphs, little dialogue, and the narrative does little to evoke imagination. Everything happens in sets of threes, and I know nothing is going to happen the first two times, so I would just skip to the third.

      Every story is the same. Someone goes out into the world to seek fortune, marry someone, or defeat evil. He/she collects some magic artifacts. Something happens based on wordplay or puns. Then he's told not to do something, and inevitably, he does it. Because where would the plot be if anyone actually followed directions? Otherwise we wouldn't have "Gremlins". Go see the Disney versions.
    • 4/5
      These are the unabridged tales of the Brothers Grimm, which means death and envy and not-nice endings. These are old German tales, which can bring back rather Teutonic visions of paganism and malicious parents. One can understand the superstition of the Germanic population and how many of these tales originated during the Thirty Years' War, when entire families and villages vanished in flames. I suppose if I had to survive during those times, my mind would have created wondrous stories that focused on retribution and survival. While the Grimms collected these tales in the 19th Century, the horrors of the previous centuries come through loud and clear.

      There are many patterns throughout the stories with the numbers 3 and 7 being very popular. Three sons venture into the world, seven brothers are turned into swans, three puzzles must be solved by the potential groom, seven years must be served under the Devil...and so forth and so on. Wives and mothers do not come out well here, either being selfish or witches or both. Hansel and Gretel still resonates, more so after reading the original version (as in, parents not wanting the kids).

      I took my time reading this over several months, so I could enjoy each story. There are many favorites but the one I enjoyed the most was the shortest:MISFORTUNE, which quickly tells the tale of a man who couldn't win, even as he was being saved (crushed by a wall).

      When misfortune pursues any one, it will find him out into whatever corner he may creep, or however far he may flee over the world.

      Book Season = Autumn (season of the witch)
    • 5/5
      I read this over and over again as a kid (obviously not the "kindle" edition, but it was one big volume.)
    • 5/5
      What a great thing to reread all these old tales again, most of them as if for the first time! I'd forgotten how much simpler and purer many of these are than their Disney versions (although I do appreciate those also) such as Rumpelstiltskin and how explicitly Christian many of them are such as Our Lady's Child, my favorite, from which Tomie Depaola's classic "Clown of God" obviously draws from. I think the translation is one of the most readable I've seen, keeping a touch of old world flavor without sounding too foreign to modern ears. Great collection.
    • 4/5
      This is a reprint of Friedrich Panzer's 1913 publication of the first edition of the fairy tale collection of the Brothers Grimm (from 1813). Although his introduction is quite dated, the real find are the fairy tales themselves, as many of the tales are slightly different from the later editions (most modern editions of the tales are of the seventh or final edition from 1857). For example, in the 1813 version of Rapunzel Rapunzel is sent into the wilderness by Mrs. Gothel (the fairy) because she is obviously pregnant, a fact that is not mentioned in the 1857 version of the tale. And in the original tale of Snow White, the heroine was pursued by her jealous mother, only later was the jealous mother turned into an evil stepmother. While I would probably not recommend this edition for casual reading, as even some of the language and orthography are somewhat old-fashioned, it is a very interesting and enlightening addition to the bookshelf of anyone interested in the genesis and development of Grimms' fairy tales. It is, however, in German, and I do not know if an English translation of the 1813 edition even exists.
    • 3/5
      This fairytale was about a brother and sister named, Hansel and Gretel, who are lured into the woods by their evil stepmom. They can't find their way back home and come upon a gingerbread candy house. They begin to eat the house and then get invited in by a witch who tried to fatten them up to eat them in a stew. They trick the witch, kill her, and then find their way home to their father with riches. The theme of this story could be triumph and perseverance. This story is kind of scary to teach as a lesson but I think it is a great book to have in the classroom for special story days to read about fairytales and the different types of them.
    • 5/5
      This is an extensive collection of 210 stories, fairy tales, and legends written by the Grimm Brothers and is 845 pages long. It includes a few of their more famous stories, like Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, and Cindarella, along with many that are not as well known.

      It's interesting to see how the versions of their famous stories in this book differ from the popular versions that are usually told.
    • 5/5
      This is a reread for me, as I read a volume of these when I was nine or ten. What always resonates for me is the violence that was in these stories and how lessons were always to be learned for the reader/listener. Stories of comeuppance and knowing ones’ place in society are in many of the tales, but so are stories of “happily ever after.” For me, it’s the sheer volume of stories that is intriguing. It’s easy to pick a favorite story for however one might be feeling at the time and get a lift or feeling of vengeful satisfaction in the misfortunes of the bad characters that remind us of terrible bosses or the guy who cut us off in traffic.
    • 4/5
      Every book nerd should have a copy of the Grimms' tales. If you haven't delved any further than Disney, you should definitely get a copy of the complete tales right away.
    • 2/5
      I guess I'm glad I read it, but it was a chore. For every good story, there are twenty near-unreadable messes.
    • 4/5
      The brothers grimm book of fairytales is not for the lighthearted. Its scary and has many dark themes yet somehow on a cold winters night im always drawn in.

    Book preview

    Classic Starts® - Jakob Grimm

    9781402789069_0002_001

    Grimm’s

    Fairy Tales

    9781402789069_0002_002

    Retold from the classic originals

    by Deanna McFadden

    Illustrated by Eric Freeberg

    9781402789069_0002_003

    STERLING and the distinctive Sterling logo

    are registered trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    McFadden, Deanna.

     Grimm’s fairy tales / retold from the classic originals by Deanna McFadden ; illustrated by Eric Freeberg.

       v. cm. — (Classic starts)

     Contents: The tale of the boy who learned fear—Little brother and little sister— Rapunzel—Hansel and Grethel—Cinderella—Briar Rose—Snow White—Rumpelstiltskin—The golden goose—The worn-out dancing shoes—The brave little tailor.

     ISBN 978-1-4027-7311-2

    1. Fairy tales—Germany. [1. Fairy tales. 2. Folklore—Germany.] I. Freeberg, Eric, ill.

    II. Grimm, Jacob, 1785–1863. III. Grimm, Wilhelm, 1786–1859. IV. Title.

     PZ8.M175965Gr 2011

     398.20943—dc22

     [E]

    2010016438

    Lot#:

    2   4   6   8   10   9   7   5   3   1

    3/11

    Published by Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

    387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016

    Text © 2011 by Deanna McFadden

    Illustrations © 2011 by Eric Freeberg

    Classic Starts is a trademark of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

    All rights reserved

    Sterling ISBN 978-1-4027-7311-2

    Sterling eBook ISBN: 978-1-4027-8906-9

    For information about custom editions, special sales, premium and

    corporate purchases, please contact Sterling Special Sales

    Department at 800-805-5489 or specialsales@sterlingpublishing.com.

    CONTENTS

    9781402789069_0004_001

    CHAPTER 1:

    The Tale of the Boy Who Learned Fear

    CHAPTER 2:

    Little Brother and Little Sister

    CHAPTER 3:

    Rapunzel

    CHAPTER 4:

    Hansel and Grethel

    CHAPTER 5:

    Cinderella

    CHAPTER 6:

    Briar Rose

    CHAPTER 7:

    Snow White

    CHAPTER 8:

    Rumpelstiltskin

    CHAPTER 9:

    The Golden Goose

    CHAPTER 10:

    The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes

    CHAPTER 11:

    The Brave Little Tailor

    What Do You Think?

    A Note to Parents and Educators

    Classic Starts™ Library

    CHAPTER 1

    The Tale of the Boy Who Learned Fear

    9781402789069_0006_001

    There once lived a man who had two sons. The older boy was smart and very good at his chores. The younger boy was very strong but had trouble learning. Sometimes the man would ask his older son to fetch something in the dark or walk into town through the graveyard. The older boy always said, Oh no, Father, I couldn’t. I’m just too afraid! He was terrified of dark, spooky places. The younger son was not.

    While the man loved both of his sons, he never asked the younger boy for help with chores. The boy always made a mess of things.

    What am I going to do with you? his father would say.

    In the evenings, the neighborhood would gather to tell scary stories around a fire. The tales were so scary that they sent chills up and down the spines of all who listened. The boy listened, too. He noticed that all his neighbors—including his brother and father—would shudder during the scariest parts of the stories. They cried, Oh, that makes me shudder!

    The boy couldn’t figure out what this meant. He wondered, Why do they all shudder?

    Then the boy had an idea. He thought, Maybe that’s what I need to do. I need to learn how to shudder like my brother. He always does everything right.

    Many months passed. Still the boy wondered why everyone, except for him, knew how to shudder. He grew taller and his shoulders grew wider. Still, he couldn’t figure it out.

    One day, his father said to him, Son, you are growing up. Soon, you’ll be a man. You need to learn a trade. You have seen how hard your older brother works.

    Father, the son said, I would love to learn a trade. But first, I think I need to learn how to shudder. Everyone knows how except me.

    His older brother laughed. You are too foolish for your own good. You’ll never amount to anything.

    Their father sighed. Even if you figure out how to shudder, that will not put bread on your table, my son.

    What am I going to do with you? his father said to his son. The young man shrugged.

    The next day, the father said, Do you truly want to learn to shudder? Then you should set off into the world all alone. That is the best way. But you must not tell anyone who you are or where you come from. You are a young man now, strong enough to take care of yourself. I forbid you to ask for help. You must be completely alone. It’s the only way you’ll learn to shudder.

    He gave his son a little bit of money and wished him well. Soon the young man was walking down the road all by himself. If only I could shudder, then I could go home again, he said to himself.

    The young man walked into an inn to spend the night. He asked for a room. The innkeeper asked, What’s a young man like you doing out this way all by yourself?

    The young man replied, I’m trying to learn how to shudder.

    The innkeeper laughed. Is that all? Well, I can certainly help you.

    The innkeeper’s wife looked at her husband and said, I know what you’re thinking right now. Do not send this young man to that haunted castle!

    But I want to learn how to shudder, the young man said, sighing. Please tell me.

    The innkeeper told him the haunted castle wasn’t far away. If you can last three nights there, the king of this land will reward you. He has great treasure, and he is also willing to offer his daughter’s hand in marriage.

    The young man said, Treasure and a pretty princess aren’t important to me. I just want to learn how to shudder.

    The innkeeper continued, Evil spirits guard the haunted castle where the king’s riches are hidden. The king himself used to live there. But a witch cast a spell on the castle. It can only be broken if one brave person can last through three nights in the spooky place.

    The innkeeper’s wife added, Many have tried. All have run away scared after a few hours.

    The next day, the young man stood before the king. He asked for a chance to spend three nights in the haunted castle. The king looked at him for a long time, then gave him permission. He said, You may take five objects with you. What shall they be?

    The young man thought for a moment, then replied, "I will need matches and wood for a fire. I would like a tool for cutting the wood if it’s

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