Fairy Tale Friday



This week we started a new book of fairy tales. The Glass Slipper: Charles Perrault's Tales of Times Past is a recent translation of Perrault's Contes du temps passe first published in 1697. The text has not been altered from the original except that the morals have been moved to an appendix at the back of the book.

#1. The Sleeping Beauty - I can't believe I am not familiar with the original story! The version I've always known ends with Sleeping Beauty waking up and marrying the prince. There is a whole lot more to the story. Turns out the prince's mother is an ogress and like to eat children so he must keep his marriage (and subsequent children) a secret. When he becomes king, his mother is finally told, and she waits for a time when the king is away. Both ds and I loved this!


#2. Little Red Ridinghood - Again I find I'm more familiar with a later variant of this story. In Perrault's original telling, the tale ends with the wolf eating both the grandmother and red ridinghood. The End.

#3. Bluebeard - A girl marries a man with a bluebeard. All is going well until Bluebeard leaves on a trip and forbids the wife to open one closet while he is gone. Of course, she does open the closet and must suffer the consequences. Ds really enjoyed this one, being a typical boy he loves stories where the good guys get the bad guy at the end and he always enjoys (as do I) a really good villain. I did edit this one while reading though as the paragraph that describes the wife finding the other dead wives in the closet was very gruesome with phrases such as "clotted blood".

4. Puss in Books - A youngest son inherits a cat when his father dies. The cat asks for a sack and some boots and sets off to make his master a rich man through trickery.

#5. Diamonds and Toads - The beautiful, kind sister goes to the well and gives an old woman a drink. The woman is really a fairy and she makes diamonds and pearls come from the young girl's mouth when she speaks. So the nasty, ugly sister goes to the well, but when a princess asks for a drink she is very rude to her. Of course, the princess is also the fairy and this time she makes toads and snakes come from the ugly sister's mouth when she speaks.

Comments

  1. This really interested me, as I am small people's educator and deal with fairy tales on a regular basis. Thanks for the read. Some of them differ from what I have learned. I trust your version better :)

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  2. I really like the idea of Fairy Tale Friday!! Tres cool!

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  3. The diamonds and toads story is one of my favorites! Have you read Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber? I think you would enjoy it (but probably might not want to read it to your kids). I never hear about the Bluebeard story without thinking of her version.

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  4. Thanks darla, I'll see if I can get that book. I have heard of it before but never actually seen it. I love adult retellings!

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