Fairy Tales

Fairy Tales can come true.
It can happen to you
If you're young at heart.

(Anything that is underlined will take you directly to the book or author!)

Isn't it true? Aren't we always looking for something to make us feel lighter; as if the weight of our lives weren't all that bad? It would be sad and strange to meet someone who had never heard a Fairy Tale as they slipped into the blissful sleep of childhood.  To hear your parent's voice leading you through dark woods or magic castles, blurring the lines between reality and truth is one of the singular joys of innocence.

And Fairy Tales almost always have within them some kernel of truth, some archetype of human experience framed in the most ridiculous wrapping. At the beginning of written experience, Aesop began encapsulating these morality tales.

Soon, with the advent of the printing press, others, like Hans Christian Andersen and The Brothers Grimm expanded the genre to a cult status.

Before Science Fiction or Horror stories, the Fairy Tale continued to be one of the singular articles of everyday entertainment. At the end of the nineteenth century, serious literary prescences such as Andrew Lang were translating and collating the Fairy Tale treasure chest, and without them such classics as the The Arabian Nights might have been lost forever.
And Fairy Tales are not always pleasant! The psychedelic interactions of Alice and her adventures in Wonderland and the other-worldly series of The Books of Oz challenge the mind and send the spirit on a voyage of discovery.

And, if you REALLY want to get "Down and Dirty" check out the REAL version of Gulliver's Travels. If your mom had ever read this, she would have made sure you didn't!

As I think of some more good Fairy Tales, I'll include them here. This should give everyone something to dream about!

The Cranky Librarian