I'm a writer who has mostly written books for adults, as well as plays and screenplays, and June Sparrow and the Million Dollar Penny is my only book for children (so far). Though I read a lot of adult literature I have never stopped reading children's books. I always keep a "comfort" book on my bedside table for the middle of the night. I think that a really well-written, timeless children's book can teach us, comfort us, and take us on a journey. No matter what age you may be, I hope that you will read these books, or revisit them even if you think you are "too old" for children's books.
In the middle of the night, when I reach for a book to avoid a midnight worry-fest, I love to read fairy tales. The Grimms' Fairy Tales are wonderful because they are very short, and there is a huge variety of stories in these collections. I don't want to read for hours, I just want to read enough to go back to sleep and have some wonderful dreams. Now, many of the Grimms fairy tales are violent and deal with extreme situations, but for me, this is like cartoon violence—they make me think, sometimes they make me laugh, but they don't usually scare me. Also, these fairy tales have a lot of symbolism, transformations, and magic, and you will come across the original folk tales that have been re-told in a much flatter way by Disney, and it's always good to go to the source! Make sure to get one…
Like Sleeping Beauty awakening from her 100-year slumber, these childhood favorites arise fresh and blooming every time they're read. This new compilation of some of the world's greatest fairy tales abounds in timeless stories of the struggle of good against evil, bravery in the face of overwhelming danger, and virtue rewarded with everlasting love. Told to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm almost two centuries ago by European storytellers, the tales possess all of the most engaging elements of folklore — from magic spells and enchanted frogs to a colorful cast of noble princes, lovely maidens, giants, witches, and other fantastic characters.…
I’ve never forgotten the thrill of my first ballet! My grandmother and I went to see The Nutcracker when I was five, and that first ballet experience inspired a lifelong love of dance. As a child, I adored dressing up and twirling around the house with my sisters, and I went on to study dance along with English Literature in college. Years later when my own daughters adored dressing up in pink tutus, I started writing about a determined little mouse who loves to dance, and so Angelina Ballerina was born. Children naturally love music and dance, and I hope the picture books I’ve chosen will inspire you and your family with the magic of dance!
I adored listening to fairytales as a child, and the Twelve Dancing Princesses was a favorite of mine, loved by my children too. Parents will appreciate this child-friendly retelling of the Grimm’s classic fairytale, along with beautiful and colorful illustrations that will beguile young dancers. There’s lots of magic and mystery in the story of the princesses who mysteriously wear out their dancing slippers every night, and the humble cobbler who saves them. Budding ballerinas will have fun dressing up and dancing like the enchanted princesses!
A beautiful, modernized version of the Grimms fairy tale 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses.' In this story, twelve princesses find that their shoes are worn out every morning-and they are totally exhausted! A handsome suitor discovers that they are enchanted, and each night, in their sleep, they are going to a magical world to dance in a ball. By helping to break the spell, he earns the love of the youngest princess. The story ends with a beautiful wedding ball.
The first thing I ever wrote was a play about a goose girl, and I’ve been fascinated with fairytales ever since. As a poet, I adore how the images speak deeply to our subconscious—fur, hair, mirrors, blood, snow, fairy fruit. As a nonfiction writer, my book explored witches and princesses, whilst my latest adult novel looks at a fairytale salon in Paris attended by Perrault. I hope this list convinces you that fairytales aren’t only for the nursery but are as important to literature as Greek myths—shaping our narratives and reemerging in surprising places.
An incredible feat of literary criticism, Marina Warner takes fairytales very seriously and as such leads us on an incredible journey through storytelling from the Queen of Sheba to Charles Perrault to the Brothers Grimm. This is the essential nonfiction title if you’re interested in fairytales, and it has shaped my reading of them ever since.
In this landmark study of the history and meaning of fairy tales, the celebrated cultural critic Marina Warner looks at storytelling in art and legend-from the prophesying enchantress who lures men to a false paradise, to jolly Mother Goose with her masqueraders in the real world. Why are storytellers so often women, and how does that affect the status of fairy tales? Are they a source of wisdom or a misleading temptation to indulge in romancing?
It’s almost hard to explain what you love about a book
that makes you feel seen as a person while digging into the problems seen in
fairy tales regarding disability. It’s almost as if I didn’t love the book so much as I needed it.
It feels like necessary reading, in a way. But her writing
is also so beautiful. There’s a haunting quality to hearing about the
psychological ramifications of fairy tales.
It’s disheartening to think
my love for The Little Mermaid might have come from my feeling different and
unable to do what some other kids could. It’s as if she put a puzzle together I
didn’t know existed. Now I wonder how I lived without it.
A CBC BOOKS BEST NONFICTION OF 2020 AN ENTROPY MAGAZINE BEST NONFICTION 2020/21 A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOK OF THE DAY (07/23/2022)
Fairy tales shape how we see the world, so what happens when you identify more with the Beast than Beauty?
If every disabled character is mocked and mistreated, how does the Beast ever imagine a happily-ever-after? Amanda Leduc looks at fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm to Disney, showing us how they influence our expectations and behaviour and linking the quest for disability rights to new kinds of stories that celebrate difference.
Paranormal Women’s Fiction is a celebration of books with older heroines. These stories focus on older women with real-life issues (and magical ones, cause paranormal is just cool). Older women kick ass. They know things. They've been there. They are worthy of their own literature category. They also have their own set of issues that they face—empty nests, widows, divorce, menopause, etc.—and these issues deserve to be addressed and embraced in literature. Growing older is a real part of life. Women's friendships matter. Women matter. Our thoughts and feelings matter.
One Word: Unputdownable! Mandy knows how to weave a story with believable characters and kickass paranormal world-building. I've always been a fan of her Urban Fantasy. In fact, that's the first genre I read from her. She's rocking Paranormal Women's Fiction, and I so want to rent a house in Grimm Cove. Or at least a vacation rental.
I've been a lawyer for 30 years, 20 of them as an elected district attorney, and writing relieves stress for me. Real crime is messy and irrational; crime fiction restores order. But literary fiction is too slow—a novel must compel the reader to turn the page. Good thrillers tackle major issues, revealing themes that deepen our understanding of humanity. I've witnessed courage during grief and stress, but I'd never betray that trust by writing nonfiction accounts. I deliberately jumbled character traits and real events and combined them with my understanding of modern police techniques like geofencing and DNA.
This book, by Joe R. Lansdale, tells a coming-of-age story. A world where evil prevails, testing the hero’s Christian faith. His morals are inconsistent with the norms of society.
It presents more of a moral forest far more than the real Big Thicket described in greater detail in my novel.
In The Thicket, award-winning novelist Joe R. Lansdale lets loose like never before, in a rip-roaring adventure set at the dark dawn of the East Texas oil boom, the perfect introduction to an acclaimed writer whose work has been called "as funny and frightening as anything that could have been dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm -- or Mark Twain" (New York Times Book Review)
Jack Parker thought he'd already seen his fair share of tragedy. His grandmother was killed in a farm accident when he was barely five years old. His parents have just succumbed to the smallpox epidemic…
I’ve been an avid fantasy reader since I was old enough to read—starting with a Greek mythology book beloved by young adults everywhere—and my love with reading translated into my love of writing. After years of scouring for the perfect story, I have indie-published three fantasy romance books. I see reading as the gateway to all creative endeavors and a rekindling of the imagination. After almost two decades of storytelling, I have established a commitment to finding good stories and sharing them with others. I use my platform to uplift authors, especially marginalized writers or fellow indies, knowing that community is what makes reading fun.
Retellings are some of my favorite fantasy stories as they rely on new, inventive ways to spin the same yarn. Little Thievesis a reimagining of the Goose Girl from the perspective of the original villain as our main character. Vanja is the goddaughter of Death and Fortune, two of the goddesses in a pantheon with deities who represent abstract concepts like Time and Justice.
Vanja has spent her life conning and stealing like when she steals the identity of her former friend, Princess Giselle, and steals from the haughty nobles. She maintains these three identities by using magic pearls that change her appearance. But the story truly begins when Vanja is cursed to either return what she has stolen or be consumed by her greed.
Kids' Indie Next pick for November/December! Amazon Best Book of October 2021!
A scrappy maid must outsmart both palace nobles and Low Gods in a new YA fantasy by Margaret Owen, author of the Merciful Crow series.
Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl...
Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love—and she’s on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja’s otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their…
I’m not ashamed to admit that my childhood fascination with the distant past was sparked by hours of leafing through The Kingfisher Illustrated History of the Worldand countless viewings of the “Indiana Jones” movies. Today, I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at Mercy College and an archaeologist specializing in the eastern Alpine region during Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The author of three books and numerous scholarly articles, my research interests include ceramic technology, social identity, and the appropriation of the medieval past by modern ideologies.
If you want to understand why everything you think you know about the Middle Ages is (probably) wrong, go pick up a copy of The Devil’s Historians, which chronicles how everyone from the Brothers Grimm and George R. R. Martin to ISIS and Donald Trump have invented a medieval past that reflects their own ideological preoccupations rather than historical reality. With chapters on nationalism, gender, race, and religion, Amy Kaufman and Paul Sturtevant’s book sharply contrasts the one-dimensional Middle Ages found in pop culture and political propaganda with the more complicated, even contradictory, medieval world revealed by contemporary scholarship.
Amy S. Kaufman and Paul B. Sturtevant examine the many ways in which the medieval past has been manipulated to promote discrimination, oppression, and murder. Tracing the fetish for "medieval times" behind toxic ideologies like nationalism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and white supremacy, Kaufman and Sturtevant show us how the Middle Ages have been twisted for political purposes in every century that followed. The Devil's Historians casts aside the myth of an oppressive, patriarchal medieval monoculture and reveals a medieval world not often shown in popular culture: one that is diverse, thriving, courageous, compelling, and complex.
As a writer and performer, I’ve always loved live storytelling! Stories really come alive when performed and there’s an unexplained magic that bonds an audience with the storyteller and connects us to our collective past. Having performed countless times in plays, murder mysteries, and storytelling, the joy and excitement felt crackling in the air is like nothing else. I’ve plenty of fond memories of storytelling over the years, from terrifying ghost stories around the campfire of Camp Wing in America to the fantastical folktales of my stage play The Storyteller’s Apprentice at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. So, next time you’re sitting at a campfire, give it a go!
These stories run deep in my blood! I remember my Mum reading "Cinderella," "Hansel and Gretel," "Rapunzel," and "Snow White," to name a few, and being totally enthralled, captivated, and scared all at once.
Reading this edition as an adult evokes the same feelings, but I also experienced a sense of wonder and intrigue as I read the lesser-known stories such as "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers," "The Girl with No Hands," "The Nixie of the Millpond," and "Hans-my-Hedgehog."
I loved discovering these stories, closer to the originally published ones in their first collection, Children's and Household Tales in 1812, as they are much darker and scarier in nature than modern versions, and reading what Philip Pullman says about each one is an unexpected delight!
A phenomenal bestselling author meets the most magical stories ever told, now in a beautiful clothbound classics edition
In this stunningly designed book of classic fairy tales, award-winning author Philip Pullman has chosen his fifty favourite stories from the Brothers Grimm and presents them in a 'clear as water' retelling, in his unique and brilliant voice. These new versions show the adventures at their most lucid and engaging yet. Pullman's Grimm Tales of wicked wives, brave children and villainous kings will have you reading, reading aloud and rereading them for many years to come.
As the author of The Cat Who Ate Christmas, I love a book about a cat who is cunning, quirky, perhaps calamity-prone, but also a cutie. There are plenty of books about loving pets, but their characters all seem to be too earnest, too driven to do the right thing. Not with cats! They will lie, cheat and do what it takes to get what they want… as long as it doesn’t get in the way of nap time. Cats are anti-heroes by nature, aren’t they? That’s why they make the best animals to read about – and an absolute dream to write about.
The original and best. Puss in Boots is an Italian fairytale, first recorded in 1550, told and retold by many people including the Brothers Grimm and the Disney corporation. This crafty cat charms and connives his way to the very top – to royalty, no less!
The miller’s son was disappointed to receive a cat as a gift from his father. But the cat – who asks only for a pair of boots – tricks the miller’s son into getting naked and robs his clothes… just as the King and his daughter are passing. The King’s daughter falls in love with the miller’s son and, convinced by Puss’s trickery that the miller’s son is a rich marquis, marries him.
Rather than rags to riches, this is a boots to riches tale.
This beautiful hardback Ladybird edition of Puss in Boots is a perfect first illustrated introduction to this classic fairy tale for young readers from 3+. Ladybird Tales are based on the original Ladybird retellings by Vera Southgate, with beautiful pictures of the kind children like best - full of richness and detail.
Children have always loved, and will always remember, these classic fairy tales and sharing them together is an experience to treasure. Ladybird has published fairy tales for over forty-five years, bringing the magic of traditional stories to each new generation of children.
