Who'd have thought I'd be reading fairy tales as an adult.
Here Philip Pullman has re-written 50 Grimm Tales. He has written an interesting introduction detailing how the traditional fairy tale differs from novel telling. Also after he has told each tale he writes a little bit of analysis to accompany it. Some tales will be familiar (at least in part), e.g. Rapunzel and Cinderella, whilst others will be less so. There are recurring themes, e.g. evil women, whether they be stepmothers or witches; the main character being an ex-soldier, or a miller, or a poor person, or a guy called Hans; princesses and kings wanting to marry pretty young things, and so on.
Some of the tales are quite gruesome with gallows, deaths, incest all being present. Therefore I don't know if every tale in here is suitable for young as suggested in the "young and old" bit in the title.
Also I can't really judge how this compares to other collections of the Brothers Grimm stories, or fairy tales in general, but as a standalone it is perfectly good and I enjoyed reading it.
(I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed here.)
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