The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales

James Mustich in 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die writes, “Except for the Bible, it's hard to imagine a book so rooted in our collective subconscious as the Grimms' Children's and Household Tales...” and I think that is true. It was the Grimms brothers who first collected and edited such stories as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, and Rumplestiltskin. This is a collection everyone should read.

Read and re-read while taking a graduate course on Fairy Tales as Literature at UofL. =)

I did not know that there were so many Grimm Brothers stories. Honestly, my knowledge mostly comes from The Brothers' Grimm movie – with Heath Ledger (RIP) and Matt Damon. And then some of the more popular stories I know. But this had so many stories you could probably read this to your kids for years and still not reach the end. I even skim read most stories and that was still quite long. I think probably the most famous Grimm stories is Hansel and Gretel, but did you know they also wrote The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, and Cinderella? And most of the stories are... quite dark (which I'm not exactly sure you'd like to tell them to little kids, but I guess some kids' movies are also violent and can get dark).

All in all, it was an enjoyable read and I'm definitely wanting to read more retellings that have the dark themes in common with the original. Or manage to find other, smaller collections of their tales and reading those. I think every storyteller has something different to contribute. My favourite storyteller is still Hans Christian Anderson because I love the way he tells the story. I now also really like the Brothers Grimm, also because of how they tell the story – very different to Anderson.