bloodygranuaile (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bloodygranuaile) wrote2012-03-15 04:52 pm
bloodygranuaile) wrote2012-03-15 04:52 pm
Revisiting my childhood
So, when you were kids, did any of you read any of the Color Fairy Book anthologies, edited by Andrew Lang, and supposedly also his wife but she didn't get any credit because Victorians?
This week I finished rereading The Orange Fairy Book and it was just as charming, pat, and ridiculous as I remembered. While the tales are rather cleaned up (at least three versions of Cinderella and none of them have people cutting bits of their feet off), they are still a lot of fun, and the illustrations are gorgeous. There are dozens of tales in each book, even though the books aren't very long, because some of the selections are so short.
The most impressive thing about this series is how global its reach it; The Orange Fairy Book features tales from all sorts of cultures instead of just the usual French, English and German ones that US kids tend to hear about--this edition features several Berber fairy stories and ends with a handful of charming Lapp tales about ogres. The stories all have citations at the ends, so you can get a sense of where the Langs did their research--some are from anthologies of specific culture's myths; others are culled from anthropology journals or acquired by direct interview.
Since there are so many unconnected stories in this volume I find I have little else to say about the book as a whole, except that it has left me with a newfound appreciation for Finnish ogre stories. SO AWESOME.
This week I finished rereading The Orange Fairy Book and it was just as charming, pat, and ridiculous as I remembered. While the tales are rather cleaned up (at least three versions of Cinderella and none of them have people cutting bits of their feet off), they are still a lot of fun, and the illustrations are gorgeous. There are dozens of tales in each book, even though the books aren't very long, because some of the selections are so short.
The most impressive thing about this series is how global its reach it; The Orange Fairy Book features tales from all sorts of cultures instead of just the usual French, English and German ones that US kids tend to hear about--this edition features several Berber fairy stories and ends with a handful of charming Lapp tales about ogres. The stories all have citations at the ends, so you can get a sense of where the Langs did their research--some are from anthologies of specific culture's myths; others are culled from anthropology journals or acquired by direct interview.
Since there are so many unconnected stories in this volume I find I have little else to say about the book as a whole, except that it has left me with a newfound appreciation for Finnish ogre stories. SO AWESOME.