Grimms' Fairy Tales

The pitch

Sixty-two tales collected two centuries ago from German firesides — including the originals of Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Hansel and Gretel, back before they were smoothed and sweetened. Short, strange, and endlessly re-readable: this is the book to leave where a reluctant reader will trip over it.

What to know

Each tale is a complete five-to-ten-minute read, which makes this the most flexible book on our shelf. One at bedtime, a few on a car ride, or a kid grazing on their own all work. The classic translation reads simply. Take the content note seriously, but know that the menace is part of why these tales work. Generations of kids have handled it fine, and most of them asked for another.

Life when written

The brothers Grimm collected these tales in the German states during and after the Napoleonic wars, when “Germany” was still a patchwork of small kingdoms and the stories lived in kitchens, spinning rooms, and nurseries, told entirely from memory. The Grimms wrote them down as scholars, afraid that world of firelight telling was about to disappear — and they were right. By the time our Victorian English edition appeared, the tales had already crossed every border in Europe on foot.