Forgotten fairy tales of brave and brilliant girls ed. by Lesley Sims
Usborne, 2019. ISBN: 9781474966429. 208pp., hbk.
Ask a young child for the title of a fairy tale and you are likely
to be told Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Ariel or
Rapunzel or whatever the Disney princess-du-jour is. But in fact,
there are many more fairy tales than those that were collected and
written down by the great storytellers like the Brothers Grimm,
Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen. Fairy tales were told
orally for many generations before they were preserved in print,
each being shared a little differently by the teller according to
time, place and circumstance, but each having a fundamental truth at
its core.
For whatever reason, the tales that were collected and written share
common characteristics of strong men and weak women who needed to be
rescued by the male's prowess and those in which the females were
the leading protagonists were almost lost to time. The story
of their discovery and recovery is almost as fascinating as the
stories themselves, and shows the slowly changing attitudes towards
women and their place in society. Food for discussion and debate
right there!
In the meantime, this remains a collection of very readable and
beautifully illustrated fairy tales that deserve to be as well-known
as their more famous counterparts. Perhaps the next Disney heroine
will arise from this anthology. Regardless, stories about brave and
brilliant girls are always good for the soul.
Barbara Braxton