What's your favorite fairy tale and why?

[shamalamadingdo]

Man the real ones in my brothers Grimm book are harsh. I love sleeping beauty the Disney one.

[starfish]

I think the old grimms are a little too gory, and nightmare inducing till kids are older. I mean everyone dies, or horrible things happen.
My Favorite when I was little was Disney Little Mermaid, after reading the Grimms version I mean, shes always in pain, The prince makes her dance for him, even though it feels like shes always stepping on knifes, and she does it because it makes him happy. Her prince marrys someone else, and to save her self, she has to stab him in the heart with a knife her sisters bring her. She turns to sea foam in the end cause she just can't do it.
There was a mermaid movie based on the Grimm version I watched and had nightmares for months. I much like the happy, sunlight and rainbows that Disney puts out.

[Doc_Lobster]

My mom always read us the real ones when we were kids. My favorite was Snow-White and Rose-Red.

[pooh8402]

Sleeping Beauty, every version. I also like Swan Princess, which the ballet Swan Lake is based on.

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[Deleted]

It's not a fairy tale, but when I was little I was obsessed with Anastasia. I thought it was cool that my dad would take me to the library so I could check out all these books on the revolution and the Russian monarchy and Rasputin.

[Deleted]

Mar 5, 2013 7:52:49 GMT -5 @bettyhomewrecker33 said:

It's not a fairy tale, but when I was little I was obsessed with Anastasia. I thought it was cool that my dad would take me to the library so I could check out all these books on the revolution and the Russian monarchy and Rasputin.

I was too, I loved that movie so much. I was surprised that it wasn't more popular at the time. I guess it was because it didn't have the power of the Disney publicity machine behind it? You don't see little girls wandering around in Anastasia costumes, you know? I also loved the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. I do like the Brothers Grimm fairy tales but I think they're mostly too scary to read to really little kids (<6-8ish).

When I taught 10th grade European history I teamed up with an English teacher and did a unit on fairy tales using a lot of sources related to the Brothers Grimm. I was really proud of that unit; the kids got so into it.

[Deleted]

Mar 5, 2013 4:46:14 GMT -5 nicbreeful said:

The Grimms are my favorite. I would read them to my older children as literature, not a bedtime story. My favorite Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast (I used to walk around while reading like Belle did, and totally thought I was special) but I also have a soft spot in my heart for Disney's/Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. I identified with Belle; have no clue where the love of Alice in Wonderland comes from.

I will say that there is a very good book that is a fictional account of the real Alice and her relationship with Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) that is fantastic. If anyone wants the title, just let me know.

Ooh yes please

[shoeless]

Mar 5, 2013 7:52:49 GMT -5 @bettyhomewrecker33 said:

It's not a fairy tale, but when I was little I was obsessed with Anastasia. I thought it was cool that my dad would take me to the library so I could check out all these books on the revolution and the Russian monarchy and Rasputin.

My sister was also obsessed with Anastasia.  Didn't they eventually make a Disney Anastasia movie?

[Deleted]

Mar 5, 2013 8:35:19 GMT -5 shoeless said:

Mar 5, 2013 7:52:49 GMT -5 @bettyhomewrecker33 said:

It's not a fairy tale, but when I was little I was obsessed with Anastasia. I thought it was cool that my dad would take me to the library so I could check out all these books on the revolution and the Russian monarchy and Rasputin.

My sister was also obsessed with Anastasia.  Didn't they eventually make a Disney Anastasia movie?

They did in the late nineties, I was always bummed it wasn't as huge as the other Disney films. I was also obsessed with the Ingrid Bergman 1950s film. 

[tacokick]

Mar 5, 2013 8:35:19 GMT -5 shoeless said:

Mar 5, 2013 7:52:49 GMT -5 @bettyhomewrecker33 said:

It's not a fairy tale, but when I was little I was obsessed with Anastasia. I thought it was cool that my dad would take me to the library so I could check out all these books on the revolution and the Russian monarchy and Rasputin.

My sister was also obsessed with Anastasia.  Didn't they eventually make a Disney Anastasia movie?

It wasn't a Disney movie. I loved Anastasia when I was a kid I read those huge books about them in sixth grade.

[sillygoosegirl]

Mar 4, 2013 23:39:11 GMT -5 @tambcat said:

I used to like The Goose Girl and Maid Maleen. I don't know why.

eta: Yes, I will probably read them to J.

I'm impressed anyone else has even heard of "The Goose Girl"! It's where my screen name comes from.

It's one of my favorites because of the intrigue: the hidden identity, telling her troubles to the hearth and being overheard, etc.

As a kid, I especially liked the Grimm stories done by PBS, most or all set in the US. I think my all-time favorite was Bristlelip (I don't know if it has another name), where the beautiful but heartless young woman refuses all the suitors her father brings her because they aren't good enough (not rich enough, not handsome enough, etc). After a while, her father gives up and marries her off to a traveling peddler, and she has to try to work for a living as a peddler's wife... which she basically fails to do because she spent her whole life to that point being so full of herself and never doing anything useful. She eventually goes to work as a servant in the home of one of the rich suitors she rejected (for having a "bristley lip"), steals from him, and is caught red handed. After she is humbled to beg for his forgiveness and generosity, because she and her husband are too poor to put food on the table, the former suitor reveals himself as her peddler husband.

Come to think of it, those two stories have a lot in common. A girl who is born to privilege, loses it, and is only able to gain it again by being a good person. I think I identify with both "heroines", having myself been born to privilege. I've never found myself in a position of losing it all, but I wanted to be the sort of person who would be recognized for her skills and goodness even in the face of adversity, like the goose girl. And ideally NOT the sort of person who would need to actually lose it all to learn compassion, like Mrs. Bristlelip.

[ProfessorArtNerd]

The Anastasia movie was Don Bluth, who's known for FUCKED UP animated movies. He also did the Nymh movies and some other stuff. We have Anastasia (of course we do, DH is studying animation, we have a lot of animated movies.) it's the only movie Lucy asked to turn off. She's not even scared of the dinosaurs in Fantasia.

Anyway! My favorite fairy tales are Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast. The real story of Cinderella was fucked up! As were most of them. We read a few in college.

[dirtyred]

The White Cat

[papie]

I have most of the real ones, but I don't read them to my girls yet.  They are too violent, lol.  Seriously.  I remember being horrified at Cinderella's stepsisters cutting their feet with a knife to make them fit in the shoes. 

So we read the Disney ones  

[papie]

Mar 6, 2013 9:27:59 GMT -5 @scottydeux said:

The Emperor's New Clothes.

Oooh, that was my favorite as a kid!

[luckyval]

My dad gave me the complete works of Hans Christian Anderson when I was in middle school. I loved that book. I hate that I lost it along the way. I like his stuff better than the Grimm Brothers

I really love The Red Shoes and The Ugly Duckling

For the Disney spin, I love The Little Mermaid, Snow White and Sleeping Beauty

eta: not really related, but I love Freeway, that Reese Witherspoon movie that's kind of a Red Riding Hood story

[pooh8402]

Mar 5, 2013 8:04:54 GMT -5 @lcap said:

Mar 5, 2013 7:52:49 GMT -5 @bettyhomewrecker33 said:

It's not a fairy tale, but when I was little I was obsessed with Anastasia. I thought it was cool that my dad would take me to the library so I could check out all these books on the revolution and the Russian monarchy and Rasputin.

I was too, I loved that movie so much. I was surprised that it wasn't more popular at the time. I guess it was because it didn't have the power of the Disney publicity machine behind it? You don't see little girls wandering around in Anastasia costumes, you know? I also loved the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. I do like the Brothers Grimm fairy tales but I think they're mostly too scary to read to really little kids (<6-8ish).

When I taught 10th grade European history I teamed up with an English teacher and did a unit on fairy tales using a lot of sources related to the Brothers Grimm. I was really proud of that unit; the kids got so into it.

that's so cool. I wish my high school teachers did that. I love the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen so much. I have both of their complete works.

[pooh8402]

Mar 6, 2013 8:00:41 GMT -5 ProfessorArtNerd said:

The Anastasia movie was Don Bluth, who's known for FUCKED UP animated movies. He also did the Nymh movies and some other stuff. We have Anastasia (of course we do, DH is studying animation, we have a lot of animated movies.) it's the only movie Lucy asked to turn off. She's not even scared of the dinosaurs in Fantasia.

Anyway! My favorite fairy tales are Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast. The real story of Cinderella was fucked up! As were most of them. We read a few in college.

fwiw, Don Bluth used to be a Disney animator. he went off on his own and started his own animation/production company. I like his movies (NIMH, Land Before Time (the original, all the sequels suck), An American Tail and Fievel Goes West, and the aforementioned Anastasia).

[game blouses]

My mom was studying children's literature in college when I was young, and I finished my book one day and was whining about it, so she handed me her textbook of Grimm's Fairy Tales. I read that book cover to cover, easily over 100 times in my childhood. My favorite was The Almond Tree, where the stepmother kills the stepson and he comes back as a bird and gives gifts to his father and sister, and drops a stone on the stepmother's head. I thought it was a beautiful story in a twisted way. I actually got in trouble for organizing a play about it when I was in elementary school.

[jane6672]

Fun ones for older kids:

Ella Enchanted
The Glass Slipper

[Deleted]

Mar 11, 2013 16:47:22 GMT -5 pooh8402 said:

Mar 6, 2013 8:00:41 GMT -5 ProfessorArtNerd said:

The Anastasia movie was Don Bluth, who's known for FUCKED UP animated movies. He also did the Nymh movies and some other stuff. We have Anastasia (of course we do, DH is studying animation, we have a lot of animated movies.) it's the only movie Lucy asked to turn off. She's not even scared of the dinosaurs in Fantasia.

Anyway! My favorite fairy tales are Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Beauty and the Beast. The real story of Cinderella was fucked up! As were most of them. We read a few in college.

fwiw, Don Bluth used to be a Disney animator. he went off on his own and started his own animation/production company. I like his movies (NIMH, Land Before Time (the original, all the sequels suck), An American Tail and Fievel Goes West, and the aforementioned Anastasia).

Oh, I love all of these movies. My 5th grade teacher used to read us Roald Dahl if we were good. I had a brief stint as a substitute teacher, and I'd always bring that same compilation book to use as a treat.