Of Grimm Realities and the Irony of Fairy Tales

Today, 20th December 2012 marks the 200th anniversary of  the publication of the first volume of fairy tales by the Grimm brothers- Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Undoubtedly, their fairy tales, along with those of Andersen's, Perrault's, and many others more contemporary to my childhood (Enid Blyton?) have shaped the way I relate to literature, and to the world as a whole.

Fairy tales are usually the first stories of gore and violence that a child hears/ reads. For some strange, unfathomable reason, they are considered appropriate to be consumed by even 3-4 year olds. Just like any movie made in animation is deemed fit for juvenile viewing. As an example here, I could mention Madagascar. The plot is suitable enough, give or take a few stereotypes that pepper the narrative. It is in the specifics that I get my hackles up. How could a movie deemed suitable for children - and believe me, 3-4 year olds are taken to these movies by their misguided doting parents - have steamy scenes like the one with Moto Moto the Hippo and Gloria? It's beyond ridiculous.

Anyway, I digress. I was speaking of fairy tales, and Grimms' tales in particular. Their tales are a 'collection of tales' - collected from folklore and cautionary tales that reflected the unsavoury medieval European life. They are therefore, more replete with sexual undertones, gender/ class stereotypes and violence than the Andersen ones. This also underscores the fact that the Grimm brothers were more of curators of local folklore - a lot of what we know of medieval Europe is certainly thanks to people like them - than creators of stories for children. The tales were the then equivalents of the 'bogeyman' stories (again misguided) people tell children to keep them in line. Certainly not what I would classify as 'fairy-tales' as the very name conjures up a benevolent image.

This Wikipedia article says it all: 

The first volumes were much criticized because, although they were called "Children's Tales", they were not regarded as suitable for children, both for the scholarly information included and the subject matter. Many changes through the editions – such as turning the wicked mother of the first edition in Snow White and Hansel and Gretel (shown in original Grimm stories as Hansel and Grethel) to a stepmother, were probably made with an eye to such suitability. They removed sexual references—such as Rapunzel's innocently asking why her dress was getting tight around her belly, and thus naïvely revealing her pregnancy and the prince's visits to her stepmother—but, in many respects, violence, particularly when punishing villains, was increased.

Disney adaptations of these tales are another story altogether. They have not only sanitized these stories, they have 'Barbified' them beyond tolerance - the exact opposite of what the above quote states. Violence has been toned down to almost saccharine- sweetness levels, with characters losing their grey shades, becoming more polarised, and a big dollop of sexualisation added. Unfortunately, they, too, have been gobbled up by children and parents alike. 

So, speaking of Grimm realities, today's Google Doodle is a tribute to the 200th anniversary. Do check it out. The artwork and wordless storytelling is phenomenal.

Their most famous tale- that of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.

Coming at a time when crimes against women are escalating - it seems like a fairy tale no more. It is a very real horror story. Being enacted day by day in different parts of the country. The world even. It is the ordinariness of the settings in which these horrors take place that is so menacing. A simple walk down the street to the neighbourhood grocer's could become fraught with frightening nuances.

How do we explain these things to children? Maybe the Grimms' Fairy Tales do not seem a bad option anymore.

Book Review: It's All The Same!

You read a book. Then you go and watch the movie made on the book. You find small and big places where the movie has deviated from the original.

It may be as large a deviation as having inserted a whole new subplot or scene. Think the scene in HP and The Half-Blood Prince where the Death Eaters come en masse and create havoc at the Burrow, the Weaselys' home or the change in the reason why the Death Eaters realise who the real Harry is in the opening sequence of Deathly Hallows 1. (Yes, that is a large deviation in my eyes- I can be a purist that way!)

It can be a small deviation like having a trim-slim protagonist in the movie version of Louis Sachar's Holes versus the plump, podgy one in the book - a wonderfully made movie - one movie which certainly improved on the book - a difficult feat indeed!

The point is, that it a reader's/ viewer's understanding and memory of the story depends on the version they have imbibed, and thus starts the metamorphosis of the original story - happens with the writer, too, doesn't it, with each subsequent draft?

It is these versions that we are celebrating - Tulika Books had recently held a Celebrating Our Myths blogathon, in which I was declared one of the winners. My prize - this book.

Folktales and mythology. There are as many versions as the cultures that tell a particular story. Every storyteller worth their salt adds embellishments to it- some of which get incorporated in further generations. A sort of branching out in oral tradition. So the same story at the root may spawn many culturally different variations.

pic courtesy matsyacrafts

Here is a book that focuses on this very aspect of storytelling, with the help of the kaavad. I have seen one of these amazing contraptions at Artnavy's home. It is a fold-able picture book of sorts, that can be used to tell the story. The storytellers, called the Kaavadiya Bhaats, unravel the story from the seemingly intricately folded kaavad. This is a storytelling tradition that is still alive in the villages of Rajasthan.

pic courtesy tulikabooks

It's All The Same!
Written by Nina Sabnani
Illustrated by Satyanarayan Suthaar
Published by Tulika books
Ages 5+

Pappuram and Kojaram are both Kaavadiya Bhaats who go from place to place telling stories with the help of their colourful kaavads. Both tell the story of why Ganesha is worshipped before any other gods or goddesses. Both the stories take completely different paths. Both stories begin with Shiva and Parvati, Ganesha's parents. Where one version speaks their two sons, the other has a disgruntled Rama being prevented from reaching his own wedding.

What happens next? How do such completely different trajectories reach the same conclusion? Read it in our book, It's All The Same- for, at the end, it all is.

The illustrations by Satyanarayan Suthaar, a kaavadiya himself, are in rich detail, full colour, in the tradition of the kaavads, as is obvious from the two pictures here. Check out this video of the making of this book - watch the two kaavadiyas in action.


    

Book Review: The Joy of Fairy Tales

pic courtesy amazon.co.uk

The Joy of Fairy Tales
Compiled and edited by Gill Davies
Published by Worth Press Ltd.
Ages 8+

Imagine a book that has one mesmerised as soon as one picks it up. Makes one forget that one is not a child anymore. One that makes you want to just sit with it and read and read and read. The moment I picked this book up at the bookstore, I knew I could not let it go.

Wanting to read a bit before buying, I scanned a few pages and came upon this poem-

Moonlight Magic

In the fairy woods when the moonlight glows
The animals twirl, each up on their toes;
Fox fiddles a merry and magical tune
As the animals dance in the light of the moon.
All around they skip, like the pixies do,
Dreaming of wishes bound to come true
Bear bounces and laughs, the hares leap high,
Till stars grow dim and the dawn is nigh...
Then home they go, paws dimpling grass
Like dewdrops gleam like bubbles of glass.

-Anon.

I was enchanted. This was lovely! It felt like the other side of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are". So much similar, yet so much dissimilar. The light to its dark. The day to its night. Even if this was something that happened by moonlight. We had to have this book. It was a collectible.

Appealing to children and adults alike, the book is a smorgasbord of fairy tales from all over the world, with snippets of trivia in the margins - European, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, African, Australian, Russian, Aborigine...you name it.

There are tales as old as the Arabian nights, tales re-told from mythology and folklore. There are tales as new as those from J.K.Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard.

There are tantalising excerpts from magical books like The Wizard of Oz, Gulliver's Travels, Lewis Caroll's Alice books, E. Nesbit's The Phoenix and the Carpet, Kipling's Just So Stories, The Princess and the Goblin, even Shakespeare.

We also have the usual suspects like Hans Christian Anderson, the Grimm brothers, Charles Perrault, and Andrew Lang. As also magical poetry by the likes of Edward Lear, Robert Louis Stevenson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Shakespeare, and that tantalising poet - Anonymous, and many more.

Think that is a long list? Just the contents of this 766 page book runs into 16 pages. We also have an extensive bibliography for those interested in more reading, short biographies of all the authors and illustrators (the illustrations alone are worth picking up the book for- each tale comes with the original illustrations it was first published with) featured.

For those interested in the evolution of the fairytale, there is a detailed timeline of fairytales and folktales through history, from all continents - right from the ancient Sumerian epic tale of Gilgamesh c. 2000 BCE to Harry Potter. As also links from that modern magic wand- the internet.

As the editor says in an afterword: "So here is a book to treasure...through its pages the reader can discover how ancient folk tales and legends developed, changed and spread - and how in their re-telling they became the familiar stories we know today." Not just another anthology.

This, as Choxbox would put it, are fairy tales at their best, before Disney meddled with them. Maybe that's just our opinion, of course, with most people knowing their fairy tales only through the Disney looking-glass. Then that's their loss, IMO.

A and I have been dipping into it at all through the vacation. Perfect for bed-time reading.

Do check out this lovely trailer of the movie Fairy Tale :A true story based on an actual incident from Cottingley that took place in 1917. Two girls happened to take photographs that were said to be of fairies. There was quite a bit of interest generated, that brought even big names like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini to investigate. It remained an unsolved puzzle for many years, until the girls, now in their sixties, admitted that it had been a prank that had gone out of hand  and many claim it is evidence of the existence of fairies. I don't know what to think, but the movie seems lively. Completely non-Disney! Do click to watch. Would love to get my hands on it.



Crossposted at Saffrontree.

Book review: Cinderella Ate my Daughter

I would like to thank Utbtkids for introducing me to this wonderful book.

Consider this. A cousin, who is a parent to three girls aged 12, 8 and 3, has always picked up girlie stuff for her daughters. Pink, frilly dresses, tutus, barbies, disney/barbie toys, dresses, fashion accessories, all the latest disney/barbie movies/dolls' houses, barbie add-ons, barbie UNO cards(??), decor in all shades of pink- baby pink, magenta, fuschia, crimson, carmine, cerise, rose...you name it. Even hot pink cakes for every birthday. Bratz stuff, shiny lip gloss and nail polish (for these age groups??) - such pride on the mother's face when she recounts her children's obsession with dressing up and hair-dressing! I am often chided for not getting all the pinky-pink stuff for my daughter, that I should lighten up and let 'a girl be a girl'! She is welcome to have her opinion, of course! Not for me, though.

Things are made more difficult by the burgeoning in-your-face hard-sell of all things pink. Or rather all things stereotypical. Parents, beware. The people to decide what your kid plays with, how s/he plays, how s/he dresses are not you, but commercial establishments who have invested big money in the business of deciding this for you. So much so, that sometimes there isn't any choice in the matter.

In her book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein (see blogroll on the right side for her wonderful blog) discusses this wide-scale commercialisation of gender stereotypes, the messages it passes on to the hapless, impressionable children, (of both gender) the long-reaching effects of this stereotyping, and the way this industry is fed by the hopes and aspirations of every parent who buys into it.

Pic courtesy flipkart

Cinderella Ate My Daughter
dispatches from the front lines of the new girlie-girl culture
Written by Peggy Orenstein
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers

Gender stereotyping is not a new thing. It has not begun with the culture of all things girlie. It is as old as civilisation- maybe even from before civilisation. Gender stereotyping has its roots in biology. A woman can give birth to and suckle her baby, a man cannot. So the woman stayed at home to take care of the baby, ensuring the propogation of humans, while the man ensured survival in terms of providing for food and protection.

However, what began as a matter of convenience and an equitable division of labour that worked wonderfully well for the survival of humans, has evolved slowly but surely into something that denies human beings their most fundamental right- of being humans. The world gets divided into the masculine and the feminine, each strait-jacketed into our notions of what is right or wrong for each.

In an out-and-out patriarchial society like ours, this has always featured big. We already have a million ways to perpetuate gender stereotypes. We do not need another way to achieve the same.

Good girls don't do this, they don't do that- so many social restrictions based on gender- Oh, yes, there are these for boys, too. They don't have it easier. Real boys don't cry, real boys cannot play with dolls...I could go on. Resulting in aggression as the only acceptable emotion for them to show- crippling them emotionally!

Paradoxically, the girlie culture has its roots in the feminist movement. Barbie, in fact, was introduced in 1959 as a symbol of feminist aspirations(throwing off the shackles of domesticity), and was then targeted towards teenagers. Soon, though, Barbie, (astronaut, scientist, doctor, etc. in her initial avatars) and her successors were no longer a sign of empowerment- there was a definate element of sexualisation coming in. Girls who played with them were getting younger and younger and more impressionable by the day- of course putting the dolls off the radar for the original older age groups. Making it that much more difficult to contain and deflect the subliminal messages that were being sent to these children.

A short-sighted view of the princess/barbie culture provides a vision of empowerment. After all, our kids think it is so 'cool' to emulate the way Barbie dresses. So 'cool' to know about the latest in celebrity activities. Hannah Montana becomes a goddess. Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus,...the latest pop icon become role models. Not yet 3-yr-olds aspire to be like these idols. Ordinariness, simplicity is seen as totally 'uncool.' After all, who wants to be an old-fashioned so-and-so? So stereotypical!

Commercialisation, of course, demands that where there is a demand, there has to be a supply- so that profit can be made. After all, that is how it works in a capitalist set-up. Crass comercialisation takes it a step further, and feeds on the social weaknesses that come disguised as another step in empowerment.

'The pursuit of physical perfection was recast as a source - often the source - of young women's "empowerment." Rather than freedom from traditional constraints, then, girls now were free to "choose" them. Yet the line between "get to" and "have to" blurs awfully fast. Even as new and professional opportunities unfurl before (the girls), so does the path that encourages them to equate identity with image, self-expression with appearance, feminity with performance, pleasure with pleasing, and sexuality with sexualisation.'

... by the time they are teenagers, the girls (quoting a study by Deborah Tolman, a Professor of human sexuality studies at the City University of New York) respond to questions about how their bodies feel - questions about sexuality or desire - by talking about how their bodies look. They say something like, "I felt like I looked good." Orenstein says, "My fear for my daughter, then, is not that she will someday act in a sexual way; it is that she will learn to act sexually against her own self-interest."  Something seen in victims of low self-esteem, and not a sign of empowerment.

Sounds eerily like something the manusmriti has advocated for the female half of the population long long ago, doesn't it? We have plenty of our own misplaced ideas and beliefs to correct without complicating things in this way, thank you very much!

So what's with the pink and blue? Let us consider here a discussion on children's fashions in the past few hundred years.

Disclaimer: The next two paragraphs have much to do only with patterns of fashion in the western world. India has a very different story - a veritable study in ethnology ... but that is a subject for an entirely different post. Suffice here to say that the pink v/s blue debate with all its history has made an entry to our country quite recently - though making waves enough to start worrying.

In the west, children of both genders wore only white, at the most, shades of grey, up to 6-7 years of age, for a very practical reason: soiled clothes could be cleaned only by boiling them, and coloureds were a waste. The styles were also similar, much like dresses, with boys' clothes buttoned up in the front and the girls' buttoned up behind. When pastels came in, both genders wore all colours. Around the time of WW1, pink was actually associated with boys, as it was considered a watered down version of red, a colour associated with strength and bravery.

Yet, today, all things feminine are associated with the colour pink - a belief that we have to thank Nazi Germany for. Just like they made it compulsary for Jews to put on a yellow Star of David to distinguish them, they issued pink stars to those men that they believed were homosexual - these too were part of the reprehensible Final Solution. This gave pink a 'non-masculine' tag, and was equated with all things feminine. This, of course, has been exploited by marketing divisions of companies like Disney and Mattel to widen the divide and create a market for girl things and boy things. Not just toys and clothes, but every b****y thing!

Magenta, an extraspectral colour
pic courtesy biotele.com

Let me put one thing straight. I have nothing against pink, and I think it is a beautiful colour. I have no problems using something pink, on the stipulation that it does not have the associations I have spoken of. Same goes for orange, grey, turquoise, white, green, blue, red, black, yellow, violet, and any other hue of the rainbow. Speaking of rainbows, pink is not even a colour from the spectrum- there is no wavelength that translates to pink. It is a trick played by our brain, that interprets a mixture of the wavelengths for red and violet as magenta, a deep shade of pink. Experimentally, this can be created by superimposing two different spectrums created by two prisms. Try it. Go ahead- click on this link to read the complete explanation. It's fascinating!

I would just like to mention a couple of things from the book at the end.

Cinderella's story as we know it is the one popularised by Charles Perrault. He, in turn, based it on a tale from the Grimm Brothers' collection of folktales and fairy tales. The tale of Aschenputtel, a fiesty girl who does not wait around for any fairy godmother or the prince to rescue her- complete with gory bits, now sanitised for our consumption to the point where we have a good and beautiful but wimpy heroine.

Peggy Orenstein also dedicates the last chapter to do-able remedies against the unstoppable and unavoidable onslaught of the girlie culture. And keeping in mind the natural rebelliousness of the fast-growing but impressionale children whose lives can get impacted.

The course of an epic

Found an interesting discussion on the Mahabharatha here. The participants are obviously students, not experts. They have given a link from where they have sourced their material, but that link does not open. The participants' being students can be gauged from some irreverent material that has been posted. We can also obviously see that they are Amar Chitra Katha and Bollywood fans.

The interesting parts are

1. A light on how the epic has been adapted to a completely different culture and religion, which nevertheless made it their own. Here- Java /Indonesia.

2. A detailed timeline of the Mahabharatha complete with dates, times, and ages of the key characters at key events. This seems to have been deduced from the lunar calendar dates and times mentioned in the original epic, and a historical perspective.

Was the epic history? I don't know. Maybe the key events really did happen, as this discussion shows (this one is by people who have really studied the epic), and have been embellished with a lot of poetical licence. After all, we do say 'a history called Jaya' when speaking of the Mahabharatha.

Let me quote a bit from the timeline here, but do click on this link for the rest of it. And let me know what you think of the life expectancy.

"3. Yudhisthira's Birth : Yudhisthira was born on Pajothpatti Ashwin Bright 5th day, in Jyeshta Star, in Sagittarius Lagna, at midday Abhijit Muhurta. That was just years. 127-5-25 prior to Kaliyug (roughly 3229-8-15 B.C)"

"45. The Great Mahabharat War started on Shubhakrit Margashirsha Bright 13/14th Day, Tuesday in Bharani Star. Yudhishthir was yrs. 91-2-9 days old. Just the previous day 11/12th Day, when armies were rehearsing Vyuhas, Arjuna fell into a gloom, occasioning Lord Krishna's famous BhagavadGeeta discourse with Arjuna."

"62. Pandavas started for their Final End after 0-6-11 days, that is, on Pramadi Ashwayuja Bright 12th Day. Yudhishthir was aged yrs. 128-0-6. Parik$hit, 36 years old, was coronated on the same day at Hastinapur.

63. Swargaarohanam is not clearly stated in the Epic. It may be 26 years afterwards. Sage Veda Vyas dictated the Great Epic to Ganapati only after Swargarohanam of the Pandavas, that is, after 26 years of Kaliyug.

64. Parikshit ruled for 60 years, coronated his 25 year old son Janamejaya, and died.

65. So, Bhagavatha was written by Sage Veda Vyas soon after Mahabharat was over, and before the 60th year of the Kaliyuga.

66. In Dwapara Yuga, human beings lived upto 400 years. There are four stages in life - Balya, Youvana, Koumara and Vriddhapyam. In Dwaparyug, Balya stage was upto 40 years, Youvana stage upto 120 years, and later Koumara and Vriddhapyam stages. But now in the Kaliyuga, Balya stage is upto 15 years, Youvana upto 45 years, Koumara upto 60 years and Vriddhapyam beyond 60 years."

Review: Lord Ganesha's feast of laughter

Today was Ganesh Chaturthi, the 4th day of the waxing half of Bhadrapada. The birthday of my favourite god, Ganapati. This is a big festival for us Maharashtrians, and is celebrated in most houses. The festival was made public by Lokmanya Tilak, when the British put a curfew on public gatherings. In the guise of getting together for the Ganesha festival, freedom fighters would hold their meetings. Today, it has become something of a public nuisance, as there is no longer that need. Ganesha, however, still reigns over our hearts.

Pic courtesy Penguinbooksindia

Lord Ganesh's feast of laughter
Written by Meera Uberoi
Illustrated by Agantuk
Published by Puffin books, an imprint of Penguin Books India
Read aloud 4+, read alone 8+

Ganesha, or Ganapati, is probably the most beloved of the Gods. He is the remover of obstacles, the god of learning, and the one whose name is taken before beginning anything. The primordial sound 'Oum' is attributed to him, and one of his many names is 'Omkara'.

Ganesha is also seen as a benevolent god, and is often a favourite with children. They are also fascinated by the unlikely seeming form- one with an elephant's head, a large belly, and with a mouse as a vehicle to boot. Many of his stories have a childlike quality of fun. 

Meera Uberoi's book has many of these stories. Some known, some not so well known.

Do you know...
That Ganesha was the one who created the first tabla when his irate father Shiva broke his mridungam into two?
That Vyasa overcame a bad case of writers' block after invoking the help of Ganesha?
That Ganesha is wedded to Siddhi (accomplishment) and Buddhi (intellect)?
That Ganesha won a race for going around the world against his brother Skanda, once by going around his parents, a child's world, and once by going around the world in his mind, by reading up all of the available knowledge about the world?
That Ganesha swallowed and contained the demon of anger, Krodhasura (krodha=anger), who was destroying the world, and that is the reason why he has a belly that hangs down (Lambodara)? "Even today, anger must be swallowed to control it, just as Ganesha did."

These and many other tales make up this collection of stories. There are also some folktales about Ganesha other than the usual tales from the Puranas, which makes the collection complete- mythology and folklore.

Meera Uberoi's narration is very endearing, in terms that children use as a matter of course.

"Shiva's wife, Parvati, daughter of Himalaya with its sparkling streams, was pretty easy-going but disliked being disturbed when she was bathing. And Shiva never seemed to remember that. He strode in whenever he wished, cool as you please, and this really annoyed Parvati."

"'I knew it was one of your sneaky tricks!' Skanda exclaimed hotly. 'So tell me, how did you manage it?'
'We-e-ell,' drawled Ganesha, scratching one large ear, 'you didn't say which world. Parents are a child's world, so I walked around our parents--thrice.' Seeing that his brother was ready to explode, he piously added,'The scriptures say so. Ask Father.'"

A loved the book, and was giggling throughout. She has recommended it to all who would like to read fun-filled tales about the elephant god, whose birthday is today, Ganesh Chaturthi.

Crossposted at Saffrontree.

On storytelling- SHAKESPEARE'S STORYBOOK

Second review up at CROCUS. Do visit here for the comments and discussion by our readers.

I once heard a well-known storyteller say- the most essential thing for telling a story is to have a story to tell.

That is exactly what human beings have been doing for time immemorial -telling stories. Even in pre-historic times, man used cave paintings to tell a story. As human beings migrated all over the world, they took their stories with them, using their immediate environment to explain things further, embellishing their stories. These imaginative additions are such an integral part of storytelling, that today we have a phrase "telling a story" used in lieu of "telling an untruth".

The re-tellings by different people led to many versions of the same story-seed. Much in the way of evolution of all species. As an example, there are many versions the world over of a catastrophic event like a flood, told differently in different cultures. This may point to a common memory of such an event.

To quote from this excellent article, "Different stories, or different ways of telling the same stories, shape distinct cultures. A people’s stories are often similar to those of other cultures, but distinct in themselves. Your culture’s stories became part of your self-identity. It’s possible that culture is rooted in storytelling."

All storytellers thus draw from experience or from stories already told, and tell the story in their own styles. And who better than William Shakespeare, the Bard, as a storyteller?

SHAKESPEARE'S STORYBOOK : Folk Tales that inspired the Bard
Narrated by Patrick Ryan
Illustrated by James Mayhew
Published by Barefoot books.
Ages 8+

In Shakespeare's day, the face of storytelling was changing from the traditional to the commercial. Storytellers before Shakespeare's time would be in the service of noblemen, the church, or the court. For the first time, there began a practice of opening the theatres to the public, and the players working in these became the first professional performers. 

Like all great storytellers, Shakespeare drew inspiration from stories he already knew. Maybe he heard them from his parents, or from minstrels, ballad singers, storytellers, who moved from place to place, or read them in books which may have been printed in printing presses which had been invented only about a century or so before his time! And then told them in his own inimitable way, enriching the English language in the process, giving us many phrases that we commonly use without realising their origin.

SHAKESPEARE'S STORYBOOK gives us a peek into the folktales /fairy tales that can easily be recognised as the inspirations for seven of his works, encompassing most of the genres covered by him. The Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, The Winter's Tale.

The original stories are from a wide spectrum- Welsh, Irish, English, French, Scottish, Italian, Oriental, Turkish, Norse- and sometimes seem to drawn from more than one source. The storyteller at work again, where Shakespeare manages to amalgamate tales from various sources and various cultures to tell his tale, sometimes set in a totally different culture from the original tale. He also uses accounts of actual events in many of his works, as also his personal experiences as father to two daughters.

Each of these seven works of Shakespeare is separately presented as a simple tale with a discussion on the possible sources and processes behind each one, followed by the tale that seems to be the most likely source. All in a fun manner that does not overwhelm the child. And a wonderful treasury of folktales for the reader!

In the introduction to his book, the author Patrick Ryan, a wonderful storyteller himself, tells us that "...each story has many different sources- some told orally, some written down. The stories have changed and evolved from teller to teller. Shakespeare is just one more yarn spinner who belongs to this grand tradition..."

What do I say about the illustrations? Done in rich, full colour by James Mayhew, author and illustrator of the Katie and Ella Bella series, they transport us to the magical world of fairies, princes, princesses, noblemen and commoners that feature in both the original folktales and Shakespeare's stories.

There's more. The book comes with two full length CDs, so that the book can be heard in true storytelling fashion as well as read. Double the treat!

As stated in the introduction, "People have loved hearing these stories, and reading them, and telling them and re-telling them, for hundreds of years. When you've had fun with them, maybe you'll re-tell them in your own way, and do an even better job than William Shakespeare did!"

So put on your storytelling hat, get hold of a favourite story and re-tell it in your own way!

Image courtesy Barefoot books.