Fables and Fairy Tales Books

Brought back great childhood memories of my grandmother reading me these timeless fables. Want your child to start on a solid foundation in the French language? Add this treasure to your library.

This book comes from a small publisher and may be easily overlooked, but it shouldn't be. Batt has gathered several folktales from around the world with the theme of fabric and/or weaving. Griffin has done a marvelous job of using fabrics to illustrate the tales while reflecting the culture of each. This is a charming book with new tales and illustrations to share with children and adults alike. The fabrics are all vibrantly colored, making the illustrations a feast for the eyes. I kept finding new details every time I looked at a page. Each story is prefaced with an introduction about the fabric which will appear in the story. This would make a perfect gift for people interested in folklore or in weaving.

Here is also a brief description from the publisher:

"The weaving of words and the weaving of fabrics come together in this exceptional gift book, which combines the talents of professional storyteller Tanya Batt and textile artist Rachel Griffin. The history and passage around the world of each of the fabrics, from wool to batik, from flax to silk, is fascinatingly described, and the fabrics themselves then become the central characters of stories from areas as diverse as Scandinavia, Hawaii, Indonesia, and East Africa."

This pop-up book is extremely cute and colorful. I hope the little Christmas angel I got it for enjoys it. I am thinking of getting it for my niece when she is old enough. Very sparkly too! I can see how it would catch a child's attention.

It's cute, short, small and sparkly, and it will keep her attention. What more do you need at storytime? And quite a bargain in the mix!

I bought this book for $1.99, thinking that even if my 4 year old nephew didn't enjoy it, for two bucks, it was worth finding out. Needless to say, I was shocked three months later when his mother told me that it was his favorite book. It taught him to use his imagination by trying to figure out where the characters may be hiding, and it was a fun before bedtime activity as well. Though he has found all of the characters countless times, it is still the first book he picks up at night!

I had these books as a kid, and I loved them. It's a set of four 4" books of Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Puss in Boots. The illustrations by Jan Pienkowsky are delicate silhouette drawings with brightly colored accents. Each book has gold details on the cover, and a marbled end page.

The stories themselves are the basic storylines of the fairy tales. Cinderella has two ugly stepsisters (wonderfully drawn), and she goes to the ball twice before losing her glass slipper and finding her true love. Snow White is defeated through tightened corset strings, a poison comb, and finally a poison apple. Each story sticks to the "original" while still maintaining a voice of its own.

I would definitely recommend this box set to anyone that loves fairy tales. Unfortunately, this set seems to be out of print, although it can still be found used online once in a while. There is another, easier-to-find book by Jan Pienkowksi that has "Hansel and Gretel" instead of "Puss in Boots". However, the individual little books in this box set have a certain charm that makes me glad I stuck with my little slice of childhood.

My nine year old daughter loved this book which consists of 22 stories. She stayed up reading them. Since I couldn't find this book to buy, we took it out of the library. She has renewed it at the library twice so that she can finish all the stories. She is very sad to have to return it. Wonderful illustrations too.

A superb collection of nine favorite H.C.A. stories (see below), wonderously illustrated with something like a hundred hig-quality reproductions, at least half of which are full-page, drawn from the work of twenty of the greatest artists from the "Golden Age" of children's book illustration (around the turn of the century). The art is simply mind-blowingly beautiful.

The tellings themselves are very fine. The language used is both delightful and sophisticated, making this a fine volume to entertain good readers amongst older children, and to expand their language skills. Of course, less able readers and younger children might like the stories just as well if they were read to them. There is no information in the book or on the publishers website regarding the origins of these particular tellings.

A sample paragraph, from "Thumbelina":

"Then they came to the warm lands. The sun was shining much more brightly, the sky was twice as high, and the most wonderful green and black grapes were growing by the roadside and on fences. Lemons and oranges hung in the forests, and there was a scent of myrtle and curled mint, and pretty children were running by the roadside playing with big colorful butterflies. But the swallow flew still further, and everything became even more beautiful. There, beneath magnificent green trees by a blue lake, stood a shining white palace, with vines climbing up it's lofty pillars. At the top were lots of swallows' nests, and the swallow carrying Thumbelina lived in one of them."

This collection contains the following stories:

The Emperor's New Clothes The Little Mermaid The Little Match Girl The Nightingale The Princess and the Pea The Steadfast Tin Soldier Thumbelina The Tinderbox The Ugly Duckling

The compilers, Russell Ash and Bernard Higton, must be very proud of the beautiful object they have produced. The publisher, Cronicle Books, deserves praise and support.

This book is a must, either for the child's library or the collectors shelf.

P. Craig Russell's pen makes sparks fly as it gives depth, color and life to every brilliant fold and cascade and ripple of luxury. More sparks fly as the pen portrays the poor and the raggled: the thinness of their bones, the dirtiness of their quarters, and, most poignantly of all, the pitiably concave looks on their scrawny faces. P Craig Russel makes Oscar Wilde's otherwise beautiful fairytales into something far beyond beautiful. The magic of the words and glistening sketches combined are enough to make one weep or wonder at the miracle of someone so talented as P. Craig Russell, and someone so talented as Oscar Wilde. Please buy this book knowing that it will bring you a treat like you have never experienced.

P. Craig Russell is one of the top artists working in the genre of the graphic novel today. His latest visual storytelling triumph in a series of marvelous adaptions of the fables and fairytales of Oscar Wilde flawlessly published by NMB Press is Fairy Tales Of Oscar Wilde: The Devoted Friend and The Nightingale And The Rose. Russell works his detailed and "museum quality" artistry to his usual high standards in the retelling of Oscar Wilde's original and imaginative stories. Readers of all ages will enjoy and treasure both the stories and the artistry of this outstanding graphic novelization. (...)