Grimm Fairy Tales: The Complete Collection

The Grimm Fairy Tales: Complete Collection

By: Wilhelm Grimm, Jacob Grimm

Rating: *****

            Although I have not read the entire works I have read 80% of the fairy tales and feel the need to write an honest review on Grimm Fairy Tales. Wilhelm and Jacob went all around Europe (mostly Germany) and collected numerous fairy tales including Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, and many others that children now a day know to be classic fairy tales where the princess and prince live happily ever after. Wilhelm and Jacob felt as if this wasn't enough and added blood, gore, and anything else you can think of that would be in a modern day horror-fairy tale. For example, Cinderella’s evil stepsisters cut off their toes and ankles in a bloody attempt to fit into the glass shoe that ruined their lives. Little Red Riding hood and her grandmother and cut out of the wolf’s body; they then shove rocks into his stomach and sew him back up. The wolf later dies because he cannot stand from the weight put into his stomach. Every fairy tale in this giant book has its own story and moral too it; all sixty-plus stories are worth reading and are a joy to anyone who wants to read a cliffhanger about a Golden Key or a story on promises like The Frog King. There are so many stories to choose from with different morals and endings to go along with them.

            These stories are rather chilling to the bone, each one with their own blood and unsettling ends. With each story you read a new world unravels and you begin to understand that fairy tales are never what they seem, that there is a deeper, darker version of what really happened and that the “happily ever after” ending we all know is actually a lie sewed in to replace the real and unsettling ending nobody likes. That’s the best part of Grimm Fairy Tales, the idea of an alternate ending that nobody likes because it’s not the “happily ever after” cliché ending everyone loves.

            I recommend Grimm Fairy Tales to readers who enjoy a classic fairy tale, but not the reader who wants their childhood ruined by the reality of what these fairy tales actually were before they were taken and revamped by Disney and other companies that made everything happy and fluffy. Some, or rather most of the stories in this book are not children friendly; they are not meant to be read as bedtime stories to a child who loves Disney and their interpretations of the fairy tales like Cinderella and Rapunzel, and so many more stories these children are familiar with now a day. 

Buy Grimm Fairy Tales at:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/grimms-complete-fairy-tales-brothers-brothers-grimm/1102502038?ean=9781435141865
http://www.amazon.com/Grimms-Complete-Fairy-Tales-Jacob/dp/1607103133/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365013968&sr=1-1&keywords=grimm+fairy+tales