Best of
Fairy-Tales

1971

The Sleeping Beauty


Trina Schart Hyman - 1971
    How could everyone in a castle - even the flies on the walls - sleep for a century and then wake up? This magical, beautifully illustrated tale begins when the king excludes the most difficult fairy of the kingdom from a feast celebrating the birth of his beautiful daughter Briar Rose. Furious, the fairy storms in and curses the baby, pronouncing that on her fifteenth birthday she will be pricked by a distaff (from a spinning wheel) and fall down dead. The youngest fairy softens the curse to a century-long sleep. Despite the fact that the king burns all the spinning wheels in the kingdom, 15-year-old Briar Rose finds herself in the tower where the evil fairy and her fate await her. The drama of the spell unfurls as she and the other inhabitants of the castle fall instantly asleep, from courtiers to kitchen maids. Thorny briars - moodily captured by Trina Schart Hyman's masterful paintbrush - grow up around the castle. Hyman depicts those who died attempting to break through the maze of thorns to reach the legendary sleeping beauty in a nightmarish illustration. But goodness and true love prevail when the perfect prince does finally find his way through the thick vines.Hyman won a Caldecott Medal for her work in Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges, and her version of The Sleeping Beauty makes us believe in the magic of the spell. The scenes inside the castle are alive with color and movement and rich with details that children will devour eagerly. Moods and expressions are rendered exquisitely, especially those of the wild, red-haired beauty Briar Rose. This wonderful read-aloud classic is one of Hyman's best.

Transformations


Anne Sexton - 1971
    The fairy tale-based works of the tortured confessional poet, whose raw honesty and wit in the face of psychological pain have touched thousands of readers.

Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, & Other Supernatural Creatures


Katharine M. Briggs - 1971
    A "Who's Who" of fairyland, with entries by fairy name and additional legends, songs, and anecdotes within each entry.

The Kingdom Under the Sea and Other Stories


Joan Aiken - 1971
    A collection of eleven fairy tales from eastern Europe and the Soviet Union retold by a noted English author.

The Provensen Book of Fairy Tales


Alice ProvensenParker Hoysted Fillmore - 1971
    A cult classic, The Provensen Book of Fairy Tales is an early golden treasury of their illustrations accompanied by fairy tales from well-loved authors such as A. A. Milne and Hans Christian Andersen to literary legends like Oscar Wilde. Here too are clever retellings and newly imagined tales: refined old favorites like Arthur Rackham's "Beauty and the Beast," feminist revisions like Elinor Mordaunt's "The Prince and the Goose Girl," and sensitive stories by literary stylists like Henry Beston's "The Lost Half-Hour" and Katharine Pyle's "The Dreamer." Full of magic, ingenuity, and humor, The Provensen Book of Fairy Tales is a witty modern descendant of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and a classic in its own right, sure to be beloved by a new generation.

All and More


Joan Aiken - 1971
    A bind-up edition of Joan Aiken's first two collections of short stories: "All You've Ever Wanted and Other Stories" and "More Than You Bargained For and Other Stories."

The Giant All-colour Book of Fairy Tales


Jane Carruth - 1971
    Eighth Impression

The Legend Of The Orange Princess


Mehlli Gobhai - 1971
    Emerging from her peeling each evening at sunset, she becomes a lovely maiden and is predictably espied, then married, by a prince. They enjoy "many years" of happy nights which end when "each morning, before the sun rose, she returned to the orange." One night, however, the prince lies ill in the jungle and the princess, preoccupied with healing him, exposes herself to the rising sun -- and disappears. But "on the spot where she had vanished, there now stood an orange tree, glowing and shimmering in the sun." The tale's romantic theme is unexceptional, but Gobhai's highly flavored pictures make the most of the variations.

A Book of Charms and Changelings


Ruth Manning-Sanders - 1971
    The Magic Bridle (Bosnian)2. Chief-Nang (Chinese)3. The Enchanted Wine Jug (Korean)4. The Flute Player (Finnish)5. The Dwarf with the Long Beard (Slavic)6. The Hat (Esthonia)7. Fedor and the Fairy (Gypsy)8. Pancakes and Pies (Russian)9. The Forty Goats (Valley of the Nile)10. The Ogre, The Sun, and the Raven (North American Indian)11. Peppi (Sicilian)12. The Sun Mother (Transylvanian)13. The White Lamb (Brittany)14. Rubizal (Silesian) 15. Tredrill (Cornish)

The Ox of the Wonderful Horns and Other African Folktales


Ashley Bryan - 1971
    Reissue.