No problem-o! Except he’s a bit big and fluffy to play Little Red Riding Hood, and he’s a tiny bit scared of the deep dark woods. Oh, and he has a friend who would be just perfect as Granny…perhaps the author wouldn’t mind a few suggestions?

    

    But after all the glamour of naval balls and white weddings, passing beneath the arches of naval swords had not led Kate down the pathway to marital bliss. Not even her cherished twins can compensate for her husband's coldness and mental cruelty and she yearns for the peace of her beloved West Country. Cass, on the other hand, revels in the freedom of movement her husband's long absences on the submarines provide - even with the arrival of the first of her four children, she is not to be denied the frenzied activity of the 1960s sexual revolution! But it is a dangerous game that Cass is playing, and as the decades roll by, Kate may not always be around to pick up the pieces...

    Drawing upon cultural myths and fairy tales, ancient symbols and goddesses, and the dreams of contemporary women, Murdock illustrates the need for—and the reality of—feminine values in Western culture today.

    Out of alleys of Cairo and Bedouin tents, from the Moroccan laborers and Syrian peasants, this collection of 130 tales comes from Arab worlds from North Africa to the Holy Land.

    Steeped in folklore and fantasy, it is a rich and diverse account of the part that fairies and fairy stories have played in culture and society.The pretty pastel world of gauzy-winged things who grant wishes and make dreams come true--as brought to you by Disney's fairies flitting across a woodland glade, or Tinkerbell's magic wand--is predated by a darker, denser world of gorgons, goblins, and gellos; the ancient antecedents of Shakespeare's mischievous Puck or J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. For, as Diane Purkiss explains in this engrossing history, ancient fairies were born of fear: fear of the dark, of death, and of other great rites of passage, birth and sex. To understand the importance of these early fairies to pre-industrial peoples, we need to recover that sense of dread.This book begins with the earliest manifestations of fairies in ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean. The child-killing demons and nymphs of these cultures are the joint ancestors of the medieval fairies of northern Europe, when fairy figures provided a bridge between the secular and the sacred. Fairies abducted babies and virgins, spirited away young men who were seduced by fairy queens and remained suspended in liminal states.Tamed by Shakespeare's view of the spirit world, Victorian fairies fluttered across the theater stage and the pages of children's books to reappear a century later as detergent trade marks and alien abductors. In learning about these often strange and mysterious creatures, we learn something about ourselves--our fears and our desires.

    Her heart is pure, her mind is sharp, and she knows how to handle a bully!

    B&W illus.

    She befriends a fortune-telling gypsy girl; returns a child stolen by the selkies to his true mother; confronts a banshee and receives a message from a ghost; helps a village girl outwit--and out-dance--the Faerie Queen; travels beyond the grave to battle a dastardly undead Highwayman; and meets a hound so loyal he fights a wolf to the death to protect the baby prince left in his charge. All fine material for six tales, but it is the seventh tale, in which Trinket learns her father's true fate, that changes her life forever. The Seven Tales of Trinket is a Kirkus Reviews Best Children's Book of 2012

    The prince is holding a magnificent ball for every young lady in the kingdom, except Cinderella - her mean stepsisters refuse to let her go! But help arrives at the last minute with FLASH and a POP! Can the Fairy Godmother help Cinderella live happily ever after?

    Invited to join them, Ivan contributes to the celebration by way of a story about things being more than they seem …This is a story posted for free on my website, turned into an ebook for the convenience of those who asked. Thank you for reading!

    Cinder Edna was forced to work for her wicked stepmother and stepsisters, just as her neighbor, Cinderella, was.Edna, on the other hand, had learned a thing or two from doing all that housework, such as how to make tuna casserole sixteen different ways and how to get spots off everything from rugs to ladybugs. And she was strong and spunky and knew some good jokes.Then one day the king announced that he would give a ball ...

    Included are the Shepherd Boy and The Wolf, the Lion and the Mouse, the Tortoise and the Hare, plus many other charactersand moralsthat have inspired countless readers for centuries. With more than fifty magnificent full-color illustrations, this handsome edition is a must for every bookshelf.

    Definitive and lively articles focus on the great tales and traditions of the age and includes information on daily and nightly customs andactivities; religious beliefs of the pagan, Christian, Muslim, and Jew; key works of oral and written literature; traditional music and art; holidays and feasts; food and drink; and plants and animals, both real and fantastical.While most books on medieval folklore focus primarily on the West, this unique volume brings together an eclectic range of experts to treat the subject from a global perspective. Especially remarkable are the surveys of the major medieval traditions including Arab-Islamic, Baltic, English, Finno-Ugric, French, Hispanic, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Scandinavian, Scottish, Slavic, and Welsh.For anyone who has ever wanted a path through the tangle of Arthurian legends, or the real lowdown on St. Patrick, or the last word on wolf lore--this is the place to look.The contributors:Ulrich Marzolph -- Arab-IslamicThomas A. DuBois -- BalticJohn McNamara & Carl Lindahl -- EnglishThomas A. DuBois -- Finno-UgricFrancesca Canad� Sautman -- FrenchSamuel G. Armistead -- Hispanic�va P�cs -- HungarianJoseph Falaky Nagy -- IrishGiuseppe C. Di Scipio -- ItalianEli Yassif -- JewishStephen A. Mitchell -- ScandinavianJohn McNamara -- ScottishEve Levin -- SlavicElissa R. Henken & Brynley F. Roberts -- Welsh

    No one knows when he came to the farm, no one has ever seen him, but everyone knows it is the troll Tomten who walks about the lonely old farmhouse on a winter's night, talking to all the animals and reminding them of the promise of Spring.Adapted by Astrid Lindgren from a poem by Viktor Rydberg