The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

I have very fond memories of reading the Blue, Violet, Orange, Green, etc Fairy Books at my very first school library. I'd love to eventually collect all of these books (12, I think?), but preferably not the particular edition that my Blue Fairy Book came in. It's very good quality, but I wasn't impressed by the cover design. Yes, I am that shallow :-p if my books are old, the cover design is allowed to be slightly unimpressive, (styles and trends were different in the past, that's part of the charm) but if it's a new book I'm a bit more picky.

Overview
Not too much to tell in this section. The book is a collection of about 30 fairy tales from many different traditions--English, French, German, Arabian, and Scottish. Some of the stories are credited to other 'collectors' like the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault, while others have no such citation. I don't know whether this means Lang dug them up himself or not, but I think all of the non-cited stories are from England, so maybe he felt that he could claim partial ownership.
The book's greatest weakness is that Lang saw fit to include an excerpt from Gulliver's Travels. Horrible idea. It may have several fantastic elements, but Gulliver's Travels is satire and political commentary! It's no more a fairy tale than A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. But even if we ignore its pedigree, the excerpt really breaks the rhythm of the book and bogs it down; the tone is too pompous and formal. Gulliver's Travels was a fine book on its own, but it doesn't fit here. On the whole though, the stories are excellent.

Recommended for: Everyone, why not?

Parental Worries: The book was designed for children, and there's not much I'd object to. Having said that, these are not morality tales. The heroes are not sterling examples of behavior, but I don't think that's too much of a problem. (see below)

Ramblings
The best thing about these books is the random, obscure fairy tales that haven't been made into Disney movies or otherwise re-told a million times. "Snow White and Rose Red" is one of my favorites in this category, but other good ones from this volume are "The Goose Girl" "Prince Darling" and "The Story of Pretty Goldilocks" (different Goldilocks). Some of the tales are pretty strange, and occasionally morbid or shocking. I was surprised to realize this, because I'd heard Lang was of the school that freely edited tales to make them more acceptable for children. However, I don't remember being traumatized by any of these stories as a child, so I think my 'shock' is merely a sign that I've grown up and forgotten that kids love that kind of thing. They can enjoy a fun story with a hero that doesn't always act like a perfect gentleman (or gentlewoman) without completely accepting and condoning his or her actions.

Its also interesting to compare the ethnic backgrounds of the tales. The stories with French sources tend to be lavish and glamorous, whereas the tales from Grimm are characteristically dark and down-to-earth. There's two tales from Scotland at the end of the book that are written with full dialect intact. (dotchter = daughter, sae = say, etc) I can't decide whether the overall result is charming or annoying--there's a fine line there somewhere.