Fairytale-a-Day: Week One Recap
Tales from France, Denmark, Italy, and Germany
Catch up on what Fairytale-a-Day (#fairytaleaday) is and join me in reading more fairy tales:
I started this first week strong, reading several fairy tales each day. I decided to start at one end of my fairy tale bookshelf and read from the next book each day. Once I opened most of the books, I couldn’t stop at just one, as I saw familiar titles that I knew the story, but wanted to be sure I read from a book source.
Day 1: Indigenous tales
It was Canada Day, so I wanted to—instead of celebrating a country built on stolen land—read some tales from Indigenous peoples. I read “The Vampire Skeleton” and “The Flying Head” from the Iroquois people, and “Where the Girl Saved her Brother” from the Cheyenne people in the book Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters. If you like spooky folk tales, read more North American Indigenous tales! It’s generalizing, I know, as there are many nations and tribes with history on Turtle Island, but in my experience, some of the spookiest tales I’ve heard have been from these groups.
Day 2: Madame d’Aulnoy
I started “The Island of Happiness” and realized it sounded familiar, so I must have read it and not checked it off in the table of contents. So, I also read “The Blue Bird” and was delighted as always with d’Aulnoy’s literary tales which combine many familiar fairy tale motifs into complex and beautiful tales of love.
Day 3: Charles Perrault
I chose the unfamiliar title “Hop o’ My Thumb,” but it also sounded familiar as I read. So I also read a tale in verse, “Three Silly Wishes” which was full of classic Perrault misogyny.
Day 4: Hans Christian Andersen
I checked off several titles whose stories I knew but I hadn’t read the original: “The Princess on the Pea,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “The Nightingale,” “The Ugly Duckling,” “The Goblin and the Grocer,” and one with a title that just sounded fun "Dance, Dance, Doll of Mine.”
Day 5: Giambattista Basile
More catching up on somewhat familiar tales with his version of a Sleeping Beauty story, “Sun, Moon, and Talia” and his Rapunzel story “Petrosinella.” They’re both way more sexual and fucked up than later French and German variations. Basile’s writing is almost as annoying as reading Shakespeare: too many literary devices distracting from the actual plot.
Day 6: Brothers Grimm
A big catch-up of titles I’m sure I’ve heard but I wanted to read from Jack Zipes’ Complete First Edition: The Original Folk & Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Including: “The Frog King, or Iron Henry,” “The Twelve Brothers,” “Bluebeard,” “All Fur,” Jorinda and Joringel,” “The Castle of Murder,” “The Water Nixie,” “The Singing, Springing Lark,” “The Goose Girl,” “The Devil in the Green Coat,” “Hans My Hedgehog,” “The Blue Light,” “The Old Women in the Forest,” “The Worn-out Dancing Shoes,” and possibly more.
Day 7: Nordic Tales
A rainy day, so I chose a cozy book of Nordic tales and read “The Magician’s Pupil.”
And now my friend is here to stay for the week, so I probably won’t be spending time reading several tales every day, but I may be reading them aloud to her as bedtime stories, which honestly is the way we should all be experiencing fairy tales.
Will you join me in reading more fairy tales in July? If you use #fairytaleaday and tag me (@taleswithtish) on Instagram, I will see and share your post! I want to see what everyone is reading! You can also share with me here in the comments!