Need help finding a book. I think it was a short stories collection. One of the stories was about a king that left his new bride alone when he had to go somewhere on business. He gave her a keychain with keys to all the rooms and an egg he told her to carry around... [more inside]
posted by icarus on Sep 28, 2008 - 8 answers

Fairies; fur-lined cloak. Find me the book. [more inside]
posted by not that girl on Dec 1, 2007 - 6 answers

I loved fairy tales as a child, and now that I am (nominally) a grownup, I love the "retellings" of fairytales — the fleshed-out versions which, for example, feature actual character development instead of lines like "she was as beautiful as she was good". I love Robin McKinley's retellings of "Donkeyskin", "Sleeping Beauty" and "Beauty and the Beast" (which she did twice for good measure), and Gregory Maguire's surprisingly political Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. What other good grown-up fairytales are out there?
posted by orange swan on Apr 11, 2007 - 60 answers

The neighbor girl borrowed my fairy tale book fifteen years ago. Help me get it back. [more inside]
posted by changeling on Aug 29, 2006 - 7 answers

Can you help me identify two children's stories/books? [more inside]
posted by peep on May 5, 2006 - 8 answers

I'm looking for a good collection of Russian Fairy Tales for my four year old. There are several available on UK Amazon. Can anyone recommend one book in preference to the others?
posted by sagwalla on Dec 15, 2005 - 8 answers

Stepmothers in Grimm's fairy tales. Some claim that the Grimms altered mothers to step mothers lest the bourgeois reader be shocked. [more inside]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen on Jul 16, 2005 - 14 answers

I need to find nasty fairy-tales. For an example, in the first Sleeping Beauty, the prince rapes her sleeping body and she wakes up when she gives birth to twins and one sucks the splinter out of her finger. Also, fairy-tales that go back to the original belief that elves and fairies were nasty creatures would be useful. Either the original nasty fairy-tales or new written ones would be good.
posted by stoneegg21 on Jan 14, 2005 - 29 answers