"Verde Prato" is an Italian tale, written by Giambattista Basile in his 1634 work, Il Pentamerone, which also includes "Penta with Maimed Hands." Il Pentamerone is a collection of 50 stories, told within a frame story of a deceitful queen who has demanded that her husband tell her stories, and he in turn hired a group of ten female storytellers who each tell five stories over five days. "Verde Prato" is the second story of the second day.
A woman has three daughters. The older two have no luck at all but the youngest, Nella, is as usual lovely and talented and more or less perfect. She is having a secret affair with a handsome prince who lives many miles away. The two lovers build a glass tunnel that runs under the ground—from the prince’s castle into the princess’s bedroom, so that they might "joy together" without the mom's knowing it. Every night the prince runs through the tunnel naked to spend time...
"The Red Shoes" was written by Hans Christian Andersen and first published in 1845. Andersen's fairy tales tend to have a distinctively moralistic and Christian bent, but usually I enjoy them for the imagery and phrases. "The Red Shoes," however, may be my least favorite of the fairy tales I've read.
A pretty peasant girl named Karen is so poor she has to go barefoot in the summer until an old shoemaker's wife takes pity on her and makes her a rough pair of shoes from red cloth. On the day of her mother's funeral, Karen is adopted by a rich old lady who promises the clergyman to take care of her, but she grows up vain and spoiled. The old woman burned the red shoes, but Karen tricks her adoptive mother into buying her a new pair of fancy red shoes fit for a princess. Karen repeatedly wears them to church, without paying attention to the service. She ignores the anger of her adopted...
Today's tale comes from the Household Tales of Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm. "Jorinde and Joringel" is about the power of true love to conquer evil, a nice fairy tale theme.
Deep in the woods, a witch lived in a castle. During the day, she changed herself into a cat or an owl and at night took back her human shape. She could lure wild animals and birds to her before killing and eating them. If anyone came near her castle, they were compelled them to stand still until she released them. She turned innocent maidens who came near the castle into birds and caged them.
One day, Jorinde and Joringel, who had promised to marry each other, went for a walk in the forest. They knew not to go to close to the castle, but they became lost after listening to the sorrowful song of the turtle-doves. They came too near to the witch's castle; she turned Jorinde into a nightingale and fixed Joringel to the ground. Once...
I've talked about "The Princess and the Pea" before, but in the delightful You Read to Me, I'll Read to You by Mary Ann Hoberman, we get a different look at the story. We get to hear a bit from the pea, who states,
I stayed up
the whole night through,
Squished and squashed
Because of you.
The adorable princess sees the pea's point of view and thinks it would be a grand thing for the pea to be the stone in her wedding ring.
You Read to Me, I'll Read to You: Very Short Fairy Tales to Read Together is cute book to read aloud with your beginning reader. Eight standard fairy tales are featured, including Cinderella, The Three Bears, and Little Red Riding Hood, and each tale, or portion of the tale, is set up as a poem to be read by two readers. I picture reading it with a child, but two children might enjoy reading it together too. One person's part is to...
When I saw the title of this Native American tale from Canada, "The Girl Who Always Cried," I picture a girl always sorrowful, who couldn't stop her tears. I was wrong. The girl is just self-centered and always crying and complaining because she can't have every single thing she wants. She was adopted, the only child of a couple.
Nearby, on the bank of a stream, lived the Owl-Man. He was a strange man who lived in the forest and was always silent when around others. He ate toads, frogs and flies. Because he was so odd, rumors were spread that he was cruel evil. Parents, including the girl's, would threaten their children that if they didn't behave Owl-man would take them away.
The girl's parents were so tired of her whining and complaining that the man of the house wished aloud that the Owl-man would come and take her away. But this old man was a magician and the Owl-man did...
Today's folk tale, "The Hundred-knot Bamboo Tree," comes from Vietnam. It has several familiar fairy tale themes including a magical helper and the underdog winning in the end.
The story is about a laborer, Khoai, who is exploited by a wealthy landowner. In order to keep and motivate the laborer, the landowner promises to reward him with marriage to his beautiful daughter after three years of labor. When the time for marriage arrives, the landowner breaks his promise by offering his daughter to the village chief's son. When the laborer complains, the landowner tries to trick him again by sending him in search of a bamboo stalk with one hundred segments, again promising him his daughter if the laborer can find the bamboo stalk.
Khoai set off in search of the bamboo, which is of course impossible to find, so he sits down and weeps. An old, cheery man comes by and asks what is wrong. Khoai tells him what he is searching...
