My daughter has expressed an interest in the Grimm Brothers and it seems there are a multitude of books out there.
Any opinions are appreciated. I told her these guys are the ones that created the original fairy tales and they all did not have happy endings. That part she liked.
I only have a cheap German paperback edition of the fairy tales, but they collected/wrote/revised a number of more chivalric tales as well. Sorry I can’t tell you the English publications, but I’m interested as well.
All the rose-red and cinderella stuff in particular “shoed” be good!
They actually made a lot of fairy tales less grim than the versions they collected. Many of the fairytales involving stepmothers were originally about evil mothers but the brothers felt that was a bit much.
(Interesting side note: The Grimms were also linguists and Jacob Grimm put together an efficient method of describing consonant changes in germanic languages that is known as Grimm’s Law.)
The Annotated Brothers Grimm sounds interesting. Here’s a review by Neil Gaiman. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/books/review/05GAIMANL.html
I would probably try to find one that had only ‘select’ stories, actually. A complete book of the Grimms’ fairy tales would have over a hundred tales. But those hundred are the descendants of perhaps something more like 15-20 earlier stories, though developed in slightly different directions with different specifics. There’s a lot of repetition and shared content and if you read through them like a book, that fact starts to stand out quite plainly, making it quite the slog. So like I said, it might be better to find a version which cuts down to a smaller sampling.
Good call. Lots and lots of the Ma:rchen are pretty much the same story, just with a different twist.
Their reputation, the Grimms, as scholars, is well-known, but probably not gripping reading for a younger kid. They compiled a dictionary, right? As well as their historical philological work.
Some of the few heraldic, knights in battle, stuff like that, is good too, though I always come back to the fairy tales when I feel my German is getting rusty or I just want to read some “sweet” (bitter?) tales.
Depending on whether your daughter is a child or adult, she might also enjoy the various retellings of the classics. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have edited several anthologies of these stories, but they are definitely for adults. Robin McKinley has also done some retellings which are quite readable.
I got a selection of these books for my sister, who had always refused to read science fiction and fantasy, and she simply LOVED them.
Unfortunately, I can’t answer your original question, but I thought that you might want to know that there are new retellings available.