Grimm's Fairy Tales

Grimm's Fairy Tales
retold by Rose Dobbs with illustrations by Gertrude Elliot Epenscheid/ published 1955 by Random House

Once again, a book with illustrations that frightened me as a child. (Funny, how I am now turning around and exposing my son to this medley of nightmare makers!) This edition is a Read Me a Story Program flip book with Babar the King by Jean De Brunhoff on the opposite side bought at a used book shop for $2.

This illustration is from the story of Snow White and Red Rose. Somewhat sanitized from the original Grimm's story, it is still replete with an evil dwarf and the wooer enchanted as a black bear.

Snow White, Red Rose,
Do not beat your wooer dead.

Only recently did a girlfriend with a daughter complain to me that all the happy endings in fairy tales come with a man swooping in and saving the maiden by marrying them. Since I have a boy, the thought never occurred to me and I wondered... are we taught as young girls to want a man to save us, or is that a reality that comes born into us as she-beings?

Also included are the stories The Musicians of Bremen, The Shoemaker and the Elves and more.