Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm

“The reason that most people value fairy tales, I would say, is that they do not detain us with hope but simply validate what is. Even people who have never known hunger, let alone a murderous stepmother, still have a sense—from dreams, from books, from news broadcasts—of utter blackness, the erasure of safety and comfort and trust. Fairy tales tell us that such knowledge, or fear, is not fantastic but realistic. … The Grimm tales still invoke nature, more than God, as life’s driving force, and nature is not kind.” —Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

“Everyone should possess and know Grimm’s Fairy Tales–one of the great books of the world.” —Richard Adams, The New York