A guidl to ptirt tales 6 the sisters gkii'1i'1

Dear Reader,

When I set out to write the adventures of the Sisters Grimm, I wanted to update everyone's favorite fairy-tale characters using adventure, humor, and surprises. I thought it would be easy. After alh I'd heard all the stories and seen all the movies. What else was there to know?

It turns out there was plenty more to know.

When I reread some of the original stories, I found that everything I thought I knew was wrong. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the Little Mermaid didn't win her handsome prince's heart in the end. Or that Pinocchio wasn't swallowed by a whale but eaten by a shark! Or that Snow White wasn't awakened with a kiss but when a piece of poisoned apple, stuck in her throat, was dislodged. I went back and reread all the classics, by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, Andrew Lang, Rudyard Kipling, L. Frank Baum, and dozens more. What I found was a wealth of funny, exciting, scary, and adventure-filled stories, and my hope is that the Sisters Grimm series will inspire you to do the same. Your local library should have a wide collection of fairy tales and folklore, filled with as many surprises as there are in Sabrina and Daphne's adventures. I invite you to crack open these classics and find out what you ve been missing. Happy reading and beware of the Scarlet Hand!

-Michael Buckley

FAIRY TALES

Many people think fairy tales are just stories about princesses and witches that our parents tell us so we won't take candy from strangers or wander off by ourselves. But if fairy tales were only here to teach us lessons, they probably would have disappeared long ago.

Fairy tales tell us big truths about life, not just as it was long ago, but as it is today, and show us how to make our way through it with bravery, cunning, and wisdom. They are such useful guides that they've been followed for centuries, by people in every country on the globe. Two hundred years ago, a young girl fell asleep in her bed listening to the same fairy tale you liked to read when you were little.

So how did fairy tales from so long ago end up here? For a long time, fairy tales were only passed down orally. That means, basically, that they were created from a giant, centuries-long game of telephone. People told stories to children, friends, or strangers they met during their travels. Then those people told the stories to other people, changing little details along the way. The general plots stayed the same, but the stories grew and changed, depending on where and when they were told. Sometimes two different versions of the same story would pop up in two different countries. The names and settings would be different, but the same things would happen. For example, there are versions of the Cinderella story in countries as far apart as Egypt and Iceland!

Following Fairy Tales. The Cinderella story is one of the most famous fairy tales in the world because it's been adapted to so many different cultures and times. The first written version appeared more than a thousand years ago in China, and new versions of the tale pop up all the time-think of all the movies you've seen about a poor, mistreated girl who ends up with the rich, handsome guy. The details change-maybe "Cinderella" works in a car wash or ropes cows-but the plot stays the same.

You can conduct your own experiment to see how fairy tales might grow or change. All you'll need is a piece of paper, a pen, and a few friends.

Have one person start writing two or three sentences on the paper to begin the Cinderella story. Then have that person fold the paper down, so only the last line he or she wrote can be seen.

Pass the paper on to the next person, who will add a few sentences to the story, with only the line before as a guide. Then the second writer should fold the paper again, so that only the last line of his or her writing is visible. Continue to pass the paper, write, and fold until you finish a page, or two if you're feeling ambitious. When you're done, unfold the paper and read the whole story through. See if you can trace how the storyline and characters changed as the story was passed from one person to another.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31