Hello!

As mentioned in the title above, I'm looking for non-problematic fairy tale anthologies that can be gifted to an 8 year old child. Tales that don't have obviously problematic themes like lack of consent (Sleeping Beauty), imprisonment (Rapunzel), harsh endings (Rapunzel, Grimms' Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, The Little Mermaid) etc. would be nice. Thanks in advance!

Edit: Thank you, everyone! I looked into your recommendations, and passed them on to my friend, who said the list was helpful. Thanks again!

Useless context: I'm documenting a bunch of fairy tales songs with lyrics and want to find which story inspired these songs.

By fairies I don't mean human sized ones like in Sleeping Beauty. But smol ones. Or maybe Disney retcon everything and twisted the truth yet again.

I saw this monstrous list but it was too scary to go through unless I scrap the whole thing... And anyway, I thought that wouldn't it better if asking actual enthusiasts? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fairy_tales

Yes there's thumbelina but... It can't be the only one... Right?... Ahh... There I go again, showing off my lack of repertoire.

Warning: Stream of consciousness rant ahead (messy as fuck). This story fucked me up in the best way possible.

Remember yesterday (see thread https://www.reddit.com/r/fairytales/s/HSYWJS26vM) when I was looking for a story about "a boy turned into a squirrel by a witch then into a dwarf who worked as a cook then got away with a girl"? That was the story "The Dwarf Nose."

My god, okay... I read it, over and over again for more than 4 times and man, what an emotional roller-coaster. Enough to compel me to write this long "review"/rambling section abyway.

Idk what came over me to suddenly look up this story after skipping out on fairytales for so long... but hm... probably due to some annoying real-life news I saw a day ago on Reddit that triggered me and needed something to unwind. And the first thing that came to me was that fairy tale.

===SPOILER WARNING===

Jesus, the whole story is like a wrapped package of traumas. No wonder it's so relatable and left a big impression on me when I first read it at 12.

That fucking bitch troll ass old lady:

• Traumatizing a child with gore shit for funsies cuz he talked back (with a fucking decapitated head illusion on the cauliflower/cabbage)
• Literal gaslighting: "you stay with me if you wanna learn skills" to make ur mommy happy?
• Literal kidnapping by pretending to be a frail old lady who needed help (she should have ordered like 2 cabbages but NOOOO she needed to order 6 so she could take the little boy for a ride O_O)
• Bodily modification without consent (she would probably pull that shit again)

The kid lost his entire teenage years and social development. Jesus fuck, they failed him on a systemic level.

The parents were also a failure:

• Mom literally sent her 8-9-year-old child with a dubious stranger even when the child protested
• Beat up and verbally abused their own son who came back later at... 15-16 years old instead of just talking about it (I mean, for the time, it would be normal seeing as discrimination is rampant)

Even when things start to look "great," it's still a myriad of a golden chain prison:

• Bro was constantly getting demeaned
• Worked hard as fuck and was praised -> only to get rewarded with... More work??? (Not getting any salary raise btw) -> literally was ahead of its time on social commentary of exploitative working
• Had to give away the tips/bonus from extra side gig just to survive (from not getting others jealous and navigate workplace dynamics) and not getting beheaded
• No one fucking defended him (none of the staff he gave money to) even when he's being nice as fuck for the last trial except the convenient magic solution cop-out friend (let's be real, kid really needed it)
• Kid was homesick and wanted to get back to his parents for all these missed connections years even if his parents treated him like shit (VERY REALISTIC)

Fuck, kid's had a rough life.

At least towards the end:

• Kid decided to take the money out (only his first year of salary though) and just NOPE from the unreasonable request (yeah, make me that very rare dish "Suzeraine". Bro just quiet-quit 19th-century style. IS HE THE OG???)
• Unreasonable boss receives his comeuppance due to being an ass to his employee
• Literally starts a FUCKING WAR over a... Fucking pasty dish?
• Kid has a heart of gold and prioritized helping his friend who helped him get out of this shitass situation instead of just jumping back to his parents
• Decided to just live his life alone without any indications to marry his friend just because she happened to be female ===>>> very very uncommon

The end is a bit of a cop-out with that escapism with convenient magic herb ending, but that kid really needed it, man. Shit's super bleak. It's like we have a good build-up, then suddenly the writer went: we are out of words limit, so we gotta wrap this up fast.

Pacing and prose are a bit iffy, but that might be due to the translation and the time period it was written in. Emotional impact and development hit in a good way many other fairy tales didn't.

Nice themes/messages (whether it's intentional or not remains to be debated; these are just my own observations) with:

• Kids have a sense of danger and not getting listened to by their parents => stranger danger
• The customer is not the king
• Lookism - surviving in this world is shit, and we gotta be a bootlicker, or else we get treated unfairly
• Sometimes life is shit and throws you curveballs even if you're an honest man/woman
• Some people just do petty shit just because they can (that old witch who turned Mimi to a goose because of a bitchfight; the Grand Duke with anger issues just because he can)
• Boss setting up unreasonable expectations (what in the living duck is a "Suzeraine") and threatens to behead/fire you if you don't get it done the next 24 hours despite being a diligent employee and having the best work ethic/reputation
• Precursor of social commentary on abusive workplace
• The "I QUIT" to shitass workplace conditions
• Shows how braindead some bosses are / Peter Principle precursor? Makes reader think critically. Galaxy brain.
• No forced marriage plot even if friends happened to be male and female. ===>>>> I never noticed this back then and assumed as a kid that they married (because I was dumb and relied on stereotypes and common developments)

9/10 would be a 10/10 masterpiece if it had a bit more meat. Truly a masterclass (never noticed that it had this many layers on workplace conditions back then, omg). Pacing is tight for the messages but a bit unnatural towards the second half end.

Like, wtf is this shit that expanded on the human condition in a relatable and safe way kids can digest, but adult readers can also get? I tip my hat off to you, Wilhelm Hauff.

Man, idk if I've read a fairy tale with that much depth. Maybe I am lacking in reading. Lol. I've only consumed Grimm and Andersen with barely any other crap.

(I looked it up, and apparently, my anthology cover had a guy with a turban due to some Turkish characters and Sultan being a thing in another story)

Then became a dwarf or some shit but at the end gets the girl while he worked in the kitchen as a staff and gets away with the girl.

Not a grimm nor anderson work.

I read a translated version and have no idea of the original author country because it was credited as "folktale".

I am doing a project about fairy tales and need one more for it but I can't think of/find any that really match the criteria. It needs to be from 1800-1901, preferably from England, and needs to be a 'book'. I'm going for adventure stories aimed at children ages 6-10

So far I have the snow queen, floating prince and other tales, the story of jack and the giants, and the little lame prince and his travelling cloak. Thanks!

When I was a kid in the 1980s in what was then Czechoslovakia, I saw a "children's play" that haunted me based on some kind of fairy tale/story about a guy who would kidnap children and then sell their parts back to the parents. My parents don't remember what it was and none of my Czech friends find this familiar. It could've totally been distorted by being a kid, but knowing how dark fairy tales can be, especially in Eastern Europe... Anyone know the name of this story/play??

I am hoping someone can help me identify a fairy tale collection I had when I was a kid. I've been trying to figure this out for years.

What I know and remember: It was the '80s. This hardcover storybook was not new, it was already falling apart when I had it, and likely why it didn't survive an interstate move when I was 5. It was beautifully and intricately illustrated; Arthur Rackham-like but I don't know if it was indeed him. There is one illustration that has haunted me all this time: it was in a story where an evil witch was chasing two children, maybe a brother-sister pair. The children ran into a thick patch of thorny bushes, and the witch flew too low on her broom and was caught in the thorns. The children got away. The witch was ugly and angry, and her face was twisted in grief and fury when she was caught in the thorns.

I know this is quite broad, but if anyone else remembers this story or collection, please do let me know!

I remember looking at it in a book of French folktales, but I can't remember the name for the life of me.

The protagonist was a girl who's stepfamily treated her like a servant because she was more beautiful than them or something. The entire conflict was that she wanted to go to a party, but they wouldn't let her.

Then her godmother magically made her look prettier so that she could go. When she got to the party, a prince fell in love with her and tried to keep her from leaving. She ran away, but left a shoe.(This could be a translation error, but I think it was made of glass?) The prince was apparently horny enough that he tried to test every woman's foot to see who it fit. The shoe fit the girl. Then they got married despite the fact he was a king's son and she was only a nobleman's daughter.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!!!

Very specific question and I'm so sorry but also I'm reaching the end of my rope. My first grader heard a fairy tale at school and wants desperately for me to find the exact same one but I can't find it anywhere, can anyone help?

She said it was a video, but I can't find it on YouTube. She says it was definitely a lazy/virtuous sister story with a cruel stepmother. It is very important to her that the virtuous sister's father is alive and present in the story. On the magical journey each sister encountered a fruit tree, a dog, a "mud oven" (I assume a hearth since that's what comes up in a lot of the variations I've found?), and maybe a well asking for help. The lazy sister always refuses to help but saying "I don't want to get my hands dirty." At the end of the journey it wasn't Mother Holle or a witch, but some fairies. They told each sister to clean some rooms in their house, but not to open the fourth door. The reward for the virtuous sister is to sleep in a room filled with treasure, and she gets to keep whatever sticks to her. The lazy sister opens the fourth door and is stung by bees. At the end the father finally recognizes the stepmother's cruelty and "unmarries her" and leaves with his daughter.

There is a video on YouTube with really unsettling animation called "The Lazy Girl Story" by the channel "Fairy Tales and Stories for Kids" with an almost identical storyline. My daughter insists that it is not the right video, the animation is wrong, and the few details that are different ruin the story. I also found a list of type 480 fairy tales from the University of Pittsburgh and she did not like any of them.

Does this possibly ring any bells for anyone?

I’m not deeply familiar with the Shrek universe, but I know about Puss in Boots, especially with The Last Wish. I know the basic plot of his two movies, and neither has to do with the original fairy tale. He definitely didn’t fight death or humpty-dumpty. Does he ever do the original story? With the miller’s son, The Marquis of Carabas, the castle, the ogre, etc.? Or is he just some unrelated cat with boots and a sword?

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Hi! Does anyone know of a fairy tale, or folklore story, where the main character travels or moves a lot? Either by necessity, or just restlessness, or for a quest. Any kind of story where the main character moves from place to place and doesn’t really settle down. Thanks!

There is a fairytale, probably but not definitely written by Andersen, that i just can´t find.

It goes like this: there is a contest held between princes who want to marry the princess. The rules are that the one who impresses her the most is going to be her husband. So the princes come up with all kinds of beautiful things, one more beautiful than the other, and soon there is a winner (i don´t remember what exactly he made, but i think it was some kind of magical machine).
And then suddenly there comes another prince and destroys this machine and this act of destruction shocks the princess more than everything else that she has seen from other princes. And because his act is so impressive, according to the rules she has to marry this prince.

I really hope someone knows what I´m talking about cause google doesn´t help!