Re: fairy tale recommendations

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Deborah Stevenson wrote:
> In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>       (beeswing) writes:
>>My almost-9-year-old daughter has asked for a book of fairy tales for
>>Christmas. She's an advanced reader who reads at the sixth grade
>>level. I'd like to track down a regular-sized (not oversized and not a
>>picture book, per se) version that would be engaging to a child this
>>age. Illustrations would be a plus but not strictly necessary. I like
>>Grimm's fairy tales, but if I did get her a copy of them, they'd have
>>to be a lot less grim than the version I read as a child. (All I
>>remember is something about a stepmother or a witch or someone similar
>>putting on hot shoes and dancing till she died. That's *not* what I'm
>>looking for!)
> 
> That last is going to make things a bit complicated, since folktales 
> pretty much run into violence whenever you get enough of them together.

This was pretty much what I was going to say---unless you go for
really low-quality Disneyfied renditions, the classic folktales have a
fair amount of evil in them.  It is hard to do a good-vs-evil story if
the evil left out.

Some non-classic stories that are pretty good, and may meet your needs are

K. Tchana       The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women
Robin Muller    Molly Whuppie and the Giant

though I think these are more 2nd-4th grade than 6th grade level.  (I
have a hard time telling now, since my son cheerfully reads everything
from first-grade to eighth-grade level.)

Of course, what she may be looking for is not classic fariy tales, but
modern children's fantasy (children often don't make these subtle
distinctions).  That opens up a much wider field, and there are a
number of books that would be suitable.  You might want to ask for
clarification. 

The other possibility is that she wants the darker "real" fairy stories.

-- 
Kevin Karplus   [EMAIL PROTECTED]       http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
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Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
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