| Title | : | The Yellow Fairy Book |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0486216748 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780486216744 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 384 |
| Publication | : | First published February 18, 1894 |
The Yellow Fairy Book Reviews
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Haven't quite enjoyed it as much as the previous tomes, I've considered some stories to be a bit vulgar to be read to kids.
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If fairy stories can't get a five-star rating then what is our standard? Five stars to Andrew Lang and his magnificent collection of colored fairy stories. This Yellow one is one of my favorites. Real fairy stories with real consequences.
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این کتاب تعداد زیادی داستان های کوتاه داره و داستان های کتاب برگرفته از داستان های خیلی قدیمی و افسانه هاست و به نظرم کتاب خیلی خوبی برای نوجوانان محسوب میشه.
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I grew up with a copy of Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book. I loved that hardback edition of fairy tales. I read it and reread it and reread it. At that time, I had no idea that there were a whole set of color fairy tales to be had. But I had such fond memories of it that when I spied a modern edition of The Yellow Fairy Book at our Friends of the Library Book Shop in 2015, I just had to bring it home with me. I have to admit that it wasn't as spellbinding to my adult self as that first fairy tale collection was to my younger self.
There is something very magical about fairy tales for children. The simple phrase "Once upon a time..." sets the stage for all sorts of wonderful adventures. Adventures that feature girls no bigger than your thumb, a boy who can turn into a wolf, and a talking stove as well as the traditional princes, princesses, giants, witches, elves, and giants. In fact I was already familiar with a number of the stories collected here--including "Thumbelina," "The Six Swans," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Glass Mountain," and "The Nightingale." These are also some of the best tales in the book and I did still enjoy the visit to fairy land...with a few reservations.
[pardon me a moment as I step onto one of my soap boxes...]
I didn't realize when I picked up the book that Andrew Lang's collection had been "edited" by Brian Alderson. Edited here means that Brian made whatever alterations he thought necessary to make these more palatable to a modern audience. I'm not going to argue the pros and cons of those decisions--what I will do is give my opinion that if Mr. Alderson wanted to put together a "more acceptable" collection of fairy tales, then he should have done so with his own book. He shouldn't have been given Andrew Lang's collection and then been given free rein to decide whether the versions Lang included were appropriate or the most "readable" or whatever. Part of the charm of the Blue Fairy Book (as I recall) was that I knew (even as a youngster in the late 1970s) that I was stepping into a different time period--an era that believed in fairies and magic and dragons, etc. and a time period that may have thought other things that were no longer true as well. I knew that this time period didn't represent my time period and I didn't expect it to.
But setting aside the rightness of whether he should have made the choices at all, I also have trouble with some of the choices themselves--he tells us that he has gotten rid of some of Lang's selections because they weren't interesting, but then he keeps variations of stories that are virtually the same. For example, we have multiple variations of the simpleton (or the least favored or what-have-you) winning the day through virtue of having made the right friends--gluttons who can eat everything, men who can make things cold or can see great distances; friends who can help him perform the impossible tasks required of him. If the point is to have a better offering of stories all arond, then I would think variety would be a good standard to meet as well.
Overall--still a good selection of fairy tales that should appeal to young readers and I did enjoy them. Just not quite as much as expected.
First posted on my blog
My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks. -
These were a lot of fun. Not as good as Grimm’s but enjoyable nonetheless!
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My rating as more to do with the narration of the audiobook rather than the fairy tales. The actual fairy tales were ok. Some were more interesting than others. However, the narration was awful. Each narrator read in such a bored voice that it was very difficult to be interested in what they were reading. I may have enjoyed the book more if I had read it rather than listened to it. If I decide to read another of the color fairy books, I will definitely skip the audio version.
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تا حالا رنگ‌های بنفش و آبی و زرد این مجموعه رو خوندم و داستان‌های این مجموعه رو کمتر از دوتای دیگه دوست داشتم
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I feel like I saw pretty much the same thing in all my reviews for these books but it was enjoyable. Some were boring and other were good.
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I enjoyed this book a lot, with its classic tales from around the world. There are stories compiled from Russia, Iceland, Poland, and many other places. There are Hans Christian Andersen stories, and some Native American legends added in for good measure. H.J. Ford's illustrations are exquisite as usual, and though the writing is more formal in style, so you have to read carefully to avoid missing details, the tone matches the fantastical tales. The stories range from the more serious and dark to the lighthearted and funny. A lot of the stories have similar elements, and so can be a bit predictable, but there are still some that are more creative and memorable. My favorite stories were as follows:
The Dragon of the North, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Iron Stove(in which a young woman saves a prince for a change), The Dragon and his Grandmother, The Flower-Queen's Daughter, The Grateful Beasts, The Magic Ring, Snow-Daughter and Fire-Son(which has a darker tone and a sad ending), The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus, The Swine-Herd, The Flying Ship, The Tinder-Box, The Nightingale, and Blockhead-Hans. -
This is the one in which the tales really start to branch out. There are a couple of literary tales that I didn't much like, but a lot more places. Greek. Polish. Bukowinaer. Iclelandic. A few from North America. I particularly liked The Golden Crab, The Flower-Queen's Daughter (in which dragons ride horses and go to dances where humans can dance, too), The Grateful Beasts, The Witch in the Stone Boat, and The Blue Mountains.
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This collection has an assortment of tales by the Brothers Grimm, Andersen, Afanasiev and several folk stories from other northern countries. The ones I liked best were by Andersen.
Daniel: I liked all the stories very much. -
This is the other book I got for Christmas last week. This was probably the first of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books that I exposed myself to (all the way back in 2013), and I'm glad to finally have a copy of my own. This one has quite a selection, including stories by Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, as well as stories from other parts of Europe as well as some Native American stories. I think this is the book with the most stories out of all of Andrew Lang's books (I think The Olive Fairy Book has the least).
My favorite stories:
- The Story of the Emperor's New Clothes
- The Iron Stove
- The Little Green Frog
- The Glass Mountain
- Alphege, or the Green Monkey (really love this one)
- Fairer-than-a-Fairy
- The Flower Queen's Daughter
- The Death of the Sun-Hero (this one's really sad)
- The Swineherd
- The Nightingale
This one had a really good selection, which I am impressed with. There's no major complaints that I have about this book, so I'm giving it a perfect score. -
I started out loving the stories, then they got less enchanting and more redundant and brutal. Favorites:
The Dragon of the North
The Golden Crab
The Little Green Frog
The Crow
The Flower Queen's Daughter
The Flying Ship (I love gifted companion stories like this)
The Seven-Headed Serpent (rather anticlimactic at the end, and how could that king live with himself, sending young people to die every year? But somehow I liked the atmosphere of the story)
The Grateful Beasts
The Wizard King (I feel sympathy with him--he just couldn't force it, could he?)
Fairer Than a Fairy
The Death of the Sun-Hero (really thought-provoking, challenging us to be careful when we give ourselves titles we may not deserve)
The Witch
The Witch in the Stone Boat
Hermod and Hadvor -
Another beautiful book with amazing stories. I particularly enjoyed the native american fairy tales in this book. Also, as I continue to read these fairy tale series a few things stand out:
One, we will ALWAYS make mistakes.
Two, we should always try to persever and correct out mistakes, which hopefully will be rewarded in the end (and maybe not the way we thought we would be rewarded!)
Three, love is really a powerful force, and that there is infatuation (which during this time, dumb mistakes are made) and then there is true love (where we sacrifice ourselves in order to make those we love happy). -
A collection of fairy tales from all over the world: Grimm, Andersen, Arabian Nights and more. I listened to it on Spotify but got a bit annoyed by the i to atoon of the reader. I think I do prefer reading myself :)
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I own this Folio edition, but the tattered and torn faded smudged yellow falling apart edition my mother owned as a child was the one I adored in my own younglinghood.
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All the Lang books are required reading. Pre- Joseph Campbell panoramas of history's imagination. Great illustrations and grittier lessons than any Disney wants to teach.
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2.75 stars.
First, I wanted mention a few small issues I have with this book, specifically the edition I have, because it did impact the reading experience. None of the page numbers match up in the Kindle edition I have, not even within the book itself. For example, the table of contents states that the story is on page 100, but when I go to the story the page number at the bottom says 80. I think this is because the edition I have does not include illustrations or woodcuts, despite having lists of them at the beginning of the book. The book lists the final story as starting on page 319, but the Kindle says that it has 253 pages, and here on Goodreads it says it only has 156 pages. This is a minor annoyance, but I wish it was more consistent because I've never had this problem before. There were also no attributions at the end of each story about what country or culture it came from, which is always interesting to know.
This is definitely my least favorite of the books in this series I've read so far. There were a lot stories that fell into the just okay category for me, and only one that I really loved, which was Thumbelina. There were more stories that I disliked than the number of ones I liked.
Favorites:
Thumbelina
Good:
The Six Swans
The Donkey Cabbage
The Grateful Beasts
The Giants and the Herd-Boy
The Invisible Prince
The Wizard King
Alphege, or the Green Monkey
Fairer-than-a-Fairy
The Glass Axe
The White Duck
The Witch and her Servants
The Magic Ring
The Flower Queen's Daughter
The Snow-daughter and the Fire-son
The Story of King Frost
The Swineherd
The Witch in the Stone Boat
The Nightingale
The Steadfast Tin-soldier
Okay:
The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership
The Dragon of the North
Story of the Emperor's New Clothes
The Golden Crab
The Iron Stove
The Little Green Frog
The Crow
How Six Men travelled through the Wide World
The Nixy
The Glass Mountain
The Three Brothers
The Boy and the Wolves, or the Broken Promise
The Dead Wife
In the Land of Souls
The Flying Ship
The Death of the Sun-hero
The Witch
The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus
Prince Ring
How to Tell a True Princess (A.K.A The Princess and the Pea)
The Blue Mountains
The Tinder-box
Hermod and Hadvor
Didn't Like:
The Dragon and his Grandmother
The Seven-headed Serpent
The Hazel-nut Child
Blockhead Hans
A Story about a Darning-needle -
I enjoyed these non-Disnified fairy tales, especially the beautiful original illustrations. I would have liked to know the national origin of all the tales.
In the midst of this book and another I was reading, I started talking with my husband of 30+ years about believing in fairy tales and happily- ever- afters. This is no longer popular, but the contrast with my other book made me think about how we've often replaced happily- ever- after with the- grass- is- always- greener. In all the fairy tales there was struggle to reach that place of happiness. Not once did the young man ask for the princess' hand, get an excited yes and the bells ring out immediately. There was always something to overcome. In the contrasting story, our new fairy tale, the couple is in the midst of chaos and struggle. Over the edge of a newspaper or the rim of a coffee cup, the unhappy spouse sees the golden ideal, shifts allegiance to this person, and is now happily- every- after. But that doesn't happen if you've never learned to work through the struggles. Eventually there will be financial strain, serious illness, straying eyes, squabbling children, or maybe just a difference of opinion on how to spend free time. And you're back where you started, glancing over the rim of a coffee cup, at the fascinating stranger who has no irritating habits. Yet! -
I love reading fairy tales - and especially a whole collection - I love seeing the common themes that the different ways the same stories are told. Although I may not agree with all of the messages - i am always interested to see how social norms get played out in these stories. In this collection - I was particularly interested in the themes of forgiveness and justice and the choices that characters make in regards to this. Not my favorite collection of stories but a few new ones I have not heard told in that particular manner.
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There are a few good fairy tales and these can be found in most collections. However, there are a lot of boring ones. The yellow fairy book contains almost exclusively stories of the “a thing happens and then another thing happens” type. Lots of deus ex machina. I found it tedious and uninteresting to read. I really wanted to like this book, but I didn’t. I stopped reading half way through and I doubt I will pick up any of the other fairy books by Lang...
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I find old fairy tales fascinating and this is a beguiling and surreal and uncensored selection. There's plenty of cruelty and bloodthirstiness amongst the 'happy ever afters'! My favourite aspect were the magical illustrations by Henry J, Ford who I'd never heard of before. Some of them would make lovely framed prints :)
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Honestly, one more king, queen, prince, or princess, and I’m going to scream. Also, the “rules” of Faerie not only change considerably from story to story, as might be expected, but WITHIN stories as well, which is more disconcerting. One consistent lesson you do learn is to follow instructions precisely and literally - take just a smidge of leeway and you are in big trouble.
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Didn't realise that this was the fourth book in the series of fairy books until I started it. It's a collection of stories though they can be read out of order.
Some of the stories were retelling earlier ones in the book or were kind of repetitious but I guess that's kind of the nature of fairy tales.
There were some really funny little bits or lines in the stories. Some were even pretty dark. -
I'm glad that I took the time to read some old fairy tales, most of which I've never heard before. The only thing I didn't like was that it was so mentally exhausting to read a whole story in just a few pages.
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This isn't my favourite of Lang's fairy books so far - some of the stories failed to capture my interest as well as others. Still, the illustrations in this edition are lovely and I still found plenty to loke about the tales.
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Started reading a story or two a night. These fairy books were a staple of my youth, largely because of the illustrations. These are not the friendly children’s fairytales of Disney, but a cultural storytelling review.
