The McElderry Book of Grimms' Fairy Tales

Though these stories tend to have an anti-stepmother bias, they are well told and beautifully illustrated. The bold colors and large picture pages are great for littler listeners. This is one of my favorite books to have on hand for birthday gifts for the kindergarten and under crowd.

This book is beautifully illustrated and written well, but it highlights all the things I don't like about Fairy Tales: repetitive sets of three, dumb princesses marrying homicidal kings and somehow thinking this is a happily ever after, major plot holes, evil parents, love at first sight.But if you want to read some classic fairytales, this is s good book for you.Warning: I would read along with your children and discuss important points such as this: "If a man keeps threatening to kill you, maybe you shouldn't marry him" and "If your second wife keeps trying to kill your children, maybe you should call the police, or at least divorce her."Personal enjoyment: 3More objective rating: 4

I will be giving this to our granddaughter for Christmas. I have read some of the stories and I think she will love it!

My daughter is a precocious reader, so most of the time I treat age ranges as information that's nice to have, but that's not going to stop us from picking up a book. But in this case, I really wish I'd paid more attention to the Age 6 & up.First the good:1) Saviour Pirotta's language is simple and engaging to read aloud2) The big print makes it easy for my almost Five-Year-Old to follow along as I read, which is helpful for beginning readers3) Emma Chichester Clark's illustrations are gorgeousAnd now the bad: Really bad things happen in fairy talesYes, yes, I know. Hardly insightful. There is a reason I looked for a sanitized version of Grimm's tales after all. But when your short story's plot hinges on children getting lost in dark forests, goblins kidnapping babies, fairies cursing infants, stepmothers turning stepchildren into swans, and kings executing princes and hapless young maidens for (let's face it) rather arbitrary reasons, even Sanitized Fairyland turns out to be a rather scary place.The Almost Five-Year-Old made me skip all the scary bits, and I found myself passing over or changing several more, which makes for a lot of in-flight editing with this book. If I had to do it all over again, I'd hold off on the fairy tales until The Four-Year-Old was at least eight.Four stars because the book is really very well done, even if my particular child isn't ready for it.(Longer version of this review available at my blogs: [...].)

This particular edition contains ten stories from Grimm's Fairy Tales, retold by author Saviour Pirotta and illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark. The ten stories are:The Sleeping BeautyThe Magic Gingerbread HouseThe Magic Bear and the Handsome PrinceThe Golden-Haired Girl in the TowerLittle Mouse and Lazy CatThe Princess and the Seven DwarvesThe Swans and the Brave PrincessThe Naughty Princess and the FrogThe Girl Who Spun Straw into GoldThe Twelve Dancing PrincessesThe things I liked about this book and which were greatly appreciated by my kindergartner (an ardent fan of fairy tales):The text size is large enough that it makes it easy for a beginner reader to attempt reading aloud whilst following the words with her fingers.The illustrations are enchanting, in full color and can be found throughout the book (at times by the sides of the text, as full page spreads, etc).The vocabulary used is not too flowery and easy enough for a 5-year-old to follow and understand. I think this would suit children ages 5-10.Final verdict - a beautiful, well-told collection of some of Grimm's most popular fairy tales (only wish there were more).

And by not horrible I mean not overly sanitized, although perhaps a bit much for the 4-6 year old crowd. For example, in the 6 swans, the sister is saved from execution but the evil queen is "put to death instead."I do object to the sister who cannot speak getting married off to the prince, but that's a problem with the story, not the book!