Grimm Tales by Philip Pullman

Fairy tales are a very fine companion to children. They are bringing complexity, weirdness, dark, light, humorous and cruel ways to a rather boring family upbringing -sometimes they could be the life threads that keep one almost safe from horrible family.

They are also flexible as they are the testimony of a time when orality were the cement of human groups. Altered and sometimes remodelled entirely they remained quite coherent though and were brought to our modern selves through writer such as Perrault, Grimm and others. They belong to every cultural space and like tales of world creation one could find more proximity than divergence - another proof that homosapiens is more dull than we could sometimes imagine it. 🤭

In this (re)tell  of the Grimm’s, the creator of Lyra Belacqua is offering a semantic and geographical version of well known “once upon a time…” bringing a touch of our modern views but keeping the edginess and swiftness, altering the cruelty a little bit.

A pleasure to read, a nice entertainment with youngsters and a first step into a deeper understanding. And fortunately not a single nonsense such as “they are keeping girls and boys in social shackles” or “ are part of rape culture”. Fairy tales have always been a way out, never a prison.