Fairy tales didn’t start with Disney. Learn the real stories behind some of the greatest tales of all time. These timeless fairy tales help children imagine how they want to live their lives. The original fairy tales don’t always have a perfect ending and help illuminate right and wrong in a gentle way.  Open your child’s imagination and love for literature with these wonderful stories from The Blue Fairy Book.

• Prince Hyacinth and the Dear Little Princess
• Cinderella, or the Little Glass Slipper
• Beauty and the Beast
• Why the Sea is Salt
• Felicia and the Pot of Pinks
• Snow-White and Rose-Red
• Toads and Diamonds
• The Princess on the Glass Hill
• Prince Darling
• Hansel and Grettel

Companion Resources:

The Blue Fairy Book – Student Guide
The Blue Fairy Book – Teacher Guide
The Blue Fairy Book Set

The post Selections from The Blue Fairy Book (Second Edition) appeared first on Classical Education Books.

“Surely among the most original and gifted of children’s book illustrators, Paul O. Zelinsky has once again with unmatched emotional authority, control of space, and narrative capability brought forth a unique vision for an age-old tale. Few artists at work today can touch the level at which his paintings tell a story and exert their hold.

Zelinsky’s retelling of Rapunzel reaches back beyond the Grimms to a late-seventeenth-century French tale by Mlle. la Force, who based hers on the Neapolitan tale Petrosinella in a collection popular at the time. The artist understands the story’s fundamentals to be about possessiveness, confinement, and separation, rather than about punishment and deprivation.

Thus the tower the sorceress gives Rapunzel here is not a desolate, barren structure of denial but one of esoteric beauty on the outside and physical luxury within. And the world the artist creates through the elements in his paintings the palette, control of light, landscape, characters, architecture,interiors, costumes speaks to us not of an ugly witch who cruelly imprisons a beautiful young girl, but of a mother figure who powerfully resists her child’s inevitable growth, and of a young woman and man who must struggle in the wilderness for the self-reliance that is the true beginning of their adulthood.

As ever, and yet always somehow in newly arresting fashion, Paul O. Zelinsky’s work thrillingly shows us the events of the story while guiding us beyond them to the truths that have made it endure.”

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Stephanie Spinner’s lyrical text, Peter Malone’s jewel-like artwork, and a sparkling performance of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s unforgettable music make this a gift to inspire even the very youngest dancer.

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Splendid watercolors set in the lush countryside bring drama to life.

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Each December, generations of children delight in the ballet version of the quintessential Christmas story The Nutcracker. But few have had the opportunity to revel in the richly detailed original tale. Now, in this glorious new edition, acclaimed children’s book author and editor Janet Schulman returns to the source’E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Nutcracker and the King of Mice.” Here we meet Marie, her Nutcracker, the Sugar Plum Fairy, and all the other delightful characters, and we discover the answers to questions left unanswered by the ballet, like why the Nutcracker and the King of Mice were enemies.

Artist Renée Graef adds her own enchantment with stunning, jewel like paintings that bring the story thrillingly to life. As an added bonus, this must-have Christmas gift also includes a free audio CD with Tchaikovsky’s inimitable musical score and a reading of the complete story by actress Claire Bloom.

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