Books like Russian Fairy Tales — picked by fans

Like most children, I met folklore through the Grimm brothers, even though the Grimms were serious scholars and didn’t publish their book for children.

Still, their complete collection of 248 stories includes Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, and Aschenputtel, "Little Ashes," a Cinderella story. Many other Grimm stories are about animals.

The Bremen Town Musicians tells of a donkey, cat, rooster, and dog, all cruelly treated, who band together to make a life for themselves. Old Sultan is about a toothless old dog who’s outlived his usefulness. His owner means to kill him. But Sultan conspires with "his kinsman," a wolf. The wolf pretends to carry off the farmer’s child, so the ancient dog can stage a rescue, becoming a hero and earning a comfortable retirement.

In this mighty two-volume work, Katherine M. Briggs set out to bring together every folk-tale, myth, and local legend written down in the British Isles, in the English language.

Tales from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England: stories of how places gained their names, tales of witches, ghosts, wizards, mermaids, elves, changelings…And also many tales of animals, including The Three Bears and Three Little Pigs.

But also ghostly black dogs, talking dogs, cats who spin, seals who turn into people, donkeys, giant worms or dragons, hens, and magpies. These books are treasure-houses of ideas and inspiration.

As a lover of folk-tale, legend, and myth—and having an especial love for Norse Myth—I soon sought out the folk-tales of Norway.

Asbjorsen and Moe are the Norwegian answer to the Brothers Grimm. Their collection is superb. There’s the Ash-Lad, who is rather like Jack of Beanstalk fame, and many trolls. There are twelve princes searching for twelve lost princesses, helpful griffins, abandoned babies, and ancient Norse gods pitching up in thin disguise.

And, of course, as the people who told these tales lived between mountains, sky, and sea, there are many tales of animals and birds.

I don’t know how old I was when I first read some version of Aesop’s Fables.

Probably very young, as many are retold for small children, and have become proverbial. For instance, the fox who, unable to reach the bunch of grapes he wants, sulks and says, "I don’t want them anyway, they’re sour." Thereby giving us the expression, "Sour grapes."

Almost all of the stories feature animals. There’s the tale of the tortoise and the hare, where the tortoise wins the race, and the tale of the strong, fierce lion whose life is saved by a tiny mouse. These ancient stories mix observation of animals and observation of human behaviour in many vivid, telling, and very short stories.

The extent of an evil leader’s influence can be measured in terms of whether he or she enters popular folklore. In the case of Ivan the Terrible, the Russian “grozny” in “Ivan Grozny” is actually translated as “awe-inspiring,” though the “terrible” tag has ensured that the czar would be remembered for his paranoia, brutality, and alleged insanity.

In folklore it was different: as Perrie’s book demonstrates, Ivan was a sympathetic figure through the twentieth century, in tales that recounted his triumphs in war or his repenting after an act of cruelty. Perrie attributes the favorable views of Ivan to “popular monarchism,” but he was also a figure whose image could be grafted onto existing folkloric archetypes to powerful effect.

In January 2023, my partner dropped this book into my hands and said, “I’m pretty sure this book was written exactly for you.” And you know what? They were RIGHT.

This book isn’t just the Baba Yaga retelling of my dreams—it also features one of the most captivating sibling relationships I’ve ever read. Bellatine and Isaac Yaga are beautifully complicated characters, each unable to stop hurting the other as they manage their trauma in very different ways. (Hint: both of them involve very cool magic.)

I spent the book desperately wanting each of them to reach one another, and was gifted with a good, cathartic cry about intergenerational wounds. This story goes places that have challenged and transformed my own writing. Plus, a sentient house with a spicy attitude? Yes. More of that.

Bolu Babalola’s Love in Color is, technically, more a collection of reimagined myths than a collection of retold fairy tales, but the stories are so richly and wonderfully rendered, so smart and edgy and beguiling, that it seems silly to privilege a strict genre definition over a powerful collection. Babalola is shameless in her embrace of love—indeed, she confesses that she loves love—and yet her contemporary takes on global myths trouble any easy ideas about love the reader might bring to the collection. Love, here, is messy, tangled, frightening, and—according to Babalola—worth the tribulations it inspires.

Christmas is a wonderful time for magical tales that children love. In this one, a poor but good-hearted cobbler is rewarded for his honesty during the night, when clever elves sneak into his shop and make shoes for him to sell. It gives children the chance to imagine invisible helpers, and also the thrill of doing good deeds in secret.

Lift the flaps and take an intimate peek inside the villains and find what really makes them tick. Through a twist in classic fairytale storytelling and a sophisticated design, this book has reimagined the inner workings of the iconic fairytale witch, giant, and wolf. Pull levers and tabs, discover objects on strings, and open flaps to discover the real truth about the villains. Brilliantly creative and exploratory.

This is the book that made my kids’ heads explode (not literally—this book is perfectly safe (as far as I know)) as it helped them discover the idea of parody: taking something familiar and twisting it in a funny, unexpected way.

We rolled and lol’ed together as we read Jon’s wild, hysterical takes on old fairy tales. The non-twist twist ending to his take on the ugly duckling story is still a running joke in our family. Jon’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and The Real Dada Mother Goose are also great for the same reason.