Books like The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe — 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.

Koshchei the Undying, Vassilia the Beautiful, the Firebird, and Father Frost whispering through the forest: "Are you cold, my children? Are you cold?" The fairy tales of Russia, like their folk art, are beautiful and jewel-coloured.

My own fairy tale book was partly inspired by the Russian tale of Sister Alenushka and Brother Ivanushka, where the little boy is told he must not drink water from the hoof-print of a goat—but he does, and turns into a goat!

There are Russian tales of ambitious cats, grumpy bears, and snakes who marry princesses. These vivid tales have inspired artists, playwrights, and composers. Every child should read them.

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.

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.

Reading this book is like the first breath you take when opening a door to a winter blizzard. Your lungs freeze.

What I admired most about this muscular tale is Preus doesn’t pull any punches for her young readers. Like an ice ball covered in snow, she packs Nordic folktales and myths around the harsh realities of two Norwegian sisters who escape from a lecherous goat farmer to join their father in America.

The book title ties into the moment every day before total darkness takes over. The way I see it, this book shows that a good story, honestly told, sheds light everywhere. 

The Twelfth Man by Norwegian-American writer Astrid Karlsen Scott is the dramatic story of Norwegian agent Jan Baalsrud’s survival after a SOE mission gone wrong. A first account of his ordeal was published in 1955, but this is a more accurate telling. I like her in-depth approach to uncovering the true facts. On one of her research trips to Norway, she teamed up with Dr. Tore Haug who was also investigating Baalsrud’s story of survival. They were able to meet and interview all the survivors who helped the agent or who were indirectly involved and had knowledge of his story. You not only see what is at stake for the hero of the story, but for the people who are helping him escape the Nazis’ search for him. 

Thea's Christmas visit to her estranged father and his new family in Norway is disappointing and infuriating, until she meets the bear. In this fiction, Sarah Lean conveys so much truth. Her beautiful, mistreated, hungry, lonely bear is so real, he brings tears to my eyes. Thea tries desperately to protect her new best friend from the locals who consider him a threat, because she knows “They would not take the time to look into his eyes, to question and discover what he was really like." I wish everyone would take the time to look into animals' eyes, to see who they really are, and let them be.

Ruth Maier was a Jew born in Germany. Kristallnacht, an infamous Nazi pogrom, took place in 1938. Ruth was able to flee to Norway shortly thereafter.

She soon became fluent in Norwegian, finished high school, and began her university studies. However, the Germans occupied Norway in 1940. She, therefore, lived in constant fear of being arrested and kept a very detailed diary of how she lived through these two dangerous years. She was then arrested in 1942 at age 22 and deported to Auschwitz, where she was immediately put to death. 

This book is for slightly younger readers, but I think it has genuine multi-generational appeal. I read it aloud to my eight-year-old, who laughed aloud and loved it – in fact, it was the first read-aloud chapter book that he stuck with. And his grandmother is also reading and loving it! Astrid has the feel of a classic, with its humor and its gentle wisdom. Though it’s a story about a feisty girl who loves sledding, it’s also a story about how someone you love can keep a hurtful secret. How does one forgive such a thing? Astrid figures it out. 

I love cold, northern places and dogs, and, if you haven’t already noticed, warts-and-all stories about women finding strength they didn’t know they had in the wilderness. Blair Braverman’s memoir checks all these boxes. As a teenager, she goes to a folk school in the Norwegian Arctic and learns to work with sled dogs, something she later continues as a guide in Alaska. (Braverman is now a professional musher and has run the Iditarod.) The book’s subtitle is Chasing Fear and Finding Home In the Great White North, and Braverman is unsparing in her exploration of fear rooted in both the human and natural world. I read this book on a series of airplanes in one long travel day, and I’m still reminded of it every time I see Braverman’s delightful Twitter stories about her dogs.