Lighting The Way

Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Happily ever after

Readers of ACHUKAREVIEWS already know that DIna Rabinovitch thinks The Fairy Tales by Jan Pienkowski is the best collection of fairy tales of her time. In this Guardian piece she expands, at length, on why:

This is a book that children will want to read and touch, and from which they will absorb story-telling as if by osmosis. That is why it matters that such a collection as this exists. These retellings of folklore are the ABC of storytelling, and not to have a collection that can be cherished and can light the imagination is to miss out on the alphabet of creativity. Because there is a line to childhood that stretches back from today's kids with their backpacks traveling between two homes, through yesterday's evacuees, all the way to Hansel and Gretel dropping white pebbles along a path to light the way when grown-ups can't be trusted.