I grew up with a copy of Andrew Lang's The Blue Fairy Book. I loved that hardback edition of fairy tales. I read it and reread it and reread it. At that time, I had no idea that there were a whole set of color fairy tales to be had. But I had such fond memories of it that when I spied a modern edition of The Yellow Fairy Book at our Friends of the Library Book Shop in 2015, I just had to bring it home with me. I have to admit that it wasn't as spellbinding to my adult self as that first fairy tale collection was to my younger self.

There is something very magical about fairy tales for children. The simple phrase "Once upon a time..." sets the stage for all sorts of wonderful adventures. Adventures that feature girls no bigger than your thumb, a boy who can turn into a wolf, and a talking stove as well as the traditional princes, princesses, giants, witches, elves, and giants. In fact I was already familiar with a number of the stories collected here--including "Thumbelina," "The Six Swans," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Glass Mountain," and "The Nightingale." These are also some of the best tales in the book and I did still enjoy the visit to fairy land...with a few reservations.

[pardon me a moment as I step onto one of my soap boxes...]
I didn't realize when I picked up the book that Andrew Lang's collection had been "edited" by Brian Alderson. Edited here means that Brian made whatever alterations he thought necessary to make these more palatable to a modern audience. I'm not going to argue the pros and cons of those decisions--what I will do is give my opinion that if Mr. Alderson wanted to put together a "more acceptable" collection of fairy tales, then he should have done so with his own book. He shouldn't have been given Andrew Lang's collection and then been given free rein to decide whether the versions Lang included were appropriate or the most "readable" or whatever. Part of the charm of the Blue Fairy Book (as I recall) was that I knew (even as a youngster in the late 1970s) that I was stepping into a different time period--an era that believed in fairies and magic and dragons, etc. and a time period that may have thought other things that were no longer true as well. I knew that this time period didn't represent my time period and I didn't expect it to.

But setting aside the rightness of whether he should have made the choices at all, I also have trouble with some of the choices themselves--he tells us that he has gotten rid of some of Lang's selections because they weren't interesting, but then he keeps variations of stories that are virtually the same. For example, we have multiple variations of the simpleton (or the least favored or what-have-you) winning the day through virtue of having made the right friends--gluttons who can eat everything, men who can make things cold or can see great distances; friends who can help him perform the impossible tasks required of him. If the point is to have a better offering of stories all arond, then I would think variety would be a good standard to meet as well.

Overall--still a good selection of fairy tales that should appeal to young readers and I did enjoy them. Just not quite as much as expected.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

Favourites here: "Six Swans," "The Nixy," "Fairer-than-a-Fairy," "The White Duck," "The Story of King Frost," "The Swineherd," "The Blue Mountains," "Thumbelina," and "The Story of a Darning-Needle."

I feel like I saw pretty much the same thing in all my reviews for these books but it was enjoyable. Some were boring and other were good.

Haven't quite enjoyed it as much as the previous tomes, I've considered some stories to be a bit vulgar to be read to kids.

There are a few good fairy tales and these can be found in most collections. However, there are a lot of boring ones. The yellow fairy book contains almost exclusively stories of the “a thing happens and then another thing happens” type. Lots of deus ex machina. I found it tedious and uninteresting to read. I really wanted to like this book, but I didn’t. I stopped reading half way through and I doubt I will pick up any of the other fairy books by Lang...

I think this might have been my favorite collection so far - or maybe it was just that I think I've gotten the most ideas for fairytale retellings from this one :)

My rating as more to do with the narration of the audiobook rather than the fairy tales. The actual fairy tales were ok. Some were more interesting than others. However, the narration was awful. Each narrator read in such a bored voice that it was very difficult to be interested in what they were reading. I may have enjoyed the book more if I had read it rather than listened to it. If I decide to read another of the color fairy books, I will definitely skip the audio version.

Classic fairy tales.

2.75 stars.

First, I wanted mention a few small issues I have with this book, specifically the edition I have, because it did impact the reading experience. None of the page numbers match up in the Kindle edition I have, not even within the book itself. For example, the table of contents states that the story is on page 100, but when I go to the story the page number at the bottom says 80. I think this is because the edition I have does not include illustrations or woodcuts, despite having lists of them at the beginning of the book. The book lists the final story as starting on page 319, but the Kindle says that it has 253 pages, and here on Goodreads it says it only has 156 pages. This is a minor annoyance, but I wish it was more consistent because I've never had this problem before. There were also no attributions at the end of each story about what country or culture it came from, which is always interesting to know.

This is definitely my least favorite of the books in this series I've read so far. There were a lot stories that fell into the just okay category for me, and only one that I really loved, which was Thumbelina. There were more stories that I disliked than the number of ones I liked.

Favorites:
Thumbelina

Good:
The Six Swans
The Donkey Cabbage
The Grateful Beasts
The Giants and the Herd-Boy
The Invisible Prince
The Wizard King
Alphege, or the Green Monkey
Fairer-than-a-Fairy
The Glass Axe
The White Duck
The Witch and her Servants
The Magic Ring
The Flower Queen's Daughter
The Snow-daughter and the Fire-son
The Story of King Frost
The Swineherd
The Witch in the Stone Boat
The Nightingale
The Steadfast Tin-soldier

Okay:
The Cat and the Mouse in Partnership
The Dragon of the North
Story of the Emperor's New Clothes
The Golden Crab
The Iron Stove
The Little Green Frog
The Crow
How Six Men travelled through the Wide World
The Nixy
The Glass Mountain
The Three Brothers
The Boy and the Wolves, or the Broken Promise
The Dead Wife
In the Land of Souls
The Flying Ship
The Death of the Sun-hero
The Witch
The Story of Big Klaus and Little Klaus
Prince Ring
How to Tell a True Princess (A.K.A The Princess and the Pea)
The Blue Mountains
The Tinder-box
Hermod and Hadvor

Didn't Like:
The Dragon and his Grandmother
The Seven-headed Serpent
The Hazel-nut Child
Blockhead Hans
A Story about a Darning-needle

A lot of similarities in stories... I guess because they are from different countries and the books are showing that different countries have similar fairy tales?