I'm not going to give this a star rating because...I just can't. I'll be honest: I did not end up reading this cover to cover. It was too painful. Dipping in and reading one or two at a time would be one thing, reading them for research to set the stage for retellings...I could handle that, but reading straight through proved to be impossible for me. I think part of it was knowing that there was so much symbolism involved that I *couldn't* just enjoy the stories. Everything stands for something else (and half the time I totally miss that the story was really about something else...) and even though I enjoy fantasy, the fantastical elements were so bizarre that I just kept going "WHAT???" ( A mouse, a bird and a SAUSAGE live together in one of the stories.)So many of them are very similar, as well, so it was hard to keep straight. I'll admit that several made me laugh (especially the one where Hans kept trading DOWN, a hunk for gold --> horse --> cow --> goat --> etc, until he was left with nothing, and was quite happy with himself).People complain about how the Disney-fication of fairy tales and I don't think that what they did is any different even than what the Grimm Brothers or Perraulat or Andersen did for fairy tales -- they took existing stories that have been around for ages and updated them for a modern audience. I, for one, am fine with the Disney versions, or even the recent crop of retellings and reimaginings that are all the rage these days.
