Authors: John McCann,Monica Sweeney,Becky Thomas
Brick Fairy Tales: Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Hansel and Gretel, and More
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Copyright © 2014 by Hollan Publishing, Inc.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 100018.
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.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-62873-732-5
eISBN: 978-1-62914-086-5
Printed in China
Editor: Kelsie Besaw
Production manager: Abigail Gehring
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
For our third
Brick
book, we would like to thank our wonderful editor, Kelsie Besaw, for her dedication to these projects and for being just as excited about these tales as we are. Thank you to Tony Lyons, Bill Wolfsthal, and Linda Biagi, for the continued opportunity to produce such a fun and educational series of books, and to everyone at Skyhorse for working so hard to put them out in the world. Special thanks to Allan Penn and Holly Schmidt for letting us have a billion Legos.
On a personal note, John would like to give a big thank-you to the Frog Queen. Becky would like to thank Professor Moebies, for reminding her why she loves stories. And Monica would like to give her warmest thank-yous to Mr. Hekler, for being the reason she writes in the first place.
I
NTRODUCTION TO
F
AIRY
T
ALES
On Fairy Tales:
Folklore and fairy tales have enchanted audiences since people first began telling stories. Before the cartoons with musical numbers and happy endings, even before the stories were collected into books, these stories were a part of a long oral tradition that passed down important cultural messages about right and wrong and good and evil. The tales in their original forms do not always end pleasantly, nor do they shy away from bloodshed and misfortune. Some are slapstick and clever, while others are nothing short of horrifying. Like any good story that is retold over and over, fairy tales entertain and enlighten us: they show us what scares us and what we value most.
The most famous collectors of these classic tales were Jacob and Wilhem Grimm, or as they are more widely known, the Brothers Grimm. As German scholars searching for cultural stories passed down throughout cities and villages all over nineteenth-century Germany, the two brothers curated one of the most extensive collections of folk stories ever known. They published the first edition of
Kinder- und Hausmärchen
, or
Children’s and Household Tales
, in 1812.
The Grimm brothers first put the stories together to satisfy their scholarly interests in German culture and storytelling and did not intend them for children. After the printing of the first edition was met with little success and unenthusiastic readers, the brothers returned to the text and reworked the stories to appeal to a broader readership. Each new printing of the book contained new edits and carefully crafted additions to both enhance the stories and make them more and more acceptable for young readers. In the same way that stories told orally change a bit with every retelling, these written fairy tales have slowly taken shape into the beloved stories we know today.
On Brick Fairy Tales:
Classic children’s stories now meet a classic children’s pastime. We have chosen thirteen tales from the original Grimm’s collection, some that you may know and some of which you may have never heard. The tales are played out with LEGO bricks, which are especially well suited to the sometimes absurd and often hilarious consequences of some of these stories’ characters. Each tale is told in its original form and remains unabridged, and each of the photographs has been crafted with special dedication to the humor, gore, and peculiarities of the folklore itself. We hope you enjoy this modern retelling of the Brothers Grimm stories through many, many LEGO bricks.
C
ONTENTS
Little Snow-white (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs)
Little Briar-Rose (Sleeping Beauty)
The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces
Cinderella
The wife of a rich man fell sick, and as she felt that her end was drawing near, she called her only daughter to her bedside and said,
“Dear child, be good and pious, and then the good God will always protect thee, and I will look down on thee from heaven and be near thee.”
Thereupon she closed her eyes and departed.
Every day the maiden went out to her mother’s grave, and wept, and she remained pious and good.
