Jump to content

Menu

Beautiful fairy tale books (illustrations and story)


jenniferlee
 Share

Recommended Posts

After reading through the thread this week, I realized that my little boys have been missing out on fairy tales. So I checked a bunch out from the library; some are illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. They are so beautiful I just want to cry.

It got me wondering if anyone had any others to recommend. I would love to have a collection (or at least check one out) of some really beautiful books.

 

I also was wondering about the retellings in these. Some are by her and some are by other authors. I always see Andrew Lang's books recommended, but does it matter, I mean is the translation better/different?

 

Thanks everyone.

 

Jen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ooh, I'll be listening in, too. The kids love fairy tales, but I haven't started on Andrew Lang's books yet. And I love Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations! I wanted to buy Peter Pan with her illustrations, but I can't find a used copy for a decent price. Also, she has a picture book about St. George of England that was beautiful. We have the Hans Christian Anderson Fairy Tale book that was recommended by SL, and a few others for little kids, but I'd like to add to our collection.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My daughter & I love K.Y. Craft's illustrations! Pegasus, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Tom Thumb, King Midas, etc.

 

The Treasury of Children's Literature is a collection of fairy tales illustrated by different illustrators. The stories are nicely done, too.

 

Other illustrators we like:

 

Scott Gustafson (Classic Fairy Tales, and Peter Pan)

 

Jerry Pinkney (Rikki Tikki Tavi, The Ugly Duckling, etc.)

 

Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters is beautifully illustrated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Three we like:

Rumpelstiltskin by Christopher Noel, illustrated by Peter Sis.

Tom Thumb by Richard Jesse Watson

Tam Lin by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Charles Mikoaycak - This one is a Scottish tale and is lovely. We found it at a used book sale, but had never heard of it before then.

 

We also like the illustrators mentioned above and the Lang books. The Lang books are closely written and have only a few illustrations.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lang, of course. :D Go for the Dover editions as they are the best bang for the buck (unless you can find a used edition with colour plates). Avoid omnibuses as they are poorly formatted, have tiny print, and are difficult to handle (it's difficult to fit twelve substantial volumes into one).

 

Neil Philip has some nice collections:

The Complete Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault

Celtic Fairy Tales

The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde

Christmas Fairy Tales

Stockings of Buttermilk

Horse Hooves and Chicken Feet

American Fairy Tales: From Rip Van Winkle to the Rootabaga Stories

 

Though it contains more than one tail woven into a linking narrative, Padraic Colum's The King of Ireland's Son is a must read, though I'm not aware of a "beautiful" edition. :001_smile:

 

The Troll with No Heart in His Body is a big favourite around here.

Edited by nmoira
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anything with Trina Schart Hyman is lovely--I have many of her titles, and they are up out of the kids' reach. They have to ask and be careful with them...:)

 

Other favorites:

 

Arthur Rackham

Lizbeth Zwerger

Victor Ambrus

and this edition of Narnia

 

and here are some of my sons' favorites:

 

Beowulf

 

To Capture the Wind

 

Ivanhoe

 

Kidnapped, Robin Hood, and Treasure Island

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure if it's really a "fairytale" but my kids really love this version of The Elves and the Shoemaker!

Mine like that one, too.

 

Ruth Sanderson does some beautifully illustrated fairy tales, with longer text and more complex language for older children.

:iagree:

We got Papa Gatto and Rose Red & Snow White from the library and they are beautiful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bearskinner is one of my absolute favorites

This Snow White

Joan of Arc

St. George and the Dragon

Kitchen Knight(King Arthur)

Merlin and the Making of a King

Rapunzel

Puss in Boots

Rumplestiltskin

Cupid and Psyche

The Sea King's Daughter (this one is breathtaking)

Little Red Riding Hood (this illustrator, Grennady Spirin, is amazing)

Goldilocks and the Three Bears

We Three Kings

The Christmas Story (this and We Three is Spirin's best)

The Velveteen Rabbit

Tikki Tikki Tembo

Strega Nona

Shakespeare Illustrated by Edmund Dulac, and Arthur Rackham-two of the best illustrators ever, IMHO

Rackham's Fairytale Illustrations

Kay Neilsen's Fairy Tale Illustrations in Full Color (with Rackham, and Dulac, he is the third jewel in the crown of Golden Age Illustators) You could just let the kids look, while you read from the kindle.

 

There's also fantastic coloring books-like Rackhams Fairy Tale Coloring book. And the Stained Glass version

Edited by justamouse
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not beautiful like some of the others, but engaging and the best Aesop I've found, they are in color and well done pictures. My children love to read and re-read the stories and look at the pictures.

 

I love this Robert Frost poem, and it's even better with stunning pictures by Susan Jeffers.

 

If you want nicely illustrated history, I like Diane Stanley, very nice pictures, although a bit below justamouse's illustration pintrest board. (Which is beautiful, BTW!)

Edited by ElizabethB
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We regularly check out classic tales illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger from our county interlibrary loan system. One of our favorites is E. Nesbit's The Deliverers of Their Country.

 

http://childscapes.com/bookpages/zwerger.html

 

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_8?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=lisbeth+zwerger&sprefix=Lisbeth+%2Cstripbooks%2C583

Edited by LivingHope
Amazon link
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not sure how good the stories are that they illustrate, but some of my favorite illustrators are Jessie Willcox Smith, Eloise Wilkin, N.C. Wyeth, Charles Santore, Robert Ingpen, K.Y. Craft, Paul O. Zelinsky, Gustav Tenggren, Elsa Beskow, Gennady Spirin, and Kate Greenaway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My mom had this from when she was a little girl and my kids love it:

 

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fairy-Tale-Book-Deluxe/dp/B001D67Q7A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332523950&sr=8-1

 

It looks like there is a new reprint, but I'm not sure if the pictures are the same.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Book-Fairy-Tales-Classics/dp/030717025X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1332523950&sr=8-2

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I was little I used to LOVE the illustrations in Dean's A Book of Fairy Tales. I have my old battered copy, but it looks like this one's out of print....

 

:hurray:

That is the one I posted in my link, I think. Mine is so worn out, too. The cheapest used one I could find was $45! As a kid I liked Sleeping Beauty the best but now we keep going back to the White Cat.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After reading through the thread this week, I realized that my little boys have been missing out on fairy tales. So I checked a bunch out from the library; some are illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. They are so beautiful I just want to cry.

It got me wondering if anyone had any others to recommend. I would love to have a collection (or at least check one out) of some really beautiful books.

 

I also was wondering about the retellings in these. Some are by her and some are by other authors. I always see Andrew Lang's books recommended, but does it matter, I mean is the translation better/different?

 

This is the rubric I use:

 

1. Are they written well?

2. Are they disneyed (KWIM) or sanitized in some way? If so, stay away. Disney has ruined so many fairy tales. I was shocked when I first learned that Hansel tells Gretel to "trust in God" in the originals.

3. If there are illustrations, then they must be beautiful (which it seems like you've mastered.)

 

I should also mention, that if you can find them, try to get the older Lang versions that were published in hard back. The font is bigger, the illustrations are bigger and each page is even decorated with border art (I guess you would call it).

 

This is what I mean. Isn't this way better than the paper back versions you see:

?ui=2&ik=805ff22382&view=att&th=1364117fa7705523&attid=0.1&disp=inline&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P8ROFKtkOcuue6csaxum8g8&sadet=1332531983891&sads=gB83rltyag5fXmhh4gJ-UPO-i4Y

 

Thanks for all of the recommendations on here. I haven't even heard of half of these versions. I'm going to have to check them out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lutheran girl,

Thanks for your input. I am just starting to ask real questions.

Which is sort of depressing considering I've been homeschooling for 9 years.

I've just sort of gone by sonlight's book lists and called it good.

 

All of this has been really eye-opening. My older kids are LOVING the fairy tale books I'm getting out for my little boys. they had read a few of them in different books years ago, but never these beautiful editions. We're really having fun!

 

Realization today: My dh knows NONE of these stories. He was never read to as a child and didn't read a book on his own until he was 19. It's now his assignment to read one fairy tale every day to the little boys.:D

 

Thanks again for all the great links. My library card is Maxed Out!

 

Jen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Aaah! I want one well written, beautifully illustrated fairy tale book - a living book - is there such a thing? I bet- but which one?? Can people please comment on the literary quality? I'm imagining beautiful words flowing from the pages..

Link to comment
Share on other sites

{on soapbox}

 

One thing to keep in mind is that there's no such thing as "fairy tales." I mean, there is, but there's no defined canon of which tales and which versions matter, plus there's the issue of conflating legend, folk lore, mythology and "modern"/"manufactured" fairy tales (King of the Golden River, etc).

 

There are many compilations because all of the material is in the public domain, so it's nearly impossible to identify The One. You have to go with your gut about which illustrations are beautiful to you!

 

There's also the question of whether you stick with a specific folklore collector (Grimm, Jacobs, Hauffman, Perrault) or throw in Hans Christian Andersen, etc.

 

{off soapbox}

 

Ahem. In recent months I have become very fond of Paul Galdone's illustrations of classic fairy tales.

 

And Cooper Edens' Classics Illustrated books are decorated with illustrations from a variety of sources that have fallen into the public domain. I find them fascinating to page through and quite lovely. It also saves you having to commit to one particular illustration style! Here is his Brothers Grimm.

 

Oh, and I also like the illustrations of Don Daily and Susan Jeffers.

 

Last but not least, for you out-of-print fiends like me, there was a Czech illustrator named Jiri Trnka who did some beautiful fairy tale illustrations for a British publisher in the 1960s. Here are some of his illustrations for Hauff's Fairy Tales. I think his stuff is just gorgeous, and so unique!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK, you guys are the BEST!

what a lovely surprise to wake up to this morning - all of these amazing suggestions...I'm going to need to be careful or my spending is going out of control!

 

Jen

 

Yes, thanks all! My amazon cart overfloweth!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...