Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (Librivox), Part B

I enjoyed Part B of this unit a lot. The stories were ones most people had probably never heard of and were not typical fairytales. Even the one that involves princesses was very different from other princess fairytales.

The Twelve Huntsmen

I thought this story was so beautiful and the ending was amazing! I did have a lot of questions throughout the story, though, like why did she need 11 body doubles and then dressed them up like men? There was never a good reason given for why that was the route the princess chose to check up on the prince. Also what happened to the prince's new bride? Was she just super cool with the prince divorcing her for his huntsman/former lover (who is a woman)? Also how did the lion just know they were women? Was it a smell thing? I would love to maybe give some clarification to these things or maybe write the story from the point of view of the new bride. That would be interesting.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

This story also had a really interesting premise! I mean princesses that secretly dance at night is super cool! Also this story has a Barbie movie, so it earns bonus points from me. The only problem I had was the ending because it seemed very rushed and I really didn't expect the soldier to choose a daughter or at least a little more after he chose one. The entire story had so much description and reasoning behind everything else that to have the soldier solve the mystery, decide to marry the oldest sister, and then the end seemed really short. I would definitely work on making the story a little more concise and changing what happens to the girls in the end. Also is the place they go to dance outside the realm of reality or is there a king somewhere wondering why his twelve sons always have holes in their shoes? Maybe I'd tell the story from their perspective.

(Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses. Photo from The Movie DB)

Bibliography. Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm, an audiobook recording available at LibriVox based on a Project Gutenberg publication. Links to readings

Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (Librivox), Part A

All the way back in Week 2's Reading Options assignment I was interested in the Brothers Grimm (Crane) because I liked that while they were still fairytales, they were different from you typical fairytales. I was a little torn on whether to go with Crane or Librivox, but I enjoyed the other Librivox stories that I read, so I decided to try listening to the stories again. 

Rapunzel

I loved the Barbie movie of this tale and I've read a bunch of different versions of it! All the versions have put their own little spin on it though so they don't get boring. I've had trouble coming up with retellings for stories that have many versions so maybe I'll do a diary entry and tell it from a different perspective. Or maybe I could figure out why the witch locked Rapunzel away in the first place. The story never said she was jealous of her beauty and she didn't have magic hair like in Tangled. It would be interesting to see why she wasn't more of a mother to her.

(Photo from Giphy)

The Traveling Musicians

I really enjoyed this story and thought all the animals working together and finding the house was really cute. It was like something out of a movie with a rag-tag gang of unlikely friends coming together for a common goal. It honestly kind of reminded me of Avatar the Last Airbender. If I were retelling this story I would make them all humans or I would listen to the last line of the story and check if they still were in the house after all this time.

Bibliography. Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm, an audiobook recording available at LibriVox based on a Project Gutenberg publication. Links to readings