This beautiful volume celebrates the best-loved stories of childhood through the vision of Maria Tatar, a leading expert in the field of folklore and children's literature. Challenging the notion that fairy tales can be read for their morals and used to make model citizens of little children, Tatar guides readers through the stories, exploring their historical origins, their cultural complexities and their psychological effects. Maria Tatar shows that by providing children with powerful models for navigating reality, these tales help children survive in a world ruled by adults. Twenty-six classic stories are presented - including "Beauty and the Beast", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "The Little Mermaid". Maria Tatar has also assembled over 300 mostly four-colour photographs, paintings and illustrations, some very rare, creating a volume that will rank as one of the finest fairy tale collections in many decades.

Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. She is the author of Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood, Off with Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood and many other books on folklore and fairy stories. She is also the editor and translator of The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen, The Annotated Brothers Grimm, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, The Annotated Peter Pan, The Classic Fairy Tales: A Norton Critical Edition and The Grimm Reader. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.