The Prince has travelled all over the world looking for a real Princess. When a girl knocks on the palace door one stormy night, claiming to be a Princess, the Queen decides to put her to the test: will she feel the pea underneath a pile of mattresses?

Madcap revisions of familiar fairy tales including Chicken Licken, The princess and the pea, The ugly duckling, The frog prince, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the beanstalk, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, The tortoise and the hare, The gingerbread boy, and the Boy who cried wolf.

In over 1,000 entries, this acclaimed Companion covers all aspects of the Western fairy tale tradition, from medieval to modern, under the guidance of Professor Jack Zipes. It provides an authoritative reference source for this complex and captivating genre, exploring the tales themselves, the writers who wrote and reworked them, and the artists who illustrated them. It also covers numerous related topics such as the fairy tale and film, television,...

Bruno Bettelheim was one of the great child psychologists of the twentieth century and perhaps none of his books has been more influential than this revelatory study of fairy tales and their universal importance in understanding childhood development. Analyzing a wide range of traditional stories, from the tales of Sinbad to "The Three Little Pigs," "Hansel and Gretel," and "The Sleeping Beauty," Bettelheim shows how the fantastical, sometimes cruel,...

A poor old Chinese farmer finds a magic brass pot that doubles or duplicates whatever is placed inside it, but his efforts to make himself wealthy lead to unexpected complications.

For twenty years after Tara Martin disappeared from her small English town, her parents and her brother, Peter, have lived in denial of the grim fact that she was gone for good. And then suddenly, on Christmas Day, the doorbell rings at her parents' home and there, disheveled and slightly peculiar looking, Tara stands. It's a miracle, but alarm bells are ringing for Peter. Tara's story just does not add up. And, incredibly, she barely looks a day...

A retelling of the traditional Persian tale in which Settareh, neglected and abused by her stepmother and stepsisters, finds her life transformed with the help of a little blue jug.

After climbing to the top of a huge beanstalk, a boy uses his quick wits to outsmart a giant and gain a fortune for himself and his mother.