What’s Your Favorite Fairytale?

I don’t just want to know which is your favorite but I would also like to know why you like that particular fairytale and what your favorite and least favorite part of the tale is. Your answer will also, hopefully, help me put together the workshop I’ve been working on about a not-so-new but definitely new to YWS way to write.

Little Red Riding Hood would definitely be my favorite, mostly because of the moral implications it brings as well as the idea that some of the original telling's of that said fairytale are quite morbid and gory.

If we're looking at actual plots, though, I would definitely have to say Jack and the Beanstalk. It's amazing what a bit of inspiration (seeds) and a little hope (magic) can bring.

Snow White, the original. It's fascinating how the plots change throughout history.

Rip Van Winkle(folk tale?) I love the setting and the ties to my own dutch-american heritage as well as the themes behind the story such as how failures in responsibilities can be passed from generation to generation and how we can always make up excuses for escaping the ones who love us.

Would Through the Gates of the Silver Key qualify? It is a sequel to The Silver Key, and I LOVE it. It is so innovative and original... And... It is just impossible to describe. Just read these two in order! TTGOTSK is one of the best things I have ever read.

Edit: For those too lazy to google them:
The Silver Key: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/tex ... ion/sk.asp

Through the Gates of the Silver Key: http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/tex ... n/tgsk.asp

The Little Match Girl because it touched me more than any other fairytale ever could.

It's a story about lonelinss and human need and as much as I love the romance and happy endings of the disney fairytales/ the wit and warnings found in the originals, The Little Match Girl was always the more real and the one I could most relate to.

My favourite part was the striking of each match in turn and the wonderful sights she would see through the window. My least favourite part would be that it had to be sad, but that's also whhat I love about it.

(One of) my favourite(s) was/is Snow White and Rose Red, probably because the girls in the illustrations were so pretty and wore similar hairbands that I owned. *priorities* I can't remember any part that was my least favourite though. I should read it again.

Snow White - I like how it can go from being completely grim in one place to happy-clappy, hippy-dippy in the other. And I like the whole idea of the story. An old, vain woman trying to cut out the heart of a young girl? Dark, and it was the first story to really scare me as a kid. Which was good, I suppose.

I also enjoy the different interpretations of it over the years, I mean, take "Mirror Mirror" and "Snow White and the Huntsman". Released at similar times, with the same basic story, yet worlds apart.

My favorite fairytale is the story of cindrella which I use to read and watch when I am a kid.

OMG Snow White and Rose Red.

Also East of the Sun West of the Moon. I have this princess story book on my shelf still after all these years and that was one of the stories in it. It wasn't my favourite when I was younger but became my favourite when I was older. My least favourite part was probably the troll queen in the climax, because she annoyed me. My favourite part of the story these days is how the princess, despite all warnings, looks at the prince when he's asleep. And then she goes and redeems herself. I think it's just so human and lovely.

Also, Shannon Hale has put The Goose Girl as one of my favourites. Where the goose girl gets in the oven, it's a little unrealistic, but it's a great ending. I love the show of human strength in the story. My least favourite part... hm... I don't know. Maybe the wind in the original because it's weird, but in Hale's retelling it's gorgeous.