I'm glad I finally read this collection, but it was not very impressive. Most of the tales were very repetitive--maybe one element was changed in the new tale. Some of the tales were inane and ridiculous, but not in a good way. The best tales were already snagged by Disney to turn into movies. It was interesting reading the original versions of those stories, though. Again, I'm glad I read it, but won't be reading it twice. ( )

Nice to read something that has a bit more morbid twist. ( )

I really liked this book because it is a classic book filled with original stories that are well-known and still popular today. The language is descriptive and clear. The writ ing is engaging, organized, and paced well. Every story is entertaining and captivating. The stories are still famous today and have left such a huge impression on people. There are no illustrations in the book besides small little drawings through out the book. I find this really interesting because the characters in this book have grown to become such famous and well-known characters that this book has clearly done such a great job developing each character through the stories. The characters are believable and well-developed. Some of the stories are fantasy based but the characters are still realistic. The plot is organized and each story is full of suspense, conflict, and resolution. This book is filled with several different stories like Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow-White, Hänsel and Gretel, Little Red-Cap (Little Red Riding Hood), and Briar-Rose (Sleeping Beauty) and 200 more characters. The big idea in this book is fantasy, love, and imagination. ( )

I have a confession to make: I find it more convenient to acquire the collected works of an author long after they're dead. That gives the experts plenty of time to wage their wars on authenticity, and translators the time to properly translate all the ancient idioms into today's slang, and so forth.

Now, I don't wish any authors dead, as I'd rather they generate as much work as possible before I finish collecting it, but I just love it when I can get a copy of EVERY JOT AND TITTLE BY AUTHOR A, so I don't have to have too many books on my shelf.

Because of this quirk, The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales is a wonder for me. Within this work, I discovered a very interesting thing that the Disney generation would probably miss: The fairy tales were not intended solely for children (and at times, probably weren't suitable for children), but were instead intended for the people. The children's stories, however, are not fairy tales, per se, but are more religious morality tales featuring Jesus or the Apostles.

If you've been raised on Disney and colorful picture books, then reading the collected, uncut works may be a shock to you. They're pretty gruesome. And everybody had lice.

But, within its pages, we have all the great tales: Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding-Hood, and so forth. And unless you're a Grimm scholar, there will probably be a story in there that you've never heard of before.

I would probably not recommend this book for your children. Other people's children, maybe, but not yours, unless you don't want to molly-coddle them until they're 36. But, don't give it to your children expecting it to be the brightly-colored, sanitized version of all your favorite fairy tales. It is, instead, the grim (was that pun intended?) tales as originally written, and well worth the read. ( )

Figured I'd read it just for the heck of it. ( )