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What is a fairy tale? For examples, we immediately think of traditional stories like Cinderella, Snow White, Aladdin’s Lamp, Rumpelstiltskin, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, and many others. But what is a fairy tale? First, it is a good story, second, it usually has magical or fantastical elements in it, and third, virtue is rewarded and evil punished. There can be some allegorical elements. A fairy tale can be a good teaching tool, as well as a good read, and it traditionally has a strong Biblical moral basis. Modern fairy tales, such as The Selfish Giant and The Happy Prince, by Oscar Wilde, have their moral qualities underpinned by Biblical truth and definitely have allegorical elements that add to the depth of the stories.
Many people over the years have collected traditional “fairy tales” from around the world. Think of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Andrew Lang and his color fairy tale collections, and many more. Ruth Manning-Sanders has also done this job, collecting and rewriting a bit, making each book in her series focused on fairy tales with one major plot element. Hence, we have A Book of Cats and Creatures, A Book of Dwarfs, A Book of Giants, A Book of Dragons, and A Book of Wizards. She has still others in the series, twenty-two in all. I liked most of the stories in the five books mentioned here but they were uneven – some were much better than others. They follow the definition of the fairy tale that I stated above, especially the moral part. A quote from the author/collector displays this very well: “…it is the absolute and very comforting rule of the fairy tale that the good and brave shall be rewarded, and that bad people shall come to a bad end.”
What makes these volumes stand out from the usual fairy tale collection is the British illustrator, Robin Jacques (1920-1995), whose exquisitely detailed drawings draw the reader into each tale. He illustrated all volumes in this series. I first came across his illustrations long ago as a schoolboy when I read juvenile science fiction author Andre Norton’s novels Steel Magic, Moon of Three Rings, and Exiles of the Stars.
Ruth Manning (1886-1988) was born in Wales, raised in England, and majored in literature in college. When she married George Sanders, they both changed their name to Manning-Sander. They toured England in a horse-drawn trailer (in Great Britain, they say caravan) and spent two years working in a circus. The couple eventually settled in Land’s End, Cornwall, at the very south-western tip of England (I have been there - it is a beautiful spot).