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A review by marissasa
The Brothers Grimm: 101 Fairy Tales by Jacob Grimm
adventurous
dark
lighthearted
2.5
I originally planned to read over 101 days, reading one short story a night before bed, but ofc that didn't happen and I instead would read a bunch at once and forget for weeks. In the end I finished in 103 days, and ranked every story from 1-5 stars coming to a final average of 2.5 stars. Many stories were short, repetitive, or basically the same as other stories with different magical objects or different settings so most of those got ranked lowly. There were 5 favorites that I gave 5 stars, being "The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids", "The Bremen Town-Musicians", "Little Snow White", "The Dog and the Sparrow", and "Clever Gretel". Overall I'm glad I read these classic fairy tales and it definitely gave me more insight into the notoriously dark origin of the well-known adaptations in media today, as the evil characters in the stories would often perish either cruel deaths or injuries and banishment. I can also see how the standout stories that weren't repetitive or re-skinned copies of the others were the ones that got reimagined as Disney movies or as their own children's books. Some of the stories, especially those mentioning religion or religious people, felt preachy, but I get the purpose of the fairy tales was to entertain and warn children about the consequences of behaving badly.
Minor: Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Terminal illness, Torture, Blood, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Alcohol, and Classism