In Their Shoes: Fairy Tales and Folktales

In Their Shoes: Fairy Tales and Folktales
Reviewer: John Lloyd
Summary: Considering this comes at compiling tales with an unusual, singular angle, it's a surprisingly strong and varied little collection.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 128	Date: July 2015
Publisher: Pushkin Children's Books
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9781782691013
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Lots of books have, in their own way, shown fairy tales to have relied on certain tropes. You certainly don't have to read them all, or indeed many, to see the wily child outsmart the adult again and again, people tricked into changing ownership of magical things, the power of being a stepmother, or the power of doing things in threes. Still, I think this must be one of a very rare few collections to look at footwear as a theme, with a tidy, small selection of fairy and folk-tales to entertain, all with that subject.

Like all best compilations, it has a wide reach, here exemplified by the fact that some tales you will be able to replicate from your youth almost word for word, and some you will not have met. Cinderella here is both the oldest, Chinese version, with its 9th Century author giving it his best 'don't blame me, I was just told this – it could have happened' signing-off, and a more recent Russian telling, with the pitch on the palace stairs to entrap the shoe, and the bloodier footwear trials to follow, with attendant birds (watch the movie of Into the Woods if you can't visualise it).

But lo and behold, you'll recognise other shoes too. Hans Christian Anderson's horrid red ones, that drive a girl to distraction – and endless dance; the ever-worn out ones of a dozen princesses sharing the same secret; the original seven-league boots – and Puss in a different pair; even ones Brer Rabbit steals. Samples of Pushkin Press's own recent books take us back to the time of Perseus borrowing Hermes' winged sandals to defeat Medusa the Gorgon, and to recent Paris, where two shoes marry and cause their owner no end of expensive problems.

Even reading a collection like this, some of the weird parts of fairy tales stand out – the poor family with such a clever son he doesn't start helping his loved ones out until after his near-death experience; the King is still powerless against the form in needing to go on a most random coach trip with his daughter just to further the story; and more. And while it gives us a snippet of background to each author, the book won't explain why there are two clear Cinderella variants, it doesn't help itself in just allowing one full-page print to illustrate every story, and it does nobody any favours to have Joel Chandler Harris' Brer Rabbit in the original vernacular idiom – I never suffered, or went to a particularly racist school, for having it transposed into something the young can actually read. But I did have doubts about the strength of this selection, and while many more substantial volumes are available, this does have a kind of magical charm of its own, in that it goes for one particular, tiny element of fairy lore, and brings it to us in all its glory. If you took great steps to buy it, I wouldn't blame you.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

The Grimm story alone, with much more in the way of graphic accompaniment, can be had here.

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You can read more book reviews or buy In Their Shoes: Fairy Tales and Folktales at Amazon.com.

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