From the father of modern Italian children’s literature, this is one of the great works about the imagination and how stories are made—featuring radiant illustrations from Matthew Forsythe and a refreshed translation from Jack Zipes.A Marginalian Favorite Book of 2025!"Holds great value for the adults who teach kids and the adults who write for them." —Mac Barnett, U.S. National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, for the Ne...

"Zipes ably demonstrates that moral, political, religious, and other ideologies have shaped these apparently innocent narratives." — Lore and LanguageThis revised, expanded, and updated edition of the 1979 landmark Breaking the Magic Spell examines the enduring power of fairy tales and the ways they invade our subjective world. In seven provocative essays, Zipes discusses the importance of investigating oral folk tales in their socio-political cont...

The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers GrimmPerhaps no other stories possess as much power to enchant, delight, and surprise as those penned by the immortal Brothers Grimm. Now, in the new, expanded third edition, renowned scholar and folklorist Jack Zipes has translated all 250 tales collected and published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, plus twenty-nine rare tales omitted from the original German edition, as well as narratives uncovered in the brothers’ letters an...

This captivating story follows the journey of twins Anja and Zack, two young witches who are separated from their parents after a ruthless dictator named Nexus takes control of the world. Guided by a mysterious, elderly witch, they set out to find the Wellikans, a hidden people living on a dark and secretive island. With her wisdom and support, Anja and Zack reach the island and join forces with scientists and the Wellikans to challenge Nexus's formidable technological power.Writte...

"What baroque dreams, grotesque scenes, ghostly, ridiculous, strange, and chilling brainstorms! . . . remarkable, original, and uncanny." —Thomas MannA man is changed into a flea and must bring his future parents together in order to become human again. A woman convinces a river god to cure her sick son, but the remedy has mixed consequences. A young man must choose whether to be close to his wife's soul or body. And two deaf mutes transcend their physical existence...

A diverse new anthology that traces the meaning and magic of the sorcerer's apprentice tale throughout history"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" might conjure up images of Mickey Mouse from the Disney film Fantasia, or of Harry Potter. As this anthology reveals, however, "sorcerer's apprentice" tales—in which a young person rebels against, or complies with, an authority who holds the keys to magical powers—have been told through the centuries, in many languages an...

Well, gentlemen, here's a tale that people have told time and again . . . .So begins the title story in this collection of fifty Sicilian folk and fairy tales edited and translated by noted folklore scholar Jack Zipes. But while some of the stories may sound as if they've been told time and again—such as variations on Cinderella and Puss in Boots—many will enchant English-language readers and storytellers for the first time. From "The Pot of Basil" to "The Talking Belly," "...

A lively selection of Charles Godfrey Leland's unique nineteenth-century tales.Born into a wealthy and privileged family in Philadelphia, Charles Godfrey Leland (1824–1903) showed a clear interest in the supernatural and occult literature during his youth. Legend has it that, soon after his birth, an old Dutch nurse carried him up to the garret of the house and performed a ritual to guarantee that Leland would be fortunate in his life and eventually become a schola...

The original stories behind everyone's favorite Christmas balletIt wasn't until the 1950s that seeing The Nutcracker at Christmastime became an American tradition. But the story itself is much older and its original intent more complex. This eye-opening new volume presents two of the tale's earliest versions, both in new translations: E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker and Mouse King (1816), in which a young girl is whisked away to the Land of Toys to h...

The first unabridged English translation taken directly from Basile's monumental Lo cunto de li cunti (1634–1636), this edition is fully annotated and illustrated, with an extensive bibliography.The Tale of Tales, made up of forty-nine fairy tales within a fiftieth frame story, contains the earliest versions of celebrated stories like Rapunzel, All-Fur, Hansel and Gretel, The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. The tales are bawdy and i...

1944, Italy is under the nazis. Leda, ten year old girl, has to carry secret messages to the partisans.One day, however, she is intercepted by the Germans. The girl manage to escape but the Germans follow her. She’s going to drown into the river when she’s saved by a strange old man who lives in a cave: he calls himself the “wizard”.Leda suspect that the old man is a spy for the Germans and would like to hide the message, but the wizard discovers the letter and ...A br...

In Grimm Legacies, esteemed literary scholar Jack Zipes explores the legacy of the Brothers Grimm in Europe and North America, from the nineteenth century to the present. Zipes reveals how the Grimms came to play a pivotal and unusual role in the evolution of Western folklore and in the history of the most significant cultural genre in the world—the fairy tale.Folklorists Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm sought to discover and preserve a rich abundance of stories emanating from an o...