The Faber book of modern fairy tales - Sara & Stephen Corrin

Fairy stories in their traditional form have never lost their popularity, but they have also provided inspiration for many modern authors. The Faber Book of Modern Fairy Tales brings together fifteen original stories which were all written during the last hundred years, are all entirely characteristic of their authors, and yet all owe something to the traditional fairy tale.

The book opens with the first part of Ted Hughes's splendid modern myth The Iron Man, which carries fantasy into an entirely contemporary world of machines and scrapheaps, and ends with The Great Quillow, Thurber's witty variant on the traditional theme of the little man who tricks a giant. In A Wind from Nowhere Nicholas Stuart Gray extracts characteristic humour and pathos from the magic properties of witches, spells and broomsticks. Helen Cresswell's Where the Wind Blows and Joan Aiken's A Harp of Fishbones are essentially concerned with young girls who are finding their way in life, but both stories are set in a timeless fairytale landscape. E. Nesbit's The Charmed Life and A. A. Milne's Prince Rabbit give a deliciously comic twist to traditional themes and F. Anstey's The Good Little Girl provides a hilarious parody of the virtuous fairytale heroine.

Sara and Stephen Corrin have edited a series of remarkably popular anthologies, beginning with Stories for Seven-Year-Olds. They show their usual flair and discrimination in the choice of stories for The Faber Book of Modern Fairy Tales, which is beautifully and imaginatively illustrated by Ann Strugnell.