Haunting and Hilarious Fairy Tales

Jack Zipes is a prolific author, editor, and commenter in the field of folklore and fairy tales. Any scholars in the field may likely look around their office or personal library and find a dozen spines where Zipes appears as a major, if not sole, force behind the book. After retiring as Professor Emeritus of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Zipes established his own publishing house, Little Mole & Honey Bear (from which this volume comes to us), to further his new pursuit in life as a “born-again gravedigger” who “dig[s] graves so that dead authors and artists can rejoin us and have an honest word with us” (p. 225). As Zipes notes in his mission statement, Haunting and Hilarious Fairy Tales is a volume “calling for peace and joy, [a book] of the past that [has] been lost and [is] now found” (p. 225).This collection of German and Norse fairy tales consists of material from illustrator Rolf Brandt's two anthologies Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm (Peter Lunn, 1943) and Why the Sea Is Salt and Other Fairy Tales (Peter Lunn, 1946), both published in London in English by way of German and Norwegian sources. However, Zipes was unable to locate the exact sources used by Brandt, explaining, “I have done careful research as best I can to determine the original authors . . . and I have carefully edited the tales and made many changes” (p. ix). Preserving such tales as “The Four Clever Brothers,” “The Young Giant and the Tailor,” “The King of the Golden Mountain,” and “Hans in Luck,” among others, alongside famous tales like “Rumpelstiltskin,” “Hansel and Grethel,” and “Ashputtel,” is critical to the purpose of a book like this. That being said, Brandt's memorable illustrations are what may interest most readers. As Zipes observes, “reading the texts through his illustrations opens the door to a new understanding of the stories and Brandt himself” (p. ix).If asked to picture a fairy tale in their minds, many readers might conjure either the indelible woodcuttings of Arthur Rackham or some other more contemporary adaptation. Accordingly, it is worthwhile for a well-respected scholar and “gravedigger” like Zipes to put equal attention on to how such traditional tales were transmitted and enjoyed well past the stage when oral transmission was the most likely source. Walt Disney's films Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Cinderella (1950) established a pop-cultural image in many minds with his interpretation of the tales. It makes just as much sense that within the same time frame, in the 1940s, young children in London experienced these stories for the first time as “Snow-Drop” and “Ashputtel,” alongside Brandt's airy yet striking pencil drawings.Brandt's human figures look like a mixture of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons. The sleeping giants faced by the tailor in “The Young Giant and the Tailor” appear squishy and plush, yet light enough that they might float away despite their immense size. The image of Hansel hunting in “Hansel and Grethel,” with his body pressed against the ground and his posterior poking up in the air, brings to mind the absurdist fever-dream illustrations from Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. Animals bounce and stare from the corners of pages in the margins, and wild visions like the living tree in “Mother Holle” exhibit a vibrant energy that recalls the previous era's rubber-hose animations, like those from Fleischer Studios or Disney's own Silly Symphonies.Contemporary readers may not rank Brandt's illustrations among other, more famous artists who turned their pencils and ink to interpret European fairy tales—such as Wanda Gág, Edward Gorey, and Maurice Sendak—but Zipes and Little Mole & Honey Bear aim to highlight these lesser-known artists. However, Brandt—who developed as an artist between the two world wars—adopted fairy tales as a subject because “somehow the underdogs triumph, and justice is attained” (p. 213). Fairy tales offer a safe road to travel if one wishes to examine power structures, society, and human nature within the nonsensical trappings of fantasy. Brandt's illustrations offer a compelling and silly-fun accompaniment to tales that may be new or already well-loved by readers.