Thursday, July 07, 2011

Top ten fairy tales

Cornelia Funke is an internationally bestselling, multiple award-winning author, best known for writing the Inkworld trilogy, Dragon Rider, and The Thief Lord.

Named by Time magazine as one of the "100 most influential people in the world today," Cornelia currently lives with her family in Los Angeles, California, in a house full of books.

For the Guardian, she named her top ten fairy tales.

One entry on the list:
The Nightingale

This is not a folk tale but written in rather modern times by Hans Christian Andersen. As a child, I owned a big book with his tales, and knew every word and every illustration by heart. I didn't wonder why I loved that tale about the mechanical and the true nightingale so much. I guess every child knows that man cannot create magic half as well as nature does. Andersen clads that truth in a truly magical story. And of course, the real nightingale doesn't need golden feathers.
Read about another entry on the list.

Also see: Five best academic studies of fairy tales.

--Marshal Zeringue