Reviews

The Lilac Fairy Book by Andrew Lang

iceangel9's review against another edition

emotional funny inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced

4.25

The classic collection of fairy tales, the 12th in the series. A wonderful collection of tales from various countries. A Reader's Corner Must Read.

feiya's review against another edition

5.0

I loved it and will be happy to pick it up again and again flipping through all those magical lands, now it's the turn of the rest of the different colored books, I plan to read them all before I die. Hopefully they're all as joyful as this one was. Most of the stories had an incredible twinkle of childhood nostalgia and memories.

jennoux's review against another edition

2.0

I'm so glad I finished the series ! It was interesting to see all these different fairy tales but after a while they are very repetitive.

kailey_luminouslibro's review against another edition

4.0

Beautiful fairy tales! Love the illustrations too.

sonshinelibrarian's review against another edition

3.0

I did it. I finally read all 12 of the Fairy books!

Ahem.

I found this installment to be a lot more uneven than the other fairy books. A lot of the stories crossed over into folk tale territory (and the difference stands out). There were also about 3 stories from the King Arthur and his court tales and I felt them a bit jarringly out of place compared to the earlier volumes.

jmbz38's review against another edition

1.0

Both Lang and the people quoted on the book cover sing the praises of the translations of the stories in this book. I for one wish they'd focused more on storytelling and less on the translation, because if these translations are accurate then the source material they came from is garbage. Most of the stories in this book make zero sense. I don't just mean because they're fantastical tales meant for children. I mean that the plot points of many of the stories don't connect, the focus of the story changes midway through and the original focus never mentioned again, characters are named that were not mentioned before, or simple details contradict one another. An example of that last one: in one tale a fairy plucks three hairs and throws them into the wind. There they "each transform into four tailors." I don't know much French (the language the story was translated from) but I know that 'trois' and 'quatre' look nothing alike. Or a farmer takes a bushel of wheat, plants it in three fields, then suddenly two of the fields are corn. Those two crops have their own words in French too; it's just baffling and confusing. It's also annoying that there's little background on the stories. At the end of each tale, there's a citation of which source it was translated from, but no mention of the year or country of origin. Avoid this book, even a monkey could make up more coherent stories than the ones contained in The Lilac Fairy Book.