Grimms' Fairy Tales, Volume 1

British actress Laura Paton reads fairy tales, including "The Frog Prince," "The Elves and the Shoemaker," "Hansel and Gretel," "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Cinderella." Paton reads at a comfortable pace in a clear, versatile voice. She gives a quiet, deft reading without intrusive overdramatization, which allows listeners to become involved in the stories. The stories are introduced with brief musical passages taken from Tchaikovsky, Strauss and Grieg, which enhance the presentation. Whether listeners know these classic stories well or are hearing them from the first time, they'll enjoy this collection. C.R.A. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

August 1, 2001
Old-fashioned, often broken typeface and Arthur Rackham's gloriously reproduced original artwork accompany 22 stories in a new edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales, originally published in 1909. A sepia-toned illustration for "Red Riding Hood" shows the cloaked girl meeting the bristly wolf, dwarfed by endlessly tall, bare trees. A caption in "The Bremen Town Musicians" recalls the bygone era: "They came upon a Cat, sitting in the road, with a face as long as a wet week."