"Mopsa the fairy," by Jean Ingelow, and "The little lame prince," by Dinah Maria Craik.
"Lob-lie-by-the-fire," by Mrs. Ewing, and "At the back of the North wind" and "The Princess and Curdie," by George Macdonald.
The average modern fairy tale is a jumble of impossibilities, with no continuity of incident, well enough or poorly written, according to the ability of the writer.
"The magic fruit garden," by Marion Wallace Dunlop, is an illustration of this kind. Two very small children, in abbreviated pinafores, are studying their Monday lessons; one is writing an essay on Perseverance, the other is copying geographical names. By the illustrations, one may judge the children to be of kindergarten age. It is not surprising that they fall asleep, and, to dreamland sent, meet with adventures enough to make the strongest head whirl—a case of literary delirium tremens.
"Snow garden," by Elizabeth Wordsworth, is on the whole a good collection; the stories, however, are of unequal merit.
"The other side of the sun," by Evelyn Sharp, is of negative goodness. The witches and wizards are mild and amiable, especial care evidently being taken that no child should be kept awake at night. It does no harm for children occasionally to shiver and shake as poor Hans in the Grimm collection longed to do. The author's satisfaction at the expression the "wymps wimpled" is insisted upon a little too frequently.
"Fairy folk of Blue Hill," by Lily F. Wesselhoeft, is of especial interest to children about Boston, since it accounts for the granite quarries and pudding stone of the region. It is smoothly written and is not spoiled by slang or pertness.
"Summer legends," by Rudolph Baumbach. The stories are not altogether fairy tales nor are they written for the youngest readers. They are gracefully written although they lose somewhat by translation. The book is in some parts amusing and all the stories are peopled with the wonderful creatures of fairyland.
Other tales seem invented only for the purpose of forcing religious sentiment, or pointing a moral in inverse proportion to the size of the reader. Their authors seem sometimes to have reached Mark Twain's conclusion that "every one being born with an equal amount of original sin, the pressure on the square inch must needs be greater in a baby."
"Pixie and Elaine stories," by Carrie E. Morrison, is a mixture of fairy tale and religious story. The author speaks in her preface of the stories having been carefully pruned. One shudders at thinking what they must have been before, with such chapters as "The Elaines' picture of heaven," and "The pixie transforms an Elaine" left in.