Classic Fairytales Re-imagined

Classic Fairytales Re-imagined retells fairy tales and folktales from around the world for bedtime, softened for modern ears and for all ages.

Fairy tales have never stood still. Every culture that told them changed them, and most of the famous ones exist in dozens of versions. This collection carries on that habit. The Slumber Studios writers took stories from many traditions and retold them for today. A few stay close to the story you grew up with, and others range much further from it, but every one reworks what happens underneath in its own way. A few may be new to you altogether. The credits run to several writers, so the voice shifts a little from tale to tale.

The clearest change is in the dark places. Many old fairy tales lean on fear and punishment, and the retellings here turn that around, not to pretend the world is safe, but to show a problem being worked through and got past. The collection was written with two listeners in mind: a child at lights-out, and an adult who wants an old story told kindly.

Folktale, fairy tale, fable: the shapes are familiar even when the stories are not, which is why they ask so little attention at that hour. Anyone raised on Grimm, Andersen, or Perrault will feel the old rhythms under the new words.

Seven readers take the stories in turn over calming background music, and the pace stays low and the voices soft whichever one you get. Fall asleep in one country and wake, if you wake at all, in another.