The Snow White Fairy Tales

The Snow White Fairy Tales collects two stories from the Brothers Grimm, both built around a girl named Snow White, read slowly and softly for sleep.

Two sisters named Snow-White and Rose-Red live with their widowed mother in a small cottage at the edge of the forest. One winter a huge bear knocks at their door, cold and looking for warmth, and the sisters let him in, brushing the snow from his fur and letting him doze by their fire. Through the seasons that follow, the girls cross paths again and again with a bad-tempered dwarf who always seems to be in some kind of trouble, and who they help despite his rudeness. His temper, and a secret behind the friendly bear, come together in an ending that turns the whole story around.

The second tale, "Snowdrop," will feel familiar in outline: a queen wishes for a daughter as white as snow, red as blood, and black as ebony, and years later a jealous stepmother, a magic mirror, and a poisoned apple send that daughter fleeing into the woods, where seven small dwarfs take her in. This is close to the Grimms' first telling of the Snow White story, plainer and a little darker than the versions that came after.

Both stories carry the old fairy-tale threads of sibling loyalty, kindness repaid, and a curse finally broken, and they sit naturally alongside any classic Grimm collection. They are a good pick for listeners who love old-world folklore, fairy tales with a bit of bite, or the Snow White story in its earliest form, before it was smoothed over for children's books.

Elizabeth Grace reads both tales soft and slow, with quiet space between the lines, so they settle over you like a story told at a bedside rather than performed. Let the cottage and the dwarfs' little house see you off before either tale reaches its end.