THE THREE SPINNING FAIRIES

One of the Grimms’ funnier and lesser-known tales receives an expansion and a new ending. When the Queen hears that Zelda, the Royal Baker’s daughter, loves to spin, she immediately promises Zelda her son’s hand in marriage if she can spin three great roomsful of flax. It sounds like a good deal—except that Zelda hates to spin, hates work of any sort. All appears to be lost, until three very peculiar fairies arrive to help; one has a grotesquely large foot, another’s tongue sticks out permanently, and the third has a bizarre, swollen thumb—all due to the fairies’ inordinate love of spinning. This offering hews quite closely to the original story, expanding somewhat to develop character and adding some contemporary dialogue (“Gross!” Zelda exclaims when the fairies offer to teach her to spin). When the fairies arrive at the girl’s wedding and are introduced as her “cousins,” the prince is so repulsed by their spinning-induced deformities that he begs his mother that his bride be relieved of all future spinning duties. The Grimms’ tale ends here, but Ernst (Sea, Sand, Me!, 2001, etc.) adds a postscript that gives her disagreeable heroine her comeuppance: the Queen, under the impression that Zelda is an industrious sort, makes her the Royal Baker, a just desert missing from the original. The pastel line-and-watercolor illustrations invest each character with great personality, from the sly and petulant Zelda to the almost simple-mindedly genial fairies. While the message that industry is its own reward is never far from the top, the general silliness keeps didacticism from the story, making it one that kids are sure to ask for a second time. (Picture book/folktale. 5-8)