The Lilac Fairy Book Large Type Edition By Andrew Lang BiblioLife (2008), 292 pages ISBN: 978-0554285375 Genre: Classics - Children's Fiction

Reviewed by Israel Drazin - November 14, 2010

Among other books, Andrew Lang (1844-1912) wrote twelve books of fairy tales that he differentiated one from the other by color; for example, this one is lilac, another is grey, another is green, another pink, another is blue, and others yellow, and brown. This book contains tales written by others, but which Lang collected. He says he is much like Adam, who Mark Twain said superintended the work in the Garden of Eden, while Eve did the work. Actually, he corrects himself, the tales were originally not written, they preceded writing. They are tales invented by ancient, probably Egyptian grandmothers who told the stories to their grandchildren. The Greek Homer knew the stories and gathered them together and made up his book "Odyssey" out of many of them. Shakespeare also used these stories for his plays. People who invent new fairy tales, he writes, never succeed. The stories in this volume come from Asia, Ireland, Portugal, and other countries. Most of them were collected and translated by Mrs. Lang.

Dr. Israel Drazin is the author of sixteen books, including a series of five volumes on the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he co-authors with Dr. Stanley M. Wagner, and a series of four books on the twelfth century philosopher Moses Maimonides, the latest being Maimonides: Reason Above All, published by Gefen Publishing House, www.gefenpublishing.com. The Orthodox Union (OU) publishes Wagner and Drazin's latest book Let's Study Onkelos on www.ou.org/torah.

• The Brown Fairy Book, by Andrew Lang.
  32 less familiar folk tales from the American Indians, Australian Bushmen, African Kaffirs and from Persia, Lapland, Brazil, and India. Different enough to capture all imaginations.
  
  
• The Grey Fairy Book, by Andrew Lang.
  This book contains dozens of fairy tales from Africa, Germany, France, Greece, and other countries.