Told Again – Oddly modern fairy tales

Walter de la Mare's Told Again is a collection of old fairy tales for 6 year olds, retold slowly and richly and made for reading aloud.

What happens

There are nineteen of them, and you'll know plenty of the names. Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Rapunzel, Dick Whittington, Red Riding-Hood. There are a few you might not know as well, like Molly Whuppie.

They're not quick versions. De la Mare takes his time. A hedgehog goes out on a Sunday morning "when the cowslips or paigles were showing their first honey-sweet buds". It's all sunshine, cabbages and very particular words.

That's the treat, really. The old stories are all there, but they come dressed up in lovely language. A hare "laying back his whiskers". A thief who can "snipple-snupple away any mortal thing". A hedgehog betting he'll win "nowt to ninepence".

The Hare and the Hedgehog is a perfect first one. The hare sneers at the hedgehog's bandy little legs, so the hedgehog challenges him to a race. Then he puts his wife, who looks exactly like him, at the far end of the field. The hare runs up and down until he's completely worn out. It's a very satisfying trick!

The Four Brothers is lovely too. Each brother learns a trade (thief, star-gazer, huntsman, tailor). Between them they rescue a princess from a dragon, and the tailor sews up a smashed ship into a raft. Then, instead of fighting over who marries her, they ask the king to look after their old dad and let the princess choose for herself.

There's an introduction by Philip Pullman at the start. It's written for grown-ups, so you'll probably want to skip ahead with a little one.

These are best shared. The sentences are long and full of old words, so most children this age will love hearing them more than reading them alone.

A couple of things to be ready for. The tellings are old-fashioned in places. In the Bremen musicians story the four old animals run away because their owners plan to skin, drown or kill them. A hedgehog tells his wife to hold her tongue. And Bluebeard is one of the tales.

What to read next

If your reader enjoys hearing the old stories this way, they might like Hilary McKay's Fairy Tales next. She retells the same old stories through new characters, like a Rapunzel that begins with two children saving every coin they have to buy a frightened little bird out of its cage.