By: Maaike Engelen
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The book offers new fairytales. Fairytales are a magical and ageless genre appealing to all ages.
The tales open up a fascinating and wonderful world in which children and adults can be in touch with the endless beauty of being human and magical at the same time.
They offer the reader experiences of witches and wizards and dragons and trolls and many more fairytale creatures in a new and enchanting light.
Maaike Engelen is a psychoanalytic child and adolescent psychotherapist who works in private practice in London.
She is interested in unconscious communication and she writes Zen poetry.
I love this book, which will enchant younger as well as older readers. Broken toys are magically mended, people live on the pages of books, elves become human so they can find true love, a boy makes the most of a difficult situation by running off with the circus, another one overcomes his fear of blood, a girl grows up to see her own beauty in the animals and trees of the forest. These fairy tales are full of joy, imagination, love and enchantment and they speak to some of our deepest experiences, drives, fears, hopes and longings. They do so in a way that is relatable both for children and adults. They don't make life more facile and rosy than it is. Instead, they connect the reader with the magic of their own agency, with the beauty of life renewing itself and with our power to deal with the darkness, wounds and troubled feelings that sometimes come with living, just as much as with our capacity for love and happiness. The fairy tale is one of the most honest and truthful genres. In this book, honesty and truth find a beautiful, inspiring and lasting voice. It's a great book to read to children as well as for children to read by themselves. It's also a great book to read for yourself. I have it beside my bed and read in it every night. The illustrations are really well done and allow you to dive into the stories even deeper. Anyone who loves the old fairy tales, from Grimm to Andersen to Oscar Wilde, will love these new tales as well. They speak of life as it really is and as it can be.
