Favorite Fairy Tales

Published in 1917, Favorite Fairy Tales is Logan Marshall's arrangement of the stories a child of that era was expected to know. Perrault's Blue Beard and Puss in Boots sit beside Andersen's Ugly Duckling and Little Match Girl, Sindbad's seven voyages, Aladdin, and the English Jack who kills giants. The Arabian tales take slavery for granted, and Aladdin's forty black and forty white slaves stay on the page.

Little Red Riding Hood, under 1,000 syllables with the shortest sentences, is the place to begin. Sindbad's voyages are brief first-person accounts with almost no dialogue. Dick Whittington is the slow one, with nine footnotes on old London. The pronouns teach rank: Aladdin is cháu to the magician's chú, then ta and ngươi to the genie, who calls himself thần. Puss says thần and bệ hạ to the king but tôi and ngài to the ogre. Blue Beard's wife pleads with thiếp and ngài, and is em to chị Ann.