What's your favorite fairy tale? Mine has always been One Thousand and One Nights. As a kid I enjoyed that it packed so many stories together and the interesting characters--like Sinbad the Sailor and Alibaba and the thieves. It was a wild adventure from start to finish; if you aren't familiar with the story in brief: a king finds out that his wife has been unfaithful to him and in his bitterness decides all women are untrustworthy; he begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning, before she has a chance to dishonor him. Scheherazade volunteers to be the king's next bride and starts telling him a story the night of their wedding, but doesn't finish it before dawn. When the king requests she tell him how the story ends, she points out that it is morning and she has no time to finish it, so he spares her life so that she might finish it the next night. Each night Scheherazade finishes one story and starts the next, always leaving a bit untold for the next day so the king must spare her life to hear how each ends. After a thousand and one nights she tells him she has no more stories to tell and he says he has fallen in love with her and makes her his queen. As an adult looking back at that familiar story, I like that Scheherazade is the hero of the story and uses her cleverness to save the day--she has no fairy godmother, but her passion for stories and her wit keeps her alive and changes the heart of the king. In most versions of the story there's also little mention of Scheherazade's beauty, instead the focus is all on her wisdom and story-telling. In some of the versions of this story, Scheherazade even uses the stories to soften the king's heart, making him feel for the characters that echo her own plight and loathe those who more reflect his own character. All of this Scheherazade musing has little to do with today's pictures aside from a vague connection to fairy tales as I wear an Alice in Wonderland inspired dress from Cath Kidston. I think it's fun to revisit the stories of our childhood every now and then. I love that C.S. Lewis quote, "I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." Maybe this is the week to dust off your favorite fairy tale and disappear into that world again...
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