I decided to rewrite a number of tales for reading to my son. It is not a matter of historical revisionism. (Or maybe it is--to some.) Rewrites of tales are appropriate in making them accessible to fresh generations of readers and listeners. These tales have been rewritten multiple times before, and will be rewritten again.

The majority of the versions of the tales that follow diverge so greatly in craft and sensibility from the tales on which they are based that for all intents and purposes, excepting the basic plot, they are new stories. So that one may compare them with the originals I provide links to addresses where the originals may be found, and if the plot seems vastly different one should consider that I often enough have taken several similar tales and molded them into one fat story. A good deal of thought and research went into my revisions, which I trust will be evident to those who are intimately familiar with the older tales, but I don't pretend to have divined kernals of knowledge those tales may have originally been intended to transmit. What I have done is bent some genders, clipped some gratuitous violence from the plots--violence which, in context of many of the tales, I don't think does anything to teach about the world, as some would submit, and was used as a disciplinary measure--and just generally tried to make the tales a fulfilling, entertaining read, writing always with oral rendition in mind.

The revision of Pinocchio was done as I found oral reading of translations available to me to be clumsy. Plus, I am fond of the story.

More tales will be added as they are completed. The myth section is new and will take some time to develop.

j. Kearns

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