The king had never heard of such a box, and did not know what it was like; so he went to every country asking all the people he met what sort of box was a sun-jewel box, and where he could get it. At last one day, after a fruitless search, he was very sad, for he thought, "I have promised the servant to bring her a sun-jewel box, and now I cannot get one for her; what shall I do?" What!" he said. "If that is all you give me in return for all I've given you, out of my house you go." So there and then he turned her out of the home where she had been born and bred, and shut the door in her face.

She decided that as it was now night she had better stay in her palanquin, and go to sleep. "Perhaps the tigers and wild beasts will come and eat me," she thought; "but if they don't, I will try tomorrow to get out of this jungle, and go to another country." This same reviewer recapitulated Cleave’s obligation “to show that he’s representing [the girl], rather than exploiting her.” Again, a false dichotomy. And so they were happy ever after. Fairy Tale bedtime story, edited by Joseph Jacobs Illustration from an old Charles Perrault fairytale book LET’S CHAT ABOUT THE STORIES ~ IDEAS FOR TALKING WITH KIDSHe consents; and she is left alone in the great meadow, very much at a loss what to do, and crying bitterly. In the midst of her grief and perplexity she meets with an old woman -- a fairy of course -- who gives her a little wand. When she puts the wand into her bosom her form will change to that of an old woman. She is then to proceed in a certain direction until she finds a palace. In this palace, as the fairy happens to know, tbey are in want of a woman to look after the poultry. The princess is told to ring the bell of the palace and offer herself for the place in her assumed form of an old woman. But in principle, I admire his courage – if only because he invited this kind of ethical forensics in a review out of San Francisco: “When a white male author writes as a young Nigerian girl, is it an act of empathy, or identity theft?” the reviewer asked. “When an author pretends to be someone he is not, he does it to tell a story outside of his own experiential range. But he has to in turn be careful that he is representing his characters, not using them for his plot.” Here she lived, then, all alone. But though her father fancied she did not care for him, she pined so much at being kept away from him, that at last she was worn out, and could bear it no longer. But this latest and little absurd no-no is part of a larger climate of super-sensitivity, giving rise to proliferating prohibitions supposedly in the interest of social justice that constrain fiction writers and prospectively makes our work impossible. Seriously, we have people questioning whether it’s appropriate for white people to eat pad Thai. They sent to fetch her, and she arrived covered with rags, but with her hands cleaner than usual, so that she could easily slip on the ring. The king's son declared that he would fulfill his promise, and when his parents mildly remarked that the girl was only a keeper of sheep, and a very ugly one too, the maiden boldly said that she was born a princess, and that, if they would only give her some water and leave her alone in a room for a few minutes, she would show that she could look as well as anyone in fine clothes.

Then the king, when he heard all this, was ready to faint. He was just going to fall down on his knees, and ask his daughter's pardon; but she said, "You must do nothing of the sort. Let bygones be bygones; you will always be my own daddy, and now let us think of nothing but making merry. Only I should like that everything belonging to me at home should be given to that servant, because it was he who saved my life." That night she took her box and went out all by herself to a wide plain in the jungle, and there opened it. She took the little flute, put it to her lips, and began to play, and instantly out flew the seven little dolls, who were all little fairies, and they took chairs and carpets from the box, and arranged them all in a large tent which appeared at that moment. Then the fairies bathed her, combed and rolled up her hair, put on her grand clothes and lovely slippers. But all Source: R. H. Busk, Folk-Lore of Rome: Collected by Word of Mouth from the People (London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1874), pp. 403-406.

It isn't romantic. It isn't colourful. "Some foods attract by sweetness, some by their appearance, but neither the pod nor the berry of pepper has anything to be said for it," complained Roman Philosopher Pliny the Elder. Then the butler took the cup upstairs on a silver salver. But when the young master saw it he waved it away, till the butler with tears begged him just to taste it. And sure enough, when she had upped and offed with her cap and robe of rushes, there he was at the door waiting for her to come; for he had determined to dance with no one else. Grandfather Tales,’ by Richard Chase, Illustrated by Berkeley Williams, Jr. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1948. And here’s the bugbear, here’s where we really can’t win. At the same time that we’re to write about only the few toys that landed in our playpen, we’re also upbraided for failing to portray in our fiction a population that is sufficiently various. I’m hoping that crime writers, for example, don’t all have personal experience of committing murder.