“A fabulous dish of frutti di mare.”

Marina Warner | Guardian

“Zipes’s new translation . . . allows those without German expertise a chance to reexperience familiar stories in all their original Hemingwayesque terseness.”

Michael Dirda | Washington Post, on "The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm"

“As Zipes has documented in many studies of folk and fairy tales, our best-loved storybook heroines came to reflect the paternalistic values of Western society. What’s a kid to do? . . . The stories for children teach lessons: if you’re kind, resourceful and brave, you'll find happiness; sit pretty and wait for the prince, and you'll be sorry.”

Caryn James | New York Times, on "Don't Bet on the Prince"

“The book is a classic, formed like a mosaic of precious small pieces, each one glinting with its own color and character, glassy and crystalline, but somehow hard, unyielding. . . . Zipes is on a lifelong mission, as ardent as the Grimms’, to bring fairy tales into circulation for the general increase of pleasure, mutual and ethical understanding . . . . his prodigious energy seems as inexhaustible as the fairy-tale purse that never empties.”

Marina Warner | New York Review of Books, on "The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm"

“Many scholars have sought to explain, and thereby demystify, the elusive spell cast by fairy tales. Zipes . . . uncovers provocative new layers of meaning by viewing the collection and creation of now classic tales by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and others through the lens of history.”

Diane Cole | New York Times, on "When Dreams Came True"

“Full of intriguing details that leave a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the Brothers Grimm.”

Independent, on "Grimm Legacies"

“Zipes in his translations has done a terrific job of reinventing . . . without condescension or archness.”

Robin McKinley | New York Times, on "Beauties, Beasts and Enchantment"

“The art of translation is balancing the conflicting impulses to represent the original exactly and to craft a polished work of literature in the target language. In this edition, Zipes masterfully negotiates these conflicting impulses to present a collection of translated tales that give the reader a sense of multivocality through varying syntactic patterns, pacing, and vocabulary.”
 

Journal of Folklore Research