Winner of the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award "A charming book about enchantment, a profound book about fairy tales."—John Updike, The New York Times Book Review Bruno Bettelheim was one of the great child psychologists of the twentieth century and perhaps none of his books has been more influential than this revelatory study of fairy tales and their universal importance in understanding childhood development. Analyzing a wide range of traditional stories, from the tales of Sindbad to “The Three Little Pigs,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “The Sleeping Beauty,” Bettelheim shows how the fantastical, sometimes cruel, but always deeply significant narrative strands of the classic fairy tales can aid in our greatest human task, that of finding meaning for one’s life.

Winner of the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award "A charming book about enchantment, a profound book about fairy tales."—John Updike, The New York Times Book Review Bruno Bettelheim was one of the great child psychologists of the twentieth century and perhaps none of his books has been more influential than this revelatory study of fairy tales and their universal importance in understanding childhood development. Analyzing a wide range of traditional stories, from the tales of Sindbad to “The Three Little Pigs,” “Hansel and Gretel,” and “The Sleeping Beauty,” Bettelheim shows how the fantastical, sometimes cruel, but always deeply significant narrative strands of the classic fairy tales can aid in our greatest human task, that of finding meaning for one’s life.

One Autumn day in 1985, sixteen-year-old Mary Veal vanishes from her Massachusetts prep school. A few weeks later she reappears unharmed and with little memory of what happened to her--or at least little that she is willing to share. Was Mary abducted, or did she fake her disappearance? This question haunts Mary's family, her psychologist, even Mary herself. Weaving together three narratives, The Uses of Enchantment conjures a spell in which the hallucinatory power of a young woman’s sexuality, and her desire to wield it, has devastating consequences for all involved.

Donika Kelly's fierce debut collection, longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award and winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize I thought myself lion and serpent. Thought myself body enough for two, for we. Found comfort in never being lonely. What burst from my back, from my bones, what lived along the ridge from crown to crown, from mane to forked tongue beneath the skin. What clamor we made in the birthing. What hiss and rumble at the splitting, at the horns and beard, at the glottal bleat. What bridges our back. What strong neck, what bright eye. What menagerie are we. What we've made of ourselves. --from "Love Poem: Chimera" Across this remarkable first book are encounters with animals, legendary beasts, and mythological monsters--half human and half something else. Donika Kelly's Bestiary is a catalogue of creatures--from the whale and ostrich to the pegasus and chimera to the centaur and griffin. Among them too are poems of love, self-discovery, and travel, from "Out West" to "Back East." Lurking in the middle of this powerful and multifaceted collection is a wrenching sequence that wonders just who or what is the real monster inside this life of survival and reflection. Selected and with an introduction by the National Book Award winner Nikky Finney, Bestiary questions what makes us human, what makes us whole.

An intertextual approach to fairy-tale criticism and fairy-tale retellings -- Marcia K. Lieberman's "Some day my prince will come"--Bruno Bettelheim's The uses of enchantment -- Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The madwoman in the attic.

Tatar challenges the assumptions we make about childhood reading. By exploring how beauty and horror operate in children's literature, she examines how and what children read, showing how literature transports and transforms children with its intoxicating, captivating and occasionally terrifying energy.

This study takes five of the Grimm brothers' best-known tales and argues that the Grimms saw them as Christian fables. The author examines the arguments of previous interpreters of the tales, and demonstrates how they missed the Grimms' intention.