That brief tale spoke to me, it made me enjoy reading again.
As Hall writes, "This story speaks volumes and I think that love is as classic as this fairy tale.
But on Tuesday, the tales spoke more of woe than recovery.
At the same time, Ms. Elliott has her cast members perform their parts with finely shaded, complex emotion, reminding us that even the most basic fairy tales speak to the shadows of the human mind.
But that moment — when you turn the page of a familiar tale and find yourself saying, "And presently he fell upon the good woman and ate her up in a moment" to your wide-eyed child — stirs something universal in parents just as experts say fairy tales speak to something universal in kids.
Even today, folk tales speak of elves who skulk among the lava fields, jealously guarding the land.
Both tales speak to a growing, nearly obsessive concern among China's citizens with parsing fact from fiction.
Some tales speak of kitsune with even greater powers, able to bend time and space, drive people mad, or take fantastic shapes such as a tree of incredible height or a second moon in the sky.
Neither of the tales spoke to Potter emotionally in the manner of Peter Rabbit, she points out, and speculates that Potter associated rabbits with the less than happy life she passed in her parents' London home.
Both tales speak of never-too-late gratitude for blessings but, of course, in true melodrama fashion, the productions undercut piety and pathos with mirth and mayhem, with puerile behavior, booze-fueled or not, the order of the day.
