Pearls and Diamonds: Children's Tales

Grimm, Wilhelm, 1786-1859Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.9

Word count: 76K words
Chapters: 8

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Perolas e Diamantes: Contos Infantis by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm GrimmAuthor: Grimm, Wilhelm, 1786-1859,Language: Portuguese, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Nov 21, 2009

Editor's review

This is a Portuguese translation of Grimms' fairy tales, released through Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook. The title translates literally as Pearls and Diamonds: Children's Stories, and readers can use it to see how Grimms' tales were presented in the Portuguese-speaking world. As classics of children's literature, Grimms' stories tend to be short and sharply plotted, well suited to reading aloud and storytelling, and convenient for comparing versions across languages. The book is in Portuguese, making it a very low-cost entry text for learners of the language or for those studying fairy-tale translation. The Project Gutenberg edition is free and easy to obtain, readable on an electronic device at any time. Note that some episodes in the original Grimms' tales carry a strong didactic, even dark, charge and are not all suitable for young children to read unmediated; adult readers or parents should look through them first and choose selectively. Overall, the book works better as language-learning material, a resource for fairy-tale research, or a source of selections for shared family reading than as a leisure read in search of fine illustrations or modern adaptation.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Learners of Portuguese who want to build vocabulary through short stories
Literature enthusiasts studying the transmission and translation of Grimms' fairy tales
Parents and teachers who need fairy-tale material for storytelling or shared reading
Collectors interested in public-domain ebooks and classic children's literature

Not a good fit for

Readers with no Portuguese who only want a Chinese translation
Young children expecting fine illustrations or modern retellings
Academic readers seeking a systematic theoretical monograph on fairy tales

Reading tips

Start with the two or three shortest tales to get used to the rhythm of Portuguese narrative before expanding.
Read alongside a known Chinese version of Grimms' tales and note differences in plot and wording.
Before shared reading, adults should preview and screen out tales that are too didactic or too dark.
Record new words by story scene rather than looking up every word; this aids retention.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in Chinese or Portuguese?

The text is in Portuguese; it is a Portuguese translation of Grimms' fairy tales. The title means Pearls and Diamonds: Children's Stories. Readers without Portuguese will need a dictionary or a parallel translation, as no Chinese text is provided.

Are the original Grimms' tales suitable for young children to read directly?

Not uniformly. Early versions of Grimms' tales include strong elements of punishment and death, differing from the gentler modern adaptations. Parents should look through the selected tales first before deciding whether to read them to young children.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg offers free public-domain ebooks, and this is one of them. Its advantages are easy access and zero cost, readable on a phone or e-reader at any time; but it usually lacks modern typeset illustrations and an introduction, so the reading experience is plain.

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About the author

Grimm, Wilhelm, 1786-1859 Author

Wilhelm Grimm (Grimm, Wilhelm, 1786-1859) was a German philologist and collector of folk tales, best known today for the fairy-tale collections he compiled with his brother Jacob Grimm. The library holds fourteen related works, including Grimm's Fairy Tales, Household Tales by Brothers Grimm, Snowdrop & Other Tales, and translations into Hungarian and Dutch, showing how widely these stories circulated in multiple European languages. These works are largely drawn from oral folk tradition and shaped through editorial retelling; their language is plain and their plots clear, combining fantasy and adventure with a frequent didactic tone. Because public information is limited, biographical details cannot be fully described here, yet the Brothers Grimm's collecting and editing preserved a great many folk tales and carried them around the world, leaving a lasting influence on children's literature and folklore studies.