The Sorcerer's Apprentice An Anthology of Magical Tales edited by Jack Zipes and illustrated by Natalie Frank

The Sorcerer's Apprentice An Anthology of Magical  Tales edited by Jack Zipes and illustrated by Natalie Frank is a beautiful hardback book published by Princeton. The cover, precious, is spectacular, iconic, mysterious, legendary. It seems to travel in the mystery of humanity thanks to fairy-tales all dedicated at the thematic of the sorcerer's apprentice.  Why this book?
Jack Zipes worked at this book for several years, discovering the high potentialities contained in  these fairy-tales for the modern society and he doesn't have any doubts. These fairy-tales can be truly helpful in a moment of great stress and confusion in a moment where hope appears distant, where values don't count anymore and where there is a big confusion and chaos.
Plus we can't live without magic. Magic is a dimension man searches to return in for reassuring himself. There is not just the world we see and where we live in.

Fairy-Tales speak in profundity of values, morality, of injustices, slavery, they're brutal sometimes in their messages, but they don't never confuse the roles of the protagonists.

These strong fairy-tales are here for remembering to all of us something precious and important: that magic exists and that we must be careful with it, because no one can steals for example a power bigger than their forces at someone else. The result will be devastating.

Fairy-tales chosen by Zipes includes all the world and the imaginary, and the perception of the world in its legendary beauty, in its ugliness, in its being mean or big is similar in every fairy-tale and it's not important if these fairy-tales are from Europe, North America or Asia or Africa.They speak at the heart.

It will be shocking to read these fairy-tales for discovering the connections we can find with our reality.

Fairy-tales were born centuries ago and transmitted in general orally. They were or they had to be admonitions, life-lessons. In the old times in particular people living in countrysides enjoyed to spend time all together after a hard day spent in the fields. It was common to share or create old and new legends and myths, maybe each time enriching them with more details or preserving the story for the posterity.

We will discover which scheme has been used by J.K. Rowling for writing Harry Potter a long fairy-tales for Jack Zipes.

Personally as a fan of Harry Potter I can tell I fell in love for these books because Harry was such an unlucky teenager. He was totally misunderstood by the uncle and the aunt, hated, I would want to add,  by their son as well. It was for this reason I loved Harry Potter so badly. Harry was very unlucky but then he found his own dimension discovering many wonderful friends, different maybe by him, but after all Harry Potter couldn't tell of having anymore any kind of root after the departure of his parents. That hell was his life but was a satisfying life?
Then he discovered he was loved and appreciated and waited by wise men like Dumbledore, but also by new friends, the family Weasley, my favorite characters, and yes in the parallel world where he fell in, Hogwarts, a place I just adore for the magical atmosphere, he understood soon that he was in good company and that he was the key for trying to defeat Lord Voldemort.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is divided in the Humiliated Apprentice Tales, where we will also find a very interesting tale by Sir Walter Scott,  the Rebellious Apprentice Tales, and the Krabat Tales.

There is to learn a lot from these fairy-tales in all these sections. We will discover what it means to try to surpass wisest men, receiving big punishments and sometimes losing everything for a caprice.They're also fairy-tales about transformations and expectations, mutations and changes, sly actions for trying to defeat the sorcerer and going away as for example in the story of The Wonderful Trade.

I consider this book tremendously actual and I highly suggest it to everyone children and adults. Children will appreciate these stories and will ask a lot of questions to their parents. Be ready for it.
Parents must explain to them ethicity, honesty, friendship, being good in a world where in most cases these values are disvalued, and what these tales can tell us also in these modern times very complicated.

Nothing is more powerful than a fairy-tale for let us galloping in imaginary worlds, in other dimensions and for keeping inside these treasures told by generations of people orally.

We live in a society where there is a great immediacy but fairy-tales must be continued to be told because they will save our life, our existence and for extension our world.

First of all: let's continue to dream and believe in magic!

I thank Princeton University Press for the beautiful physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori