Fairy Tales Worth Remembering as an Adult

Source: nytimes.com

TL;DR

• Yiyun Li selects three fairy tales that stay with readers into adulthood for their subtle insights on love, play, and imagination.
• The tales are a Chinese star-crossed lovers story from the first millennium B.C., a 1812 Brothers Grimm piece on deadly children's play, and a 1835 Andersen tale of dancing flowers.
• These stories reveal limits of romantic love, blurred lines between pretend and real for kids, and childlike wonder without forced morals.

The story at a glance

Yiyun Li, a Princeton creative writing professor, picks three lesser-known fairy tales worth revisiting as an adult. She covers "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl," a Brothers Grimm story about children acting out slaughter, and Hans Christian Andersen's "Little Ida’s Flowers." The piece appears in the New York Times T Magazine now to highlight enduring childhood stories that shape grown-up views.[[1]](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/17/t-magazine/classic-fairy-tales-brothers-grimm.html)

Key points

• "The Cowherd and the Weaver Girl" tells of lovers punished by gods, turned into stars separated by the Milky Way who meet once a year.
• Li sees it as a realistic view of love's limits under cruelty and class divides, offering legend as solace without magic fixes.[[1]](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/17/t-magazine/classic-fairy-tales-brothers-grimm.html)
• In the Brothers Grimm's "How Some Children Played at Slaughtering," a boy playing butcher kills his friend acting as the pig.
• The story shows how young children blend pretending and living, creating their own harsh rules and logic.
• Andersen's "Little Ida’s Flowers" comforts a girl by claiming wilted flowers danced at a ball and got tired; she dreams of it.
• Li praises its lack of moral, capturing a gentle acceptance of fanciful ideas like flowers at parties.

Details and context

These tales span cultures and eras: an ancient Chinese myth, early 19th-century German folklore by the Grimms, and mid-century Danish fancy from Andersen. Li draws from personal memory, noting how they impressed her young and lingered.

The pieces avoid tidy resolutions or preachiness, unlike many fairy tales. The Chinese lovers face permanent separation; the Grimm kids enact real violence through play; Andersen's flowers just tire from fun.

Li's reflections tie childhood reading to adult insights on emotion, perception, and fantasy's role in coping.

Key quotes

"To me, it’s a perfect story about how love in a romantic relationship is limited."[[1]](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/17/t-magazine/classic-fairy-tales-brothers-grimm.html)

"The tale sheds an unsettling light on how, for the very young, pretending and living are so intrinsically intertwined."[[1]](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/04/17/t-magazine/classic-fairy-tales-brothers-grimm.html)

Why it matters

Fairy tales like these quietly shape how we see love, reality, and wonder across a lifetime. Readers gain fresh eyes on familiar stories, spotting nuances missed in youth that speak to grown-up struggles. Watch for more T Magazine pieces rethinking classics through writers' personal lenses.