The Happy Prince, and Other Tales

These are not the fairy tales you remember from childhood, or perhaps they are, if your childhood held more shadow than sweet. Oscar Wilde's 1888 collection contains five stories that ache with beauty and sacrifice. A golden statue weeps for the suffering he can only watch from his pedestal, and with the help of a small swallow, gives away his eyes, his gold, his very self. A nightingale dies for a rose that a student will discard. A giant learns that spring cannot come to a closed heart. These are moral fables, but they taste of tears. Wilde layers exquisite prose over devastating truths about kindness, love, and what we sacrifice for beauty. Adults read these stories and hear what children cannot: the grief beneath the lesson. Children return to them years later and understand. This is a book that grows with you, or perhaps it simply waits for you to catch up.