A Very good read.

As a person who obviously loves fairy tales, I have to say I think I found a favorite writer. I had never heard of him before until I was browsing fairy tales on Amazon. I put it in my wish list to either buy later or to receive as a gift. Thankfully it was the latter...
The complete fairy tales of Oscar Wilde is so far a really good book. I'm approx. halfway through, and thoroughly enjoying it. I knew I would love it just by reading the introduction which stated that Mr Wilde was a Christian, and each story is based on Christianity. That alone won me over. As I started reading the actual stories, I can see that he put a lot of thought into his stories. They are not "girl falls for prince and prince and girl lives happily ever after". Most of the stories are sad, but they have a moral behind it.....I will end this post with a summary of my favorite story so far. .

"The Selfish Giant"

This giant had a HUGE garden, and the children in the village LOVED playing in this garden. When the giant came back from being gone on a LOOOONG vacation he was angry to find children in his garden. So he put up a huge wall with a "trespassers will be prosecuted" sign. This made the children sad since this was the only playground they had.

Since the children no longer played there, the winter wind and the snow settled into this garden. Before too long they invited the hail and sleet to join them. They made this garden their home. While outside the wall the seasons changed, it never changed inside the wall. The giant could never understand why spring and summer didn't return.

Then one morning he woke up and heard birds chirping. He looked out the window and saw the trees and flowers in full bloom, and in each tree was a child playing and laughing. He then saw a tree still covered in snow and ice and a little child crying because he was too small to climb the tree. No matter how the tree reached her branches down so he could grab onto it, the little boy was just too small.

The giant realized how selfish he had been, and he walked outside and quietly walked behind the small boy. All the other children saw him and took off running, but this little boy was crying so hard he didn't see the giant until he felt the giant pick him up and place him in the tree. Immediately the tree bloomed. The giant noticed the other children and told them he was wrong and they can play there anytime they want. While they were playing, he took an ax and chopped down the wall he built. Then he spent the rest of the day playing and chasing the children.

Day after day the children came to play, but the boy the giant loved most, the one he helped into the tree, wasn't there. He asked where he was, but the others didn't know of him or where he lived. They had never seen him before.

Years went by and the giant kept watching the children, and hoping that first boy would come back. One day, when the giant was old and feeble, he looked out and saw his little friend. He asked the boy where he'd been, and then noticed the nail prints in his hands and feet. The giant got angry, "Who did that to you?" The little boy said "It doesn't matter. You let me play in your garden and today you will come with me to play in my garden in paradise." The giant laid down under the tree and died.
The end.