The fact that fairy tales remain a literary underdog — undervalued and undermined — even as they shape so many popular stories, redoubles my certainty that it is time for contemporary fairy tales to be celebrated in a popular, literary collection. Fairy tales hold the secret to reading. This book can help us move forward as readers in a moment of insecurity about the future of books.

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me is like a beloved, handmade, topsy-turvy, cool doll. I had one as a kid (perhaps you did, too): on one side was Red Riding Hood, and underneath, the grandmother and wolf; how it scared and delighted me! If you peek under this book’s voluminous skirt, you’ll find some wonderful creatures hiding here, lovers of fairy tales all: Angela Carter, Hans Christian Andersen, J. R. R. Tolkien, Italo Calvino, Emily Dickinson, Barbara Comyns, the Brothers Grimm. Next time you go to the library, please say hello to them, to their other fine fairy-tale companions, and to the scholars who have charted the history of the form: Maria Tatar, Jack Zipes, Marina Warner, Ruth Bottigheimer, Donald Haase, Cristina Bacchilega, and many others.

Once you start looking, it is easy to see the variety — the sheer fractal ferocity — and intelligence of fairy tales. This collection contains stories reflective of current trends (fragment, pastiche, story-in-chapters); it also contains stories told in more linear, straightforward ways. Some of the selections pay homage to midcentury and later styles; others come poetically through modes associated with the tradition of oral folklore. You will find stories that hew closely to their enchantment, and others that announce hardly any magic — until you encounter a tiny keyhole in the wall of their language. In each instance, you will easily enter these secret gardens.