Adam and Liz Gotauco Discuss Fairy Tales

PINNA PINNA PINNA GRIM GRIM-R GRIM-R Welcome to a very special episode of GRIM-GRIM-R where I'm going to be talking to somebody I have admired for a while and a new friend of mine, Liz Gataco, who is a children's librarian and also an author and she does what I do, which is SheetTel's Crazy Messed Up Fairy Tales. She does it for grownups and I do it for kids and for grownups. But for grownups out there and only grownups, she has a great new book of these crazy fairy tales you should totally go look it up. Liz Gataco is her name and also has a really fun social media feed, social media presence that's at Cosbarian, where she tells these hilarious fairy tales. But very much for grownups. But I know she can talk to kids because Liz, you are also a children's librarian, is that right? I am. I've been a children's librarian for about 15 years and it's the best job ever. It is amazing when your book got sent to me in the mail by your very savvy publisher who was like, I think he would like this. And I was like, oh my gosh, I had a sister and I didn't know I had a sister. So it's exciting to be talking to you right now. It's very true. And during the process of writing my own book there at one point Tom was like, do you know a tailed darker grandma? I was like, do I know a tailed darker grandma? I'm a children's librarian who loves weird fairy tales. What do you think the answer is? And so, you know, and that was a great inspiration to kind of think about my book being like a grown up cynical version of yours. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a good description of it. But you still appreciate them, right? You're cynical about them. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. How did you first fall in love with weird fairy tales? Like how did you first discover them? Well, I was the perfect age when Disney's the little mermaid, the original came out. And that became my entire personality. Like any time I was in a body of water, you know, I was like, I'm a mermaid now. If I was on a rock, I'm like thrusting myself up in the air and the waves crashing by me, of course. And it's really, I'm just sitting on the beach and my mother's like, what are you doing? And so my mother, who is like, will take any opportunity to make an interest, a bookish interest. No. And my mother, she gave me a copy of Hans Christian Anderson's tales and she was like, you should read what happened in the old one. And it did. And I was like, oh, no. But also for the kids, for the kids out there who don't know and adults, a lot of adults don't know what happens in the real little mermaid. It's a much more difficult process for the little mermaid who does not have a name as your listeners will be familiar with this common thing in very tells. She's just the little mermaid. She also doesn't have a crab friend. No crab friend. No scuttle. Scuttle is my favorite Disney character of all time. So that was a shock to read. Yeah. She is obsessed with humans with human life. She has a grandmother of wonderful grandmother character in that version who tells her all about humans and have the only way to become human is to marry a human. And so, you know, Ariel, she kind of sets out more with the idea of becoming human than like marrying a prince. And she's luckily she meets a prince who's had some and he seems to like her, although not great. He's not a great guy. And unfortunately, though, like for her, where is Ariel gets to experience all this wandering joy and like seeing human life, it's very hard for the little mermaid in the old version to become a human. And so, she's a very important character to her to walk on her legs. And the prince likes her, but it doesn't really like her. And so, she has a sad ending. It's she doesn't end up with the prince. He married someone else. And she, because of this deal she's made of the sea witch, something you should never do. I don't recommend. She has to become part of the sea foam. She can't even go back to being a mermaid again. She does have a little upside that like she kind of like joins these beautiful angels who take care of the earth. And that gets her this immoral soul she's been really wanting. And don't do I remember correctly that so when she she becomes sea foam and then she gets to join these angels after 300 years. Yes, yes, she hasn't she hasn't suffered enough yet. She has to do weird. Go around the world for 300 years. And not only that actually it's not even that that easy, which is saying something. Because if she sees like children behaving nicely, it like takes days off of her probationary period. Or you know she'll get to go to heaven sooner. But if she sees children misbehaving, that adds time. So you should think about that the next time you're thinking of being a naughty little child is you're making it really hard for Ariel to get to the angels in heaven. That's right. And this story was written what about 150 years ago. And she hasn't reached 300 years yet. She needs your help, children. Please behave clean your wounds with a little mornade. For the love of Ariel or whatever was her name. No, she had no name. Her name is Fred. Fred. Fred. Yes, Fred is exactly what my podcast listeners hope it is. Unless it's Bob. That was an excellent origin story for how you fell in love with weird messed up fairy tales. What about you? I don't know if you've talked have you talked about your origin story before the pod? That's an interesting question. So I was a teacher and one day they asked if I'd be willing to be a substitute librarian for a day. And I said yes, because librarian is the best job. This is the best job. And they were like, you're going to be telling stories to second graders. And I said, no problem. I teach second graders. And they said, you're going to read them a story. You can read them anything you want. And I said, great. So I went home and I was looking around on my shelves. These shelves right here for a story to read to the kids. And I came across this book. This is my copy of the real grim fairy tales. And I had like read a couple of them in college, but I didn't know it well. And I opened it up to a story called Faithfully O'Hannes, which I had never seen before. That's a good one. You know that one. And in Faithfully O'Hannes, two children get their heads cut off by their parents. They give her back on against other fine. But I was like, that's interesting. Can I read this to second graders? Will I get fired? And then I thought, let's find out. Yeah, right. Why not? Only one way to know. So I brought it in. I started reading these kids. And very quickly they started to get nervous. So I'd make jokes to calm them down or I'd warn them. So I'm really terrifying. Was it about to happen? And I think it did a pretty good job. Because by the end of the story, I looked up. And every kid at the same expression on his or her face, every kid looked exactly like this. Which in for the podcast listeners, they look traumatized. And so I just missed them. But this one little girl came up to me afterwards. I'll never forget this because this moment changed my life. She stuck her figure in my face and she said, That was good. You should make that into a book. And I went home and I wrote it down. And I sent it to an agent whose kid I taught like I just happened to know this person. And I wrote it actually as a picture book. And she took it to an editor at Penguin who she knew liked fairy tales. And the editor invited me to Penguin and the editors had me down and said, It's interesting. You wrote this as a picture book. Two things. First of all, it's 4,000 words, which is very long for a picture book. And second of all, two children are decapitated in it. And I said, oh, yeah, right. And she said, if you could make this into a novel, I would consider it. And so I turned that into the first chapter of a tale dark and grim. That's so exciting. So I'm assuming that that little girl gets some royalties now. She gets nothing. Oh, but I still know her. Yeah. And she actually, I was a few years after that I was doing an event at the Brooklyn Book Festival. And I told that story. And this girl comes up to me afterwards and she goes, I think I was in that class. And I go, you were the girl. It was amazing. And that girl was me. You know, somehow we're the same age. But somehow it was me. Yeah, I love that. I'm at the idea. Yes. We should change the origin story. And actual person violet. I'm sorry. Liz is taking her place. I'm honored. I think it's funny that you talked about Anderson. Yeah. Because I have a problem with Anderson. I have a feud with Anderson. He doesn't know about it. Unless he's also C-Fome. And then maybe he might know about it. He was a drama queen. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he was into the drama. My feud is. So I really love grim fairy tales in particular. Because I believe they dramatize the emotional and psychological shape of kids' lives. I didn't make this idea up. It's a pretty well known idea for his popularized by Bruno Bedelheim. But the idea that like kids are dealing with really difficult things in their lives. And they go through these crazy, weird, scary situations. All of my episodes, all the podcasts, all the stories that I tell. You got a kid you love that go through something really tough. And then they find a way to try and fit the end. And it feels to me like the structure of childhood. Right? What ideally is, you know, kids life is tough. You like show up in a classroom with a grown up you've never met. You have to do whatever they say. There's a bunch of other inmates. I mean, children who like could be doing anything to you while the teacher's back is turned. And you got to just navigate all of that. And then the next year we're like, starting again. So like they're going and that's just one example. And then kids do in the vast, vast majority of cases grow up. And integrate the things they've learned. Ideally they become like good people. And so that's to me the structure of a lot of grim fairy tales. It is not the structure of many Anderson fairy tales. Not at all. Anderson is like, you know, things were bad. And then they got really bad. And then she died of cold and hunger. Um, Anderson is a great reader to read. If you're a kid that's really into shot in Florida, which is a fabulous word that means you like to watch other people suffer. And you know, that sounds really mean. But I'm sure, you know, your little brother, a little sister and their ice cream cone drops. And you're like, that's kind of funny. That's like the kind of stories that Hans Christian Anderson writes. It's a very sad. I will say they're weird. But definitely there's some weirdness like with the brothers grim. But I would say that they're largely sad except for my two favorites, which are the snow queen. Happy ending. And the two box. Which is wacky, but happy ending. Do you want to tell us a little bit of one of those stories? Well, you don't have to be the tender box because that one's crazy. And it's much shorter. The snow queen trailer. Remind us. Um, the tin in the tender box. And we meet a soldier who's just coming home from the war. And on his way home, he meets this like little old lady, given them witch vibes. And she's like, excuse me, sir. Could you please hop down into this tree and retrieve my old tender box for me? And he's like, I guess I will. And she's like, do you're going to meet three dogs down there? And they're really scary. But don't worry about it. I'm going to give you my apron. You just put the dog on the apron. He's going to go to sleep. And you can grab that tender box and whatever else is there, you can keep. That's key. Um, so he has down that tree. And he does. He meets this dog with eyes, the size of teacups. And he says you can't detail here. Sit on this apron. And the dogs are like, all right, take a little nap. And there's all these copper coins there. So the soldier fills his pocket with copper coins. And then he goes and he meets a dog with eyes as big as wagon wheels, which is really interesting visual. Like, is the dog a regular size dog with huge eyeballs? Or is it like a big dog? That's nightmare stuff. Well, it goes to sleep on the apron. It has silver coins all around. You grab the silver coins. And then the third dog, you can probably guess, has gold coins. And his eyes are as big as, oh my gosh, it's like this tower in Copenhagen. I can't remember the name of it. In Denmark. Anyway, that's where the tender box is. When he gets back up on the tree, he's like, so what's the deal with this tender box? Like, you seem pretty into it. And she's like, not any of business. And he cuts her head off. He's like, all right, well, she just cuts her head off. This is the hero of our story, folks. He's not always very direct. You know, I guess in sometimes in these old fairy tales, they're like, the only good, which is one whose head has been cut off. So he does that. He takes a tender box. Well, not a very nice thing to do. But it works out very well for him because that tender box will summon those dogs every time he strikes a match. A tender box is, well, a tender box is like a lighter, I would say. It's more like a lighter one of those little clicky ones. And he can some of the dogs and the dogs will get him whatever he wants. And so he becomes really rich along the way. He like kind of kidnaps this princess. Oh my goodness. There's a way to make it nicer. I think you could make it a little less, a little less crazy. But I mean, there's a reason why Anderson is so nutty. Yeah. And but eventually the two of those crazy kids get married. And but she, but does she want to get married after the heat? I think she does see I guess these are a little complicated for the princess because her parents are so protective of her. They like never let her go out. She never gets to meet anyone. And even though like the soldier meets her in kind of a sneaky way that I don't recommend like I think he probably should have knocked maybe knock on the door and been like, Hey, do you want to come hang out with me and my weird dogs? That would be the way I would go about it. And that's how everyone should go about it. But maybe he was helping her escape. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think so. And so at the end her parents try to prevent the marriage and the soldier gets back at them in a real crazy way. And she doesn't seem to be sad about it. She's like, all right, let's get married. You know, I think she had a little situation. She need to escape. Yeah. Yeah. So he was helping her escape and he murdered one witch. You know, he is happy ending is a questionable thing there because if a bad guy is happy, is it happy? Is it happy? But is is he the bad guy? I don't know. I don't know. The world is a complex place. You talked about one of your Ask Adam sessions about how the important things to you in a fairy tale that you do have a hero you can root for and that you do have a happy ending and that sometimes you'll finesse massage the tails. You know, yeah, I rewrite the tails. Absolutely. So yeah, absolutely the tender box would require you know, I think like maybe that witch would have to be really scary and the soldiers like defending himself. And that's how she, you know, gets out of the picture. I do. I rewrite my stories a lot because there are some grim tails that are just pretty much you can just straight up tell them and they're great. But for me, you know, the Grim Brothers were just, you know, Hans Christian Anderson was inventing stories. But the Grim Brothers were just capturing a tale at a certain moment told by a certain person. Right. So there is nothing and then they did edit them and improve them. But there's nothing sacred about the story as they told it. This is in some sense like a cultural inheritance that we all have inherited just by having their book. And so I find that it's absolutely my right everyone's right to take the ideas from the story and then retell them how we want to retell them because the person who told it to them was doing that. And so yeah, I definitely have certain rules that you know, yeah, that main character you got to care about them. There has to be crazy events that are scary but also funny. And then there's got to be some sort of cathartic triumph at the end. And you think maybe that makes them feel formulaic, but to me, they're just so weird that there is no end of shocking weirdness that can come out of this fairy tale tradition. Oh, sure. And I mean, the big difference with Anderson and Grim, of course, which you just alluded to with him kind of creating his own story, some of which were inspired by folklore and are very similar to some of the Brothers Grim. But he was doing like in the in the academic world in the big smarty pants people world, you know, we call his fairy tales were literary fairy tales because he was kind of creating these original works and the Grim Brothers were collecting folklore, which are stories that belong to the people they're collecting them from, you know. And so since they belong to us, whatever version we tell, it's the version. Yeah, it's amazing. That's right. These are our stories. I love that. I really do. So speaking of telling fairy tales, you are children's librarian. Have you ever intentionally or accidentally told a really messed up fairy tale to kids or what is your experience of telling fairy tales to children? I believe in some of my book clubs, we've probably talked a little bit about some like messed up origins fairy tales. I've definitely done some shows for teenagers where we've talked about it. And at those events, I really like to get into like some of the weirder Cinderella's because of course the Brothers Grim versions of stories aren't the only versions. They're all over the world. In fact, there's like thousands of versions of Cinderella, all different shoes, all different types of princes that she meets. Sometimes the story doesn't end at the ball and she goes through a whole sequel part where she gets like swallowed by a whale in one version. That's a cool one. Yeah, so much she gets revenge on her step family. Yeah. So I like to tell those versions of stories. The versions of stories you know one version, but here are some of the other ones and the weird wacky ways that they turn. And the teens have really enjoyed that. Yeah, I'm sure they do. Teens love vengeance, but you know what sort of kids we all love. We all love a little bit of bloody vengeance. We like to see justice prevail. Yes. And sometimes it does darkly. Yes, I was just thinking about the crab man's daughter that episode, which I'm going to record for your social media feed soon. And when I was recording it with the kids for the Grim Grimmer Grimmer, at one point the girls like fight back against the king, they become these amazing mermaids. And this girl just added one of the children that I was telling a story to just shouts out of nowhere. We are women and we are terrifying. And I'm not a woman, but I did. It was awesome. I just felt yes, that vengeance that revenge. Oh, so good. So yeah, that's that's the feeling we're looking for. Yeah, well, I have to tell your listeners that their input is my favorite part of your podcast with all you're fine. Adam, but yeah, the kids are those types. I agree. They're the secret. And that's how it came about actually because you know, I told that fairy tale to to file it in her class. And then I put it in the back. I asked, and then I published the book, and then I'm going around promoting the book around the country, I was doing a lot of stuff in Texas, driving from school to school in Texas, selling my books, and telling them Grim fairy tales. And it became clear to me very quickly that the best part was the things that the kids were saying back to me that I was like, this fairy tale is amazing. And the kids are even more amazing. And so in the early, early days of podcasting, 2017 or something, somebody approached me and was like, would you be willing to give any ideas for a podcast? And I was like, in fact, I do. You all need to hear what these kids say when they hear real fairy tales. And so yeah, the kids are the star, but don't actually tell them that because then they get, you know, then they want to talk too much and they get swelled heads and kids, you're fine. You're just along for the ride. Please stop interrupting me. There's just enough. There's just enough happening. You don't want to overdo it. Yeah, well, I actually go through the same thing with my grownup audiences. grownups experience fairy tales in a very similar way to kids because I do story time for children. And then I do story time for adults. I see the responses. And you know, a lot of times my followers will crack jokes about the fairy tale that I'm like, why did I think of that? That was really funny. Or they just relate to it in a way in a new way similar to your audience, you know. Yeah. And you unfortunately don't get to incorporate them in, but I guess because comments are sort of part of the experience. Yeah, you know, the people other people can read them and riff off of that for sure. Yeah. I was storytelling only online for so long and just kind of like talking into my phone and people listening on the other side. That getting to do it live in the past year has been really lovely. And because it's a really important part of storytelling. Yes, it's a it is a social experience. Absolutely. And you have some public events coming up actually. I think that was a transition that we did not plan. But I think you've got two in New York and a couple in Rhode Island. Is that right? I do. I'm doing a ton of Rhode Island events because that's where I am. And it's tiny and I can literally go over the place. In October, I'm coming in to New York to PNT, knitwear. I'm going to be doing a show in Baltimore and Richmond, Virginia, Portland, Maine, mostly Northeast places. That's great. When are you going to be in Baltimore? I'm going to be in Baltimore in November on November 13th or 14th. I can't remember which. Okay, awesome. I'm going to be in Baltimore on September 19th at the Enoch Pratt Free Library 4P.M. Holy! Rollin' to Avenue everybody. So yes, unfortunately we will not overlap. Oh, but Baltimore folks, you're being taken care of. Did it work? Is this thing on? Okay, good. Hi. My name is Carly Cue. And if you're anything like me, you may have noticed that there are a lot of big questions out there that need answers. Like, is the Loch Ness Monster real? What's going on in the Bermuda Triangle? And who ate my pie? Okay, well maybe the last one hasn't occurred to you, but on who went wow, mystery edition, I'm solving all of life's mysteries. Well, at least some of them. Join me as I travel through space and time to investigate history's most famous mysteries. All during my lunch break. Some things can't be explained, but they can be explored. Listen to episodes of Who When Wow Mystery Edition, wherever you get your podcasts. Go on adventures with Opal Watson, the curious brave kid detective with her own mystery solving business. Whether something's gone missing or something strange is happening in town, she'll get to the bottom of it. She always does. So break out your notepad and be prepared for dramatic twists and turns because you're coming along on her next case. Opal Watson, private eye. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm assuming that your listeners have gotten into your broader uva of works. And if they haven't, they should. I certainly hope so. Thank you. And so I wondered how fairy tales have influenced the stories that you've told since the taildark and grim. I can guess how they've influenced maybe your like medieval piece that is Quizzidors Tale. Am I remembering that correctly? Yes, that you are right. I was a teen librarian when that came out. So there's a gap in my knowledge there. And then of course the World War II series. So I was wondered how those stories which are obviously so important to you have influenced your work in genres outside. Yeah, that's such a good question. I think two main ways. The first is the most obvious way, which is like sometimes there are fairytale elements that I am so inspired by that I bring them into the other book. So the World War II books Max in the House of Spies and Max in the Land of Lies are about, you know, they're like take place during World War II. There's a real kid, but on his shoulder appear these two creatures cobalt and while I might have first heard of cobalt through dungeons and dragons cobalt in dungeons and dragons are very different from cobalt in German mythology. And so through fairy tales creatures like cobalt became very clear cobalt one of my favorite like fairy tale facts ever is so a cobalt in German mythology is a spirit that lives either in your house or where you work and creates mischief and make sure life miserable. And when they were mining this very beautiful blue stone when they broke it open poisonous gas would escape and miners would get sick and they blamed it on cobalt which is why they named that stone cobalt so cobalt blue the color is actually named after the mythical creature of a cobalt which is I just that's cool which is a dragon ish creature right. No, not only in D and D and D and they're not outside they do look dragon ish but in German mythology they just look I mean like little men or people they can take all sorts of different forms actually there are like a huge long list of different kinds of cobalt so generally it's just like a mischief making creature like smurf's that messes what you're saying. No, it's not okay. I do. But the other way that they really and much more so in fact inspire my books is the satisfying structure of a fairy tale from the very beginning from a tail darken grim structured how I make my chapters so a tail darken grim each chapter is its own fairy tale and they woven together into one big story. So each chapter begins once upon a time and ends with at least some sort of happily ever after even if it continues to the next story and I've continued to do that in my book so that not all but most of my books each chapter should hopefully have a fairly satisfying structure that I learned from telling fairy tales and adapting them in the chapters because I want you to start a chapter and get into and be like oh my gosh what's going to happen and then you get this cathartic resolution other authors. Other wonderful authors do you know like page turning chapters were the scene like a quick scene and you don't know what's going to happen next and you turn the page that's fun to but for me the way I think about structuring my stories really came from learning and telling fairy tales. Yeah, there's kind of a nice tradition of like World War two stories and fantasy at least and fairy tale there's a great book for grown ups the book of lost things. I think is a beautiful illustration of that and and Arnia in a way I think you know you've got escaping these horrors of war through the fantasy is. Exactly and the movies that pans labyrinth is the idea yeah yeah yeah. Two stories from me. Oh yeah I love that one. It looks incredible I'm dipping my toe into scary movies I can take in my fairy tales I guess but sometimes in movies I'm like no no too much it's very different it's very different we had to think a lot about this because a tail darken grim was made into a show for Netflix. Animated show and it's very different when because a book you choose what you imagine yeah and it's and you make a decision and and the podcast is like halfway between you're hearing what I'm saying. So whether you want to or not and that's why I give you a warning at the beginning of each episode you know turned down the volume and count to five and so that you are ready to not hear something if you don't want to where is the book. The easiest thing in the world to do is just to close it stop reading every time you open a book you close it so easy to do and then with the podcast you're hearing it whether you want to or not unless you're quick on the volume but you can still choose what you're sort of imagining. On a TV show it's all being imagined for you so you're visualizing stuff that you don't necessarily want to which means that the TV show of a tail darken grim there's some stuff that is so cool in there and I love it and I help to make it. But also it is definitely not for everybody I had a friend right to me pretty close friend and she was like so my daughter was watching Netflix and she came in crying because some show upset her and I was like what show was this and she couldn't really describe it to me and finally I pieced it together that it was your show and I was like I'm I'm so sorry. So yeah that's the plate of being a chill a children's author of dark stories for sure I'm very nestled right now in research for Alvin Schwartz's dark scary story series of course and all of the challenges that people tried to that people were nervous about with that book. Yeah the kids who really love it and about the kids who are like I'm never sleeping again not every books for me but it's such a good point that it's really easy to close a book put it in freezer if you don't like what's happening. Like with a TV show you can't stop watching you're like it's all happening in front of me and I can't turn my eyes away and then you know you're scared by the time the things happen that you don't want to it's already happened. Yeah you are always going to turn it off too late so listeners kids if you don't know Alvin Schwartz's scary stories to tell them the dark that's the one right that like formed so Liz and I about the same age it formed our generation we all read that book or so many of us. But it is truly scary I would say it is grimaced with every story is definitely grimaced for sure for sure yeah it is for kids but scary it's Graham. So you started like breaking into fairy tales outside the world of the brothers grim and I wondered where else you would like to go and I have a suggestion. Oh my gosh okay I'll tell you where I'm going but then I really want to hear your suggestion so all my grim grim or grimaced listeners know. That we do a lot of stories by Franz Ksava von Schoenvert. This book is called the Turnip Princess. What's so cool about Franz Ksava von Schoenvert other than saying his name which is one of the most fun things you can do is that his stories were only discovered about 20 years ago in a cardboard box in the Bavarian National Library by a graduate student. And so he collected stories the way the brothers grim did around the end of their career in the 1850s he was doing his work and some of the stories are fairly like well formed and well told but because he didn't ever got around to editing and publishing them many of them are kind of a jumble like you're like what is even happening in the story I can't quite tell. But the details are so unbelievably weird that it's great material for me to take and reform and then put out there like there was an episode in the new season of grim grim or grimaced called the 12 tortoises and it's just the whole thing has nothing to do with tortoises until the very end when 12 tortoises walk out in the main character has to figure it out of transform them back into people and then it's over. You're like what sounds awesome awesome. So yeah there's so many examples of his weird weird stories also in season five of grim grim grim is the newest season I have a guest storyteller join me on an episode her name is on a Alimahamid and she and I tell the fisherman in the gin one of the Arabian night stories that's a good one which she heard growing up it's such a good story and there's a grim version of it too but I definitely prefer. That version and son and I I she did such a good job of making it super funny so that's where we've started to expand but what is your recommendation. Okay I have I'll try not to give you too many but first one I thought of was a towel kelvinos folktales from Italy. Yeah because he was basically kind of like the the brothers grim of Italy and they're very funny. There's a lot of really weird stuff and I think that they have the same quality of what you like about grim folktales and I think your kids would like them to. I'm trying to think of examples one there's like one about a princess who lives inside an apple there's one about a boy who is well he's this is going to sound really grim but he's cut in half by a witch and he lives two different lives one half one place. Yeah that's called the clove and like okay I have to tell that yeah there's some really good stuff in there and there's a lot of like familiar things as well as like the Italian versions of little red riding hood which is an ogre instead of a wolf and fun things like that. I also think you should look up Hungarian folktales. I'm not distracted. I've got some of these here and I was going to hold them up if I could yeah. So I have it and let the grim brothers book I hadn't read it yet I haven't read it yet so okay turns out I will. Yeah, leaf through that that baby you'll love it. Yeah actually Italian fairy tales in general are really fun some of them are really grim like like Mr. Anderson but some of them are really fun and weird. And you like Pinocchio is a great example of one that's really wacky and you know a lot of these grim fairy tales first appear in collection by Italian collector named the de Basile who was collecting fairy tales back in like the 1600s so like they go back and fact many of them go back to Italy and then even before that and this is something that I learned while writing the inquisitors tale some of them go back as far as something called the just a Roman or which were these Romans. Stories that pass through the middle ages and then were then written down so a lot of these fairy tales go way back even to the Roman Empire and some people who are much smarter than me like scientists think that there's evidence that like beating the beast is 4,000 years old. Well, crazy of the you know some form of a very different version of it back then yes, a thousand years old. Well, because I do believe that are there are like you know all of our cultures are different around the world but there are some very fundamental things that we all share all humans share and I found this with the fairy tales you know when I go to I go to Japan or India or. You know the Texas border with Mexico or Lancaster, Pennsylvania all very very different places the kids respond in very predictable ways to these fairy tales they scream the ass a lot of the same questions often in the same order because we all share certain things like we love our parents we want to be safe we want to eat we are afraid of evil witches and you know ogres in the forest you know all of these things we share. And so they go way back okay those are great recommendations the clove and boy may end up on great one for you know I think it's very similar to like Hans my hedgehog in some ways. And then oh my last suggestion is you do some Filipino folk tales and I have to know children's librarian who's Filipino who would love to pop in and maybe tell some of some day and that's me. Okay, all right I did not know you were Filipino there they're really fun there's a lot of there's a lot of folk tales where people turn into fruit. Love that I do I would have to find some with happy ending I will say that there are some of them are kind of sad but I'm but I can find them. I bet I can. Well yeah we'll work on it together I mean I like when I do a story with somebody I love to work together to make it feel like a grim grim grim a grim a grim a step a so while also being truly original fairy tale yeah I'll send you there's a great series of Filipino folk tales for kids. That you should definitely pick up well it sounds like listeners of a grim grim grim a grim a this is not the last you're going to hear from Liz guitar. I am so grateful that you have had this conversation with me that I've gotten to have this conversation with you I am a big fan of your work again grown ups check out her book grown ups only her last name is spelled G O T A U C O perfect Liz guitar go look it up and yeah this won't not will not be the last time you hear from Liz I hope and of course the new season of grim grim grim grim grim is on Pena if you subscribe go to Pena dot FM use code grim g R I M M for a discount you can hear it all right now add free or you can wait until September 18th and then you will hear one episode a week with ads but you'll get to hear them going wide everywhere you listen to podcasts and really think you're going to like this new season so make sure you listen. The world of sonic the hedgehog has been thrust into a not so dark not so stormy hard boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming follow sonic and the intrepid chaotic detective agency as they take on their biggest case yet this high flying action-packed venture will take them across the world fighting for every clue they can find. It's one heck of a tale which is good because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives. Well if that's all I can just dispose of you wait what all will be revealed in sonic the hedgehog presents the chaotic case files. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Buckle up for don't break the rules the hilarious improv comedy game show where amazing voice actors become wacky characters based on kids wild prompts they make up lines on the spot pushing each other to be the last one standing without breaking the rules. 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