I just found my copy of this in a storage box. Of course I kept it; how I loved Gorey as a child. ( )

Highly disappointing. Gorey may have a unique viewpoint, but it's wasted (and entirely unused) on this retelling. ( )

Rumpelstiltskin is a fairy tale about a poor miller who has a beautiful daughter whom he wants to marry the king, so he tells the king that she can spin straw into gold. The king decides to see if it is true and locks her in three different sized rooms to spin him enough gold, and if she could he would marry her. But what the king does not know is that the daughter has not been spinning the gold, but it was actually a little man who she would give things to in return. But the last deal she made was to give him her first baby when she became queen. After she was married, she forgot about her deal but the little man remembered and offered her three days to figure out his name, or he would come and take the baby.
I liked this story very much. The first reason I liked the story was because it was a fairy tale with a small meaning behind it-Don't make promises you do not really intend to keep. The daughter made Rumpelstiltskin a promise to give him her first baby "Yes! Yes! I promise!". But after she became queen and had her first child, she did not want to keep that promise to him. The second reason I liked this book was because it was entertaining. At the end, Rumpelstiltskin thought the queen would not know his name and that he would get to keep the baby, and he was having his own little party in the woods. Singing his song "Tonight my cakes I bake. Tonight my beer I make. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow the queen's little baby I take!" He was so sure that he would get away with it, and the illustration of him dancing showed how excited he was. ( )

One of my favorite children's stories because despite the powerful and nasty men around her the poor woman in the story manages to become the heroine. ( )