How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales

Bernheimer (Horse, Flower, Bird) offers up a strange little collection of stories with only a tenuous connection to classic fairy tales. The protagonists of yore have been replaced with young girls and women in the leads. Many of these tales lack any villain and those that appear are shadowy figures, literally so in "The Girl with the Talking Shadow." Emotions raised are on the tame side as well, with melancholy and unease taking the place of sorrow and dread. Although one story suggests that these tales may, in some way, involve the author (mention is made of an author character that has written a story similar to one earlier in the collection) that suggestion isn't carried through, so any sense of autobiographical meaning hidden within is denied. The format itself is also lacking in heft: many pages contain only half a page (or less) of text. Only those readers who are fairy tale completists or who prefer the quirky will relish this volume. (Aug.)