There's an article about fairytales on Deviant Art it's good, but I coulnd't help but comment, since I love fairytales, that was my comment, I just want to preserve it here:

"Wow, seeing that Top Bedtime Stories list just made me realise how unique all the storytelling is in every country and it's culture, because I didn't read nor was read to any of this books except Wind in the Willows when I was little.

But I've always loved fairytales. And let me tell you, Russian fairytales are rather different from others, like ones written by Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen and Brothers Grimm. I still have a book "Magic Ring" written by Andrey Platonov, and there was some gruesome stories about how the brother chopped his sister's arms off (i don't recall why) but they appeared when she needed to protect her son in the war that she went to, dressed as a man. So there you go. My parents didn't hide that book from me, and I didn't grow up violently chopping people's arms off.

And also, you have to differentiate the fayritales written by someone, from folklore tales, that aren't even mentioned above, and those were way more scary, I have a few fairytales anthologies one of them is the anthology of Karelian fairytales and also most of them were scary as *hit I couldn't stop until I read them all, there were storylines there similar to Cinderella and other tales that have their own interpretations in different folkores.

About Disney, I loved it too, but when I watched The Little Mermaid, it was after I've seen the russian cartoon that had the real ending with the mermaid basically killing herself and becoming sea foam, so I always knew that Disney fairytales were the sweetened versions, but at least I had something to compare to, because at that time in Russia the art of animated film was on its prime and they made lots and lots of beautiful cartoons based on fairytales. I don't know if there was such diversity in US for example, so I grew up not only on Disney and Ninja Turtles.

Nevertheless it was because of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast", that this fairytale became my favourite and because it's one of the traditional fairytales, there are many many different versions of it. The russian version is called "Crimson Flower" (or Vermillion if you like) and there too was a beautiful cartoon based on it. When I grew up and learned english I've read as many Beauty and the Beast retellings I could find and the best yet is "Beauty" by Robin McKinley and "Heart's Blood" by Julliet Marilliet.

There was another two I really loved because of the russian movie and cartoon based on it. It's "Donkeyskin" written by Perrault, and "King Thrushbeard" by Grimm, if you haven't read it, do. There is an unimaginable amount of fairytales, and it pains me sometimes that most of the people know only those, Disney or Pixar cartoons were based on, or the ones adapted in the movies (although I can't wait to see "Snow White and the Huntsman"), and most of their authors are being forgotten along with fables and folklore stories that each country has."