New Delhi: Little Red Riding Hood travels through the forest to see her ailing grandmother unaware of the dangers of the big bad world outside, only to be tricked by a wicked wolf.
'Little Red Riding Hood' one of the stories among a collection of about 200 folk tales by the Grimm brothers has been retold by Google doodle in 22 illustrious frames as a tribute on the 200th anniversary of Grimm's Fairy Tales.
Grimm's Fairy Tales is the popular name of a 19th century German book called Children's and Household Tales (Kinder und Hausmärchen in German) written by German brothers Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Carl Grimm (1786–1859). Their first collection was published in 1812.
Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Hansel and Gretel, Tom Thumb, Rapunzel, The Golden Goose, and Rumpelstiltskin are among the most popular fairy tales collected by Grimm brothers.
The first volume of the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales was published in 1812 containing 86 stories; the second volume of 70 stories followed in 1814. The seventh and final edition under the brothers' watch was published in 1857 and it contained 211 stories split across two volumes.
These editions were extensively illustrated by Philipp Grot Johann, whose work on Grimm's Fairy Tales is considered as amongst the finest of his career. Some of these illustrations are mildly humorous, such as the one in The Devil With the Three Golden Hairs where the devil is pictured reading a newspaper which, on closer examination, is a stock market letter. Robert Leinweber took over illustration duties for the latter editions after Johann's death in 1892.
Earlier, Google has celebrated the 120th anniversary of the Nutcracker with a doodle depicting scenes from the ballet.
The ballet, scored by Tchaikovsky and set around Christmas, was first performed alongside his opera Iolanta at the Mariinsky theatre in St Petersburg on 18 December 1892, but was poorly received. It was not until the 1950s, when George Balanchine re-imagined the choreography, that it became a major international hit.
The story of Clara and Hans Peter being whisked off to the Kingdom of the Sweets was first seen in England in 1934, before reaching the US ten years later. Nowadays the Nutcracker is performed by ballet companies around the globe, commonly over the festive period.
On top of the countless live performances, there have been various film adaptations, including a 1993 version starring Macaulay Culkin and narrated by Kevin Kline.
