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I don’t know that I’ve ever done an introduction post before, but I figured it’s time. 🙋🏼‍♀️💁🏼‍♀️💃 My name is Elizabeth, and I am a Catholic writer, creator, and storyteller. I love, absolutely love, reading the literary classics and spreading that love to as many people as possible! My own novels read more like Lord of the Rings or Hans Christian Anderson than Hunger Games because the classics run in my blood. When I’m not reading my favorite books to a sibling, I’m writing my own. I’m a Star Wars loving, philosophical thinking, TV show binging lover of Jesus! 📚📖 Feel free to share your favorite classic in the comments to spread the love, and tag your friends who love to read the great books. Happy Reading! 📚👸🏻🧝🏻‍♀️🧚🏻‍♀️🧙🏼‍♂️👨‍🌾🕵🏼‍♂️📚 #books #lordoftherings #hanschristianandersen #catholicwriter #tolkientribe #fictionwriter #greatbooks #greatbooksofthewesternworld #greatbookstoread https://www.instagram.com/p/B6FKPYjlC-_/?igshid=1pxpfhtl68rtn

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Literary Leviathans – a new podcast! Siblings Tim and Elizabeth Russell discuss their casual readings of Jane Austin, Ray Bradbury, T.S. Elliot, and many more! Join us as we delve into texts that, by their very nature, change us when we encounter them! https://www.instagram.com/p/B06bynhDblh/?igshid=q8k041ue1yrw

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Only 24 hours left to buy Trinian and receive the pre-launch bonuses! What long fantasy read are you going to dive into this summer? Read the beginning for free at thefairytaleblog.com. . . . #fantasy #books #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #bookgram #unitedbookstagram #igreads #readersofinstagram #booksofig #epicreads #bibliophile #bookrelease #newrelease #authorlife #authorsofig #authorsofinstagram #indieauthor #authors #writersofinstagram #writer #writerscommunity #fantasyauthor #fantasyreads #worldbuilding #king #ipreview via @preview.app https://www.instagram.com/p/BzvnLsNlMWa/?igshid=10bcwwz30v0qw

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Look at that – I’m holding my book in my hands. Actually holding it and reading it! It’s a dream come true! 🥰📚🥰 Link in profile . . . #books #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #bookgram #unitedbookstagram #igreads #readersofinstagram #booksofig #epicreads #bibliophile #bookrelease #newrelease #authorlife #authorsofig #authorsofinstagram #indieauthor #authors #writersofinstagram #writer #writerscommunity #fantasy #fantasyauthor #fantasyreads #ipreview via @preview.app https://www.instagram.com/p/BzjlqlAl0-l/?igshid=18cp4klueks3z

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“Every man or woman is miserable during life; that’s the way life is. But we can find some happiness anyway.” Quote from Trinian | An Epic Fantasy. Buy it now to receive the pre-launch bonuses! Time is running out... link in my profile. . . . #books #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #bookgram #unitedbookstagram #igreads #readersofinstagram #booksofig #epicreads #bibliophile #bookrelease #newrelease #authorlife #authorsofig #authorsofinstagram #indieauthor #authors #writersofinstagram #writer #writerscommunity #fantasy #fantasyauthor #fantasyreads #ipreview via @preview.app https://www.instagram.com/p/BziwDQnFvMl/?igshid=1wl60rp1q2a17

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Happy Independence Day! In Trinian, the humans are not pitted against a mere king who threatens to steal their freedoms, but a god! Buy Trinian to immerse yourself in a world of incalculable fantasy stakes! Link in my profile. . . . #books #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #bookgram #unitedbookstagram #igreads #readersofinstagram #booksofig #epicreads #bibliophile #bookrelease #newrelease #authorlife #authorsofig #authorsofinstagram #indieauthor #authors #writersofinstagram #writer #writerscommunity #fantasy #fantasyauthor #fantasyreads #ipreview via @preview.app https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzf_oMvFUAS/?igshid=1s32sme7hevd8

[mythsnfairytales-blog]

Gorgeous fairy tale interpretations! I just had to share.

“7 tales & original sin” by mazique

[mythsnfairytales-blog]

Buy the Book to get the Bonuses! How to do this: 
1. Buy Book before July 11th
2. Forward email receipt to trinianbook@gmail.com
3. Receive your Pre-Launch Bonuses! . . . #books #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #bookdeals #kindledeals #bookgram #unitedbookstagram #igreads #indiesareworthit #readersofinstagram #booksofig #epicreads #bibliophile #bookrelease #newrelease #authorlife #authorsofig #authorsofinstagram #indieauthor #authors #writersofinstagram #writer #writerscommunity #fantasy #fantasyauthor #fantasyreads #ipreview via @preview.app https://www.instagram.com/p/BzYSLq0Ftzh/?igshid=1nbhun1q3p1z1

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Trinian is a simple soldier who never expected to be king. But when he is kidnapped by the evil god Power, he learns he is the long prophesied ruler of Drian. Thrust into a world of politics and war, Trinian must protect his kingdom from a traitorous sister, giant gorgans, and evil gods. In the end it is Trinian, alone and unaided, who must face off against Power and prepare the world for the coming of the mysterious Golden King. . Trinian is now available for pre-order with limited-availability bonuses! Don’t miss this amazing opportunity! Click the link on my profile. . . . #books #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #bookgram #unitedbookstagram #igreads #readersofinstagram #booksofig #epicreads #bibliophile #bookrelease #newrelease #authorlife #authorsofig #authorsofinstagram #indieauthor #authors #writersofinstagram #writer #writerscommunity #fantasy #fantasyauthor #fantasyreads #ipreview via @preview.app https://www.instagram.com/p/BzYRO1CFgKl/?igshid=13k0pn5bawhbp

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Do you love fantasy maps? I love fantasy maps! So I decided to include one with Trinian’s release! I commissioned my talented sister to draw it, and it’s so gorgeous! If you want a free copy, be sure to buy the book before July 11th, after which the map will no longer be available! . . . #books #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #bookgram #unitedbookstagram #igreads #readersofinstagram #booksofig #epicreads #bibliophile #bookrelease #newrelease #authorlife #authorsofig #authorsofinstagram #indieauthor #authors #writersofinstagram #writer #writerscommunity #fantasy #fantasyauthor #fantasyreads #ipreview via @preview.app https://www.instagram.com/p/BzWrXdIFd79/?igshid=97m89tljpknz

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Trinian | An Epic Fantasy is now available for purchase! I’m currently running a pre-launch campaign, with awesome bonuses that will only be available for a limited time. Click the link on my profile to learn more, or message me with questions. . . . #books #bookstagrammer #bookcommunity #bookgram #unitedbookstagram #igreads #readersofinstagram #booksofig #epicreads #bibliophile #bookrelease #newrelease #authorlife #authorsofig #authorsofinstagram #indieauthor #authors #writersofinstagram #writer #writerscommunity #fantasy #fantasyauthor #fantasyreads #ipreview via @preview.app https://www.instagram.com/p/BzRaCLFFazX/?igshid=5uketulv7mgf

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I couldn’t have said it better myself! I love George McDonald! ❤️

“The Fantastic Imagination” (excerpt) by George MacDonald

“All art is unstable. Its meaning is not necessarily that implied by the author.  There is no authoritative active voice. There are only multiple readings.” -David Bowie

“You write as if a fairytale were a thing of importance: must it have meaning?”

It cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty may be plainer in it than the truth, but without the truth the beauty could not be, and the fairytale would give no delight. Everyone, however, who feels the story, will read its meaning after his own nature and development: one man will read one meaning in it, another will read another.

“If so, how am I to assure myself that I am not reading my own meaning into it, but yours out of it?”

Why should you be so assured? It may be better that you should read your meaning into it. That may be a higher operation of your intellect than the mere reading of mine out of it: your meaning may be superior to mine.

“Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?”

If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much. At all events, the business of the painter is not to teach zoology.

But indeed your children are not likely to trouble you about the meaning. They find what they are capable of finding, and more would be too much. For my part, I do not write for children, but for the childlike, whether of five, or fifty, or seventy-five.

A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit. An allegory must be Mastery or Moorditch.

A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sips every wholesome flower, and spoils not one. The true fairytale is, to my mind, very like the sonata. We all know that a sonata means something; and where there is the faculty of talking with suitable vagueness, and choosing metaphor sufficiently loose, mind may approach mind, in the interpretation of a sonata, with the result of a more or less contenting consciousness of sympathy. But if two or three men sat down to write each what the sonata meant to him, what approximation to definite idea would be the result? Little enough–and that little more than needful. We should find it had roused related, if not identical, feelings, but probably not one common thought. Has the sonata therefore failed? Had it undertaken to convey, or ought it to be expected to impart anything defined, anything notionally recognisable?

“But words are not music; words at least are meant and fitted to carry a precise meaning!”

It is very seldom indeed that they carry the exact meaning of any user of them! And if they can be so used as to convey definite meaning, it does not follow that they ought never to carry anything else. Words are live things that may be variously employed to various ends. They can convey a scientific fact, or throw a shadow of her child’s dream on the heart of a mother. They are things to put together like the pieces of dissected map, or to arrange like the notes on a stave. Is the music in them to go for nothing? It can hardly help the definiteness of a meaning: is it therefore to be disregarded? They have length, and breadth, and outline: have they nothing to do with depth? Have they only to describe, never to impress? Has nothing any claim to their use but definite? The cause of a child’s tears may be altogether undefinable: has the mother therefore no antidote for his vague misery? That may be strong in colour which has no evident outline. A fairtytale, a sonata, a gathering storm, a limitless night, seizes you and sweeps you away: do you begin at once to wrestle with it and ask whence its power over you, whither it is carrying you? The law of each is in the mind of its composer; that law makes one man feel this way, another man feel that way. To one the sonata is a world of odour and beauty, to another of soothing only and sweetness. To one, the cloudy rendezvous is a wild dance, with a terror at its heart; to another, a majestic march of heavenly hosts, with Truth in their centre pointing their course, but as yet restraining her voice. The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.

I will go farther.–The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to rousing his conscience, is–not to give him things to think about, but to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding–the power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.

“But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!”

Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there! One difference between God’s work and man’s is, that, while God’s work cannot mean more than he meant, man’s must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is a layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God’s things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time things that came from thoughts beyond his own.

“But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?”

I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, “Roses! Boil them, or we won’t have them!” My tales may not be roses but I will not boil them.

So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.

If a writer’s aim be logical conviction, he must spare no logical pains, not merely to be understood, but to escape being misunderstood; where his object is to move by suggestion, to cause to imagine, then let him assail the soul of his reader as the wind assails an aeolian harp. If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it. Let fairytale of mine go for a firefly that now flashes, now is dark, but may flash again. Caught in a hand which does not love its kind, it will turn to an insignificant ugly thing, that can neither flash nor fly.

The best way with music, I imagine, is not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear upon it, but to be still and let it work on that part of us for whose sake it exists. We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. He who will be a man, and will not be a child, must–he cannot help himself–become a little man, that is, a dwarf. He will, however need no consolation, for he is sure to think himself a very large creature indeed.

If any strain of my “broken music” make a child’s eyes flash, or his mother’s grow for a moment dim, my labour will not have been in vain.

[mythsnfairytales-blog]

50 Best Books of All Time

💕📕 Love book recommendations? Want to see what Classics you might have missed? Check out my list of 50 best books of all time!

Which ones have You read? And what is Your favorite classic? 📕💕

Please comment about your favorite classic, any modern books and authors that are gems in this current ocean of mediocrity, or anything else book-related!

George Elliot’s Middlemarch

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea

Antoine de Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince

Gail Carson Levine’s Fairest

Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three

Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron

Lloyd Alexander’s The Castle of Llyr

Lloyd Alexander’s Taran Wanderer

Lloyd Alexander’s The High King

Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman

Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray

Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Robert C. O’Brien’s Frisby and the Rats of Nimh

Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn

Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time

William Goldman’s The Princess Bride

T.H. White’s The Once and Future King

C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce

Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

C.S. Lewis’s Till We Have Faces

Noel Streatfeild’s Theater Shoes

Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Louis Sachar’s Holes

Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth

Frank L. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz

George McDonald’s The Light Princess

Charles Dicken’s Great Expectationsgreat-expectations

Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Elizabeth Russell’s Halfbreeds (Yup, my shameless plug! But I’m not ashamed – I love reading my book, and I highly recommend it!)

Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World

A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh

Mary Ann Shaffer’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Sigrid Undset’s Catherine of Siena

Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc

Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Grace Lin’s Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Roald Dahl’s Matilda

Dean Koontz’s Odd Thomas

Louisa May Alcott’s An Old Fashioned Girl

M. Montgomery’s Anne of the Island

Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy

Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall

Catherine Marshall’s Christy

Jane Austen’s Persuasion

Gail Carson Levine’s The Two Princesses of Bamarre

[mythsnfairytales-blog]

Knowledge Crumbles and I Know

Out, out brief candle

Out damned spot

Hurry up please its time

I had not thought death had

undone so many.

Do you know what it is you read?

How can I, if there is no one to explain it me?

Understand?

If I be the wisest, it is because I

know that I know Nothing.

I think, but because I exist,

don’t mean I understand.

Understand.

What is that study that leads

us to the light of understanding?

Burst the bonds of the prisoner

Turn him round to the red hot glow

and naught he knows –

Knowledge is greater than he knew.

Thunder, lightening, and in rain

when hurly-burly’s done

How can we know if fair is foul

The truth be fair to know.

What do we know?

Squat heachens, round and round,

will there ever be an end?

As you wish.

King of Scotland,

King of Denmark,

Rightful heir denied.

Hyacinths from hyacinth girl.

Rue is for remembrance,

You must wear it with difference.

But violets are all used up:

They perished the paternal

Death-filled day.

Is woman woman? Or

Is woman man? –

The terrifying question.

No rock stuck fast

solid ground to stand.

All is crumbling; all –

It is but sifting sand.

The Rock must stand.

Forty thousand brothers

could not, with all their quantity

of love, make up my sum.

What wilt thou do for her?

Wailing!

And gnashing of teeth.

Signifying nothing.

Now you know.

[mythsnfairytales-blog]

With a glance behind and gaze to fore

I pushed myself beyond the door

Door that closed upon my past

And now the future die is cast

Cast to breaking on the shore

Shore that’s breaking on the floor

Floor of deep embedded beads

That time has wrought to sandy seeds

Seeds mix and jumble up inside

My newfound person stepping wide

Wide the round and fertile earth

a promise – a paean – of rebirth

Birth from inner sin and woe

upon the mortal shore I go

Go crawling and pushing upon my knees

Until enveloped in the balmy seas

Seas roil and billow and drown my soul

till my old life has met its toll

Toll on, yea bells, of troubled mirth

Your laughter ends with final birth

Birth anew, a raging clutching pain

And I, defenseless, cast upon the main

Mainly, you know, I’ve struggled and run

to find myself at last a conquered one

One, rise! Oh divinely mortally met

And in thy threesome bosom I am set

Set at last, on softly wafting shores,

And closed, behind, the sinful, mortal doors

[mythsnfairytales-blog]

Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack. He lived with his mother in a cottage on the outskirts of a kingdom, right between the town and the outlying farmland. The kingdom was going through a period of drought: everyone was starving, and Jack and his mother were no exception. One morning, his mother said to him, “Jack, we are going to starve. You must take the cow into the village and sell her for what you can get. We will live on what she sells for a few weeks and then we will die.”

So Jack took the cow and headed down the path to the village. On his way, he met a hobbling old man who carried a little handkerchief. Inside the handkerchief, the old man said, were four magic beans, and he offered to trade Jack the beans for the cow. Jack saw that this was the most he would get for the dried-up, starving cow and gratefully accepted. When he got home, however, his mother was less than pleased and grabbing his ear with one hand, threw the beans out the window with the other. “How could you!?” she cried. “We were supposed to live for another few weeks, but now you will go to bed with no supper tonight, because we have no food to make a supper with!” And at that, Jack went to his bed, tired out from his walk and his empty stomach.

The next morning when Jack woke up in the early light, he found a great plant had grown up where his mother had thrown the beans. All the way up to the sky it reached, and further even than that. It was taller than the tallest skyscraper in our world.

Well, Jack knew he had not long to live and decided that there is no moment like the present, so he started making his way up the vine. “Maybe I’ve already died,” he thought, “and now I’m climbing up to heaven.”

But eventually he found himself at the top, and the beanstalk supported a great castle – a castle larger than the biggest prison in our world. It was a castle made for giants.

Jack went inside and was in awe of all the magnificent things he saw there: sparkling gold, glistening jewels, gorgeous velvet, and exotic spices. Most of the things were far too large for a normal-sized man like Jack, but some were people-sized, and these he picked up and fingered: some were softly embroidered, others were prickly-plated, and still others glassy smooth. He breathed deeply and there wafted a most heavenly scent upon the air. Jack could have stayed in that castle forever; he was beginning to lose himself in the radiance of it all when he was suddenly startled by something far more beautiful. Through the door at the other end of the room emerged a lovely girl of normal, person-sized height. She was adorned in a dusty apron, carried a dirty broom, and her hair curled around her forehead in sweaty, frazzled wisps. But nothing could dim the vibrant, fresh beauty in her face or the stately way that she held herself erect.

She started when she saw Jack and dropped her broom. “What are you doing here?” she cried in alarm.

“I did not mean to startle you, miss. I found a giant beanstalk and climbed it to find myself in this beautiful place.”

“This place is not beautiful at all,” exclaimed the girl. “I know it glistens and dazzles, but it is all false finery that covers the den of a troll. My master eats any man that he can find, and he will eat you if he smells you here. You must leave immediately.”

As you might have guessed, Jack was instantly head-over-heels in love with this beautiful girl, and because of this, her concern did not fill him with proper caution; instead, since he had a dreamy nature, he was grateful for her concern, and he saw her through stars and galaxies, shining in the glow of the stained-glass window draping its light upon her.

“My name’s Jack.”

“Please, Jack,” she begged, “please leave.”

“If I leave,” he said, “you must come with me for I will not leave you to live with a man-eating troll.”

“I cannot go,” she started to tell him, but then Jack, who really was starving to death, suddenly fainted.

When Jack awoke, he was lying on cold stone beside a ginormous fire with a cold cloth on his forehead. The smell of hot soup wafted to him from a bowl at his side.

“You should really eat,” came the voice of the girl, and he turned to see her standing on top of a giant wooden countertop cutting up vegetables. “You look like you’re starving.”

Jack ate without another word, practically swallowing the entire bowl in one gulp. He was that hungry.

“Thank you.” He started to climb up the leg of the counter-top.

“No!” cried the girl. “I was telling you earlier, I can’t leave but you must!”

“Why can’t you leave?”

“I am the princess of the kingdom below.”

“Princess Miranda?”

“Yes. I was kidnapped three years ago and forced to cook and clean for the giant. I have a spell on me, and if I try to escape, this whole castle will fall down upon the kingdom and kill everyone.” Jack had reached the top of the counter, and she handed him an apple. “Now you must go. It is almost his lunchtime and he will be down shortly. Then he will eat you and I will have to watch.”

Jack’s heart leapt at her concern. “There must be a way to break the spell?” he asked.

“So long as he has his magic items, he will have power over me.”

“What are his magic items?”

The princess pointed to the corner of the kitchen. “His magic golden eggs and magic golden harp give him all his spells.”

Suddenly the entire room shook, and Jack fell against the wooden counter-top. The princess, who was more used to it, just wobbled a bit.

“Quick!” she cried. “We are too late, he is coming! You must hide.”

She slid down the leg of the counter, and he followed her, then she grabbed his hand and raced to a cupboard. Jack was too overcome by her touch to do anything but completely obey her. She pushed him inside, and before he realized what had happened, she had sliced his hand with a knife.

“Ah!” he cried, pulling away.

“No time!” she cried and taking his hand, dripped his blood into a bowl. “Wait until he is eating then leave through that door. Go down your beanstalk and never come back here again.” Then she shut him up into complete darkness except for a small sliver of light between the cracks.

He saw the princess take the blood that she had drawn from his smarting hand and pour it into the giant’s bowl of soup. If he had not been so completely in love, Jack might have shuddered at the fact that he himself had just eaten that soup.

“FEE, FIE, FOE, FUM!”

The room shook and the pottery on the shelves clinked and rattled. “I SMELL THE BLOOD OF AN ENGLISHMAN!” The ground quaked as the largest man you have ever seen rumbled into the room. Jack peered through the sliver of a crack and bounced up and down with each heavy footfall. The giant turned his head so that he could see the hugeness of his face, the wideness of his shoulders, and the fierceness of his eyes. Then he did shudder. No, he quaked; and not from the vibrations of the giant’s steps.

“Do you, sir? That’s just a little something special I put together for you. I managed to bargain it off Mrs. Dungbury of Gigantic St.”

“AH! YOU KNOW WHAT I LIKE!” The giant sat down at the large table and started eating like a mad animal, pouring soup in his mouth before even having time to swallow.

Then Jack took his chance. He leapt out of the cupboard, and the giant was so busy with his soup that he noticed nothing else. The princess watched him anxiously, but Jack did not head straight for the door like she had told him; he jumped up onto the table in the corner, where the golden eggs and harp were laid out in all their glory. The princess in fear shook her head at him, but he ignored her and picked up the eggs one by one (there were three of them, and each was very heavy). Then he reached for the harp, but it was magical, and played music whenever anyone touched her, so now she began to play herself, and at hearing the sound, the dinner table shook as the giant lifted up his mighty head.

“WHY DOES MY BEAUTIFUL HARP PLAY MUSIC?” he asked the princess.

Jack rabbited and raced across the kitchen floor for the door to freedom, but he still clutched the golden eggs to his chest.

“I do believe she just wants to make your dining experience more enjoyable, sir,” said the princess, and sighed with relief when she saw that Jack was safely out of the room.

Jack climbed down the beanstalk as quick as he could. When he got to the bottom, he found his mother waiting for him.

“And where have you been all morning? Do you expect me to starve to death alone?!” She stood before him with arms crossed over her chest in her strictest manner, but he could see how thin her cheeks really were.

“Mother, look!” he cried, holding out the eggs that he had wrapped in his shirt.

“Oh, my!!” she cried out and threw her hands high into the air in astonishment.

They sold the eggs and got enough money from them to live on for the next ten years.

But Jack could not forget the Princess Miranda, so the very next morning, he got up earlier than the sun and started climbing the beanstalk again. As soon as he entered the palace, he headed for the kitchen to find her.

“Princess!” he cried, when he saw the lovely girl at the giant fireplace. She was standing on an iron ladder to reach a huge, boiling stew pot and using a great spoon to stir it. Her face was flushed and her arms straining, but her back was strong and she looked more beautiful than ever.

“Jack!” she yelled at him, “you’ve come back! But why? You must have sold those golden eggs and are no longer starving. You’ll get eaten!”