One of the innumerable delights of Italian Folktales is its mixture of the deeply familiar with the totally unexpected.

Most of the basic "story-types," of which Calvino says there are about 50 represented here, are more or less familiar to members of the English folk/literary tradition. The themes that recur in all Western folktales run through these; we meet the youngest son of the king, the wicked stepmother, the stupid giant, the helpful animals…. But the recombinations of these themes mostly are not familiar. This is much more than Cinderella served up with salsa di pomodoro. The tales are endlessly surprising. And their mood is quite different from the elegance of the French contes, the iconic spendors of Russian skazki, the forest darknesses of German Märchen. Often they resemble British tales of the Joseph Jacobs collections in their dry and zany humor, but they have more sunlight...