Once upon a time, there lived two brothers named Jacob and William in Germany. They liked to listen to old stories and then write them down. Then they had enough stories to make a book. You can guess the name of their book! It is Grimm's Fairy Tales.
The story of this little book began when the brothers were still in school. And it started with a good teacher. This teacher liked to find out how things happened. Soon the two brothers were doing the same thing. They asked questions and then looked for answers to them.
Among the questions the brothers asked, "Who made up the old fairy tales? Who first told about Cinderella? Who made up the story of Snow White and the story of Sleeping Beauty?"
They found that no one knew the answers to such questions. The tales were made up in very early times. Most of them were made up in days before people knew how to write. People told the stories to one another and to their children. But only a few old people still remembered them.
"When these old people die, the stories will die with them," said the brothers. "We must write down all the stories we can find."
Jacob and William hunted for stories for five years. At last they had 89 tales written. Just before Christmas, in 1812, the first book was published. People loved the book! They asked for more fairy stories. So the two brothers put tales into two more books. In all, they collected 210stories to put into their books.
