A Bouquet of Fairy Tales

A Bouquet of Fairy Tales tells stories about the following plants: tulips, thistles, roses, pussy willows, lilies of the valley and poison ivy. The first tale, The Tulip Palace, is the story of a terrible young king who learns his lesson from a wise old, crafty magician and a beautiful butterfly. The second tale, The Silver Thistle, tells the story of Margery, who looked like a thistle and how a greedy, wicked old man caused her kindness to vanish from the earth. The Red Rose is the story of a beautiful maiden who spoke with musical words sounding like songs. It tells how she disappeared in the snow on her eighteenth birthday and why rose bushes now have thorns. The Pussy Willow tale goes back to when the world was ruled by cats. A happy time for cats was a terrible time for mice, who organized to prevent becoming extinct and rid the world of the cat kingdom. This is the story of how they saved mice forever. The Lily of the Valley story took place in the Middle Kingdom of Angr where the people worshipped the Goddess of Despair. A girl named Lily came to live there from the Lower Kingdom of St. Cyr in the Middleterranean Ocean. The tiny bell-shaped flowers grew close to the earth and helped Joy invade the Angr kingdom. See how this happened. In Poison Ivy a very mean and angry queen hated her daughter-in-law, Trinka because she was a commoner, until she was tricked by Trinka's pet salamander. When the queen died her spirit turned her into poison ivy as punishment for her years of cruelty and when people now see poison ivy, they always jump away from the plant.