Some time ago a friend gave me the German book “Die kleinen Leute von Swabedoo”, a fairy tale by an unknown author. It is a wonderful story about loving, giving and what happens when you stop doing that. I looked around on the net whether there was an English version out there and it seems there are different versions of the story.

In general the story seems to be called “Warm fuzzies”, because warm fuzzies are the gifts that people exchange in the story (in German they are giving “small, warm fur”, something the reader can actually feel because one “small, warm fur” is attached to the cover of the book). There is one version on amazon called The Original Warm Fuzzy Tale. Obviously it is rather close to the German version as far as the story goes. Then there is one by a Richard Lessor which must be actually quite modern as TV and restaurant chains are mentioned. It is much shorter than mine and not nearly as detailed (maybe the free text on the internet is abridged, I don’t know).

One of the reviewers on amazon complains about people dying in the “original” story. That is something she doesn’t “want to read to her children”. I wonder why. In every fairy tale (just like in real life) gruesome things happen and a lot of people die. Why wouldn’t she want to read that to her kids? I wanted to recommend to her the book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by Bruno Bettelheim. Maybe that would open her eyes.

All that aside, if you have kids and want to teach them something about the importance of happiness, giving and love, then this very short book is not a bad choice at all.