My love story with fairy tales—and with myths, their sometimes cousins, sometimes siblings, sometimes one and the same (depending on who you ask, and quite possibly the weather)—is long and convoluted. I was enthralled by them pretty much from the moment I learned to read, thanks to an early diet including Italo Calvino’s *Italian Folktales*, Edith Hamilton’s *Mythology*, and Lloyd Alexander’s *The Chronicles of Prydain*, and the fascination lasted throughout (and in many ways, shaped) my years at university. And the older I got, the more fascinated I became by the way these stories change. Here is what I think: that change is essential to myths and fairy tales, an inherent quality that makes them what they are; and that the way they change functions as a mirror to us—revealing the assumptions that we take for granted, and the ones that no longer fit.…