Snow White introduces us to quantum mechanics. Relative motion, momentum, and energy are explained by a prince. And Cinderenda sheds light on white dwarves, neutron stars, and black holes.

First Snow White encounters one of the Little People, then one of the Even Smaller People, and finally one of the Truly Infinitesimal People. And no matter how diligently she searches, the only dwarves she can find are collapsed stars! Clearly, she's not at home in her well-known Brothers Grimm fairy tale, but instead in a strange new landscape that features quantum behavior, the wavelike properties of particles, and the Uncertainty Principle. She (and we) must have entered, in short, one of the worlds created by Robert Gilmore, physicist and fabulist.

The First Tale: The PRINCE and p (A quest for the nature of motion).- The Second Tale: SNOW WHITE and the particularly little PEOPLE (Into the deep basement of our world).- The Third Tale: ALI GORI and the CAVE of NIGHT (consider the heavens).- The Fourth Tale: JACK and the STARSTALK (spacetime and gravity).- The Fifth Tale: WARING beauty (the big bang and after).- The Sixth Tale: CINDERENDA and the DEATH of STARS (the life and fate of stars).- Epilogue.- Further Reading.