Once upon a time in cyberspace: Fairytale writer Charles Perrault honoured by Google Doodle

Once upon a time in France, there lived a man called Charles Perrault. He gave us the stories we grew up reading — Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, Mother Goose, The Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. And Google is celebrating his birthday, how they do best — with a Google Doodle. Born in 1628, Perrault studied law and became an advisor in the court of King Louis XV in the 17th century. [caption id=“attachment_2580272” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  The Google Doodle celebrating Charles Perrault’s 388th birthday.[/caption] Perrault, surprisingly started writing his stories only after he retired. Most his works, however, were inspired by folklore, sprinkled with modern twists. He  wrote a book called _Histoires ou Contes du Temps pass_é (Tales and Stories of the Past With Morals), with the famous subtitle “Tales of Mother Goose” after loosing his job at the age of 67, reports  The Mirror According to TIME, Perrault became a true pioneer of storytelling because he put them in the written form, something that was not an everyday thing at that time. Google writes in its Doodle archive, “Perrault borrowed basic plots and the familiar opening “once upon a time” (il était une fois) from traditional stories told aloud, while modernizing them with both fashionable embellishments and the very act of putting them into writing. (The publication of the tales coincides with the rise of the modern novel: they came after Don Quixote and La Princesse de Clèves, but before Robinson Crusoe and Tom Jones).” The doodles, tableaux for Perrault’s stories — Mother Goose, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Puss in Boots — were created by artist Sophie Diao.