True, but they are beautiful, in my opinion, and if you're going to have to spend some time working on a text it helps if the text is something that you're will

True, but they are beautiful, in my opinion, and if you're going to have to spend some time working on a text it helps if the text is something that you're willing to spend time on. Also, although the "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" use old-fashioned language, it's an old-fashioned spoken German, which means that in some ways they're closer to modern colloquial German than a lot of modern prose. They won't suit everyone but I'd definitely recommend that anyone learning German give them a try. If you did want weird, how about learning German from the lyrics of Bach cantatas? :-)