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Fairy Tales |
| Baum, L. Frank |
The Wizard of Oz (and other Oz books)
Baum wrote the quintessential American fairy tale when he wrote
The Wizard of Oz a hundred years ago. You've seen the
movie and perhaps the play(s), now read the book that started
it all. |
| DiCamillo, Kate |
The Tale of Despereaux
This book reminds me of Lemony
Snicket's books in that you, "Dear Reader" are addressed
throughout the book to warn you of dire events or to explain
big words along the way. It is an original fairy tale concerning
a tiny mouse, Despereaux, a beautiful princess named Pea, a scheming,
vengeful rat and a serving girl. It is a clever, suspenseful
and engaging story from beginning to end. |
| Ferris, Jean |
Once Upon a Marigold
Oh, how to begin telling what this fairy tales is all about?
It is convoluted, interesting, irreverent and just plain funny.
You have mystery, comedy and romance, a handsome hero, an unhappy,
princess, a troll, a perpetually lost tooth fairy, a befuddled
king and a scheming queen.
Christian falls hopelessly in love with
Princess Marigold after watching her through a telescope he invented.
On a whim, he p-mails her. That is, sends her a letter by carrier
pigeon and is delighted when she p-mails back. Christian and
Marigold become best friends. But it is time for Marigold to
marry and her mother is scouring the land to find a suitable
husband, not scared off by her birth-gift. Confused yet? It all
makes perfect sense as you read this delightful fairy tale.
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| Fletcher, Susan |
Shadow Spinner
Even if you have never read
The Thousand and One Nights , you have probably heard of Shahrazad and her dilemma.
The Sultan had a nasty habit of murdering his wives after one
night of marriage. Shahrazad entertained him with a story and
so she was given another night to live as long as she entertained
with her tales. Shadow Spinner opens up near the one thousand
and first day. Shahrazad is running out of tales. Marjan happens
to visit the Sultan's palace with her "auntie" to help
her sell some jewelry. During the transactions, Marjan tells
a story to the children to keep them distracted while their mothers
shop and catches the attention of Shahrazad's sister. Marjan
teaches Shahrazad the story, enabling her to live another day
but unwittingly sets in motion a series of events Marjan never
would have believed possible. |
| Gray, Margaret |
The Ugly Princess and the Wise Fool
This is quite an original fairy
tale from the beginning, in which the princess was born not beautiful,
to the end, in which the princess earns a degree in wisdom before
marrying someone who is not a handsome prince.
Princess Rose's lack of beauty does shock
the kingdom as the third princess is supposed to be the most
beautiful of all. But the people soon grow to love their un-lovely
princess as she is kind and generous. Rose, most of all doesn't
mind her homeliness until Prince Parsley travels about the land
looking for the most beautiful princess to take as a wife. Rose
falls for him and begs her fairy godmother for beauty. Both her
fairy godmother and her friend, Jasper warn her that to wish
such a thing could be trouble. This tale is humorous and engaging.
It contains clever allusions to other fairy tales and is all-in-all
an enjoyable book.
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| Haddix, Margaret Peterson |
Just Ella
Peterson continues the story of Cinderella past the "and
they lived happily ever after." It turns out that being
a princess is filled with rules, regulations, inactivity and
no fresh air. Because she did not grow up a noble, she is now
having a crash course. The handsome prince she thought she fell
head-over-heels in love with? Prince Charming is Prince Boring
without a thought in his head which isn't scripted. |
| Hale, Shannon |
The Goose Girl
The Goose Girl is a novel length retelling of a traditional fairy
tale by the same name. While it follows the same plot structure
of the original tale, the development of the characters makes
this retelling a full-length, plausible novel. We have Princess
Anidori, Ani, shy and insecure and heir to the throne until her
powerful mother decides Ani does not have the stuff queens are
made of, and there is Selia, ambitious lady-in-waiting and Ani's
lifelong friend and confidante. When Ani is journeying through
the mountains to a foreign country to marry a prince, she is
betrayed by Selia but escapes being murdered by the guards Selia
has lured to her side. |
| Hale, Shannon |
Enna Burning
This is a companion novel to The Goose Girl, but where that novel retold a familiar fairy tale, Enna Burning is completely original. Enna and Isi became fast friends in The Goose Girl, but now that Isi is married, Enna has returned to her beloved forest. Her brother, Liefer, has discovered a mysterious parchment and when he deciphers it, learns to control fire.
When Isi's kingdom is attacked, Liefer fights on her side, but is soon consumed by the fire he has barely begun to control. Enna then discovers the secret and ponders what she should do.
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| Harrison, Mette Ivie |
Mira, Mirror
This clever story briefly retells Snow White but focuses on the fate of the evil queen's mirror. Interestingly, the last book that I read, Fairest, also had a magic mirror in it. Mira is the witch who is trapped inside the mirror. She has been waiting for over a hundred years in a hut in the forest and assumes that her "sister" the witch who became queen is dead. A young peasant girl named Ivana stumbles into the hut while running away from her abusive father and Mira tricks the girl into removing her from the wall of the hut and taking her. Mira's intentions are to manipulate the girl into getting her magic so that she can try and transform herself back into her human form. |
| Holmes, Sara Lewis |
Letters from Rapunzel
This book is not really an original fairy tale or retelling of one as much as it uses the fairy tale, Rapunzel as a metaphor for the way twelve-year-old Cadance deals with her father's hospitalization for severe depression. The story is told through letters from Cadance as Rapunzel to an unknown recipient at a post office box. Cadance found part of a letter that her father had written to this person and she thinks that he or she might be able to help her undo the "curse" her father has fallen under. |
| Kindl, Patrice |
Goose Chase
Goose Chase is a delightful
new fairy tale told by the heroine, Alexandria Aurora Fortunato,
or Goose Girl, in old-fashioned fairy tale language. Alexandra
Aurora Fortunato has some bad luck. When she cries, she cries
tears of diamonds and when she combs her hair, the falling hair
is gold. A wicked king wants to marry her and so does a prince.
After she escapes imprisonment, she flees with her twelve beloved
geese, but doesn't get very far before she has to contend with
an ogress and further imprisonment. This is a fairy tale with
a twist, Alexandra Aurora is no maiden in distress. She is quite
capable of rescuing herself, thank you. |
| Levine, Gail Carson |
Ella Enchanted
This was Levine's debut novel,
a variation on a Cinderella story that won her a Newbery Honor.
Ella of Frell had a gift bestowed on her when she was an infant;
the gift of obedience. It turns out to be a curse as Ella is
incapable of disobeying an order. How is this a Cinderella story?
Well, there are elements from the traditional Cinderella story
present, the evil stepmother, the ugly and wicked stepsisters,
Prince Charming, except here he is named Char and Ella is by
no means helpless heroine waiting to be rescued. |
| Levine, Gail Carson |
Fairest
I thoroughly enjoyed this original fairy tale from Levine. She cleverly combined various motifs to produce a story familiar, yet refreshingly new. Aza is the adoptive and ungainly daughter of two innkeepers in the kingdom of Ayorthaia, where beauty and the ability to sing and write songs are valued above all else. The king has taken a foreign wife much younger than he and Aza has been invited to attend the royal wedding as the companion to a visiting duchess. It turns out that though his wife is very beautiful, she cannot sing. Aza has the ability to throw her voice, or illuse, as she calls it and when the queen discovers this ability, she basically blackmails Aza into being her lady-in-waiting. After the king is felled by a stray missile launched by a centuar during a wedding celebration, the queen asserts herself as a ruler in ways the citizens of the previously peaceful kingdom do not approve and there is talk of open revolt. |
| Marcantonio, Patricia Santos |
Red Ridin' in the Hood and Other Cuentos
Eleven fairy tales are retold and given a Latino twist mostly by giving Spanish names for the characters and replacing settings and foods with Hispanic ones. In Red Ridin' in the Hood, for example, Red lives in the barrio and her mother makes her wear a hideous red dress when she is sent to take her ailing granny some food. The wolf is driving a low-rider Chevrolet pick up truck. Red takes care of herself quite nicely. Jaime and Gabriela are lost in the desert after their father and stepfather abandon them and come upon a house made of pan dulce. Juan and the Pinto Bean Stalk, Blanca Nieves and the Seven Vaqueritos, Belleza Y La Bestia, The Three Chicharrones, and Emperador's New Clothes are some of the more familiar titles. Some are quite clever, some stretch cuteness a bit. The illustrations accompanying the tales are interesting. One reviewer wrote that there are plenty of wonderful tales of Hispanic origin, why adapt western folk tales? I am inclined to agree. |
| McKinley, Robin |
Beauty
This retelling of the Beauty
and the Beast is narrated by Beauty. She is rather embarrassed
by her nickname as she feels shy, clumsy and awkward. She's a
scholar and a horsewoman and lives prosperously with her two
sisters and father until he loses his ships at sea and therefore
his fortune. The story is quite faithful to the traditional tale
excepting the sisters are loving and kind. The characters are
interesting and some detail changes make for a charming book. |
| McKinley, Robin |
Spindle's End
This is an ambitious retelling
of The Sleeping Beauty and excepting for the fact that
the King and Queen's daughter was cursed by a malevolent fairy
to prick her finger on a spindle's end, this version of Sleeping
Beauty is not like anything you have ever read. It is wonderfully
rich and detailed. Rosie is a character that you would like to
meet in real life. It has everything you want in a fantasy, romance,
action and a believable setting. |
| Napoli, Donna Jo |
Bound
It was an ancient Chinese custom
to bind the feet of young girls to prevent their feet from becoming
big and thereby decreasing their prospects for marriage. Girl
children were not valued either and so not only were a Chinese
girl's feet bound, but she was also bound to a life of servitude,
if not to a husband then to someone within the extended family.
Napoli weaves these aspects of Chinese culture into a novel-length
Cinderella story which is at once new and familiar.
Xing Xing is the fourteen-year-old daughter
of potter Wu and is left at the mercy of her stepmother when
he dies suddenly. While her father was alive, she was doted upon
and taught calligraphy, poetry and philosophy. Once he is gone,
she is reduced to a life of drudgery, while her increasingly
desperate stepmother attempts to find a suitable husband for
her own daughter.
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| Napoli, Donna Jo |
The Magic Circle
This novel imagines the life
of the old witch of Hansel and Gretel before the tale. What made her who she was? Was she completely evil? Did she have any redeeming qualities? This variation on the Hansel and Gretel story is narrated by the witch. Before she lived alone in the forest, she lived in a village and had a daughter and was a midwife. |
| Napoli, Donna Jo |
The Prince of the Pond
This variation of The Frog
Prince is told by a female frog, later named Jade by the
mysterious, huge male frog she happens upon, jumping from a pile
of human clothing in the hag's garden. Jade is fascinated and
attracted to this handsome green frog who doesn't know how to
croak or jump properly. She saves his
cute, green fanny a couple of times and wonders how he ever got
to be so big being so clueless to frog ways. Fawg Pin develops
a name for himself, though, when he courageously outwits three
pond nemeses, the toad, the snapping turtle and the water snake.
He even begins to change Jade's view of frog ways by caring for
the tadpoles they have created.
Napoli followed The Prince of the Pond
up with two additional titles to form a trilogy. Jimmy the
Pickpocket of the Palace and Gracie, The Pixie of the
Puddle.
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| Oberman, Sheldon, reteller |
Solomon and the Ant
This collection of forty-four Jewish folktales beginning with the story of King Solomon and the Ant. They are diverse and interesting, some thought-provoking, some funny and all are accompanied by extensive notes and commentary. |
| Pattou, Edith |
East
I adored this novel length
retelling of East of the Sun and West of the Moon. This
498 page book doesn't feel long at all. It is an enchanting story
told from shifting points of view, Father, Neddy, Rose, the White
Bear and the Troll Queen. We learn of the family's history, their
declining fortune and father's initial career as a mapmaker and
of mother's superstitions and how they rule her life. We learn
of the lie of Rose's birth long before she does and of the mysterious
white bear that both she and her brother Neddy see from time
to time.
While faithful to the basic structure of
the traditional fairy tale (see annotated tale on SurLaLune
Fairy Tale Pages), the characters are more fully developed
and Rose's journey to find the bear is an epic in its own right.
This is a love story, a fantasy, and an adventure all in one
luminous, if not voluminous book.
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| Shusterman, Neal |
Duckling Ugly
This is probably my favorite of the Dark Fusion series so far, although I did like them all. Cara is is hideously ugly and while she receives unconditional love from her family, especially her mother, at school, her classmates are exceptionally cruel, especial the beautiful queen bee, Marisol. She is a talented artist and phenomenal speller, but she can't even enjoy the fruits of her spelling ability as she is publicly humiliated at a spelling bee through a computer glitch. She makes friends with a wise and wonderful blind, old woman who cultivates plants and then with a brutally honest young man from her high school. Just as she is beginning to blossom with the friendship of these two, she is improbably asked to the homecoming dance by the school's alpha male. She senses a joke here along the lines of Carrie, but is completely thrown by her parents' encouragement to go.
This story mixes the familiar tale of The Ugly Duckling with the legend of The Fountain of Youth in interesting and creepy ways and I highly recommend the story and the rest of the series as well.
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| Yolen, Jane & Adam Stemple |
Pay the Piper
Jane Yolen, author extraordinaire
and editor, reteller and all-around expert on fairy tales teamed
up with her rock musician son to pen the first in what appears
to be a series called Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tales.
Pay the Piper
retells the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin with the modern
day piper being Gringas, a rock star of indeterminate age. Fourteen-year-old
Callie begs to attend the concert Gringas and his band the Brass
Rats are giving the night before Halloween. She even goes so
far as to make attendance of the concert a homework assignment
for her journalism class because her parents are fairly strict.
With her reporter's pass, she is given a chance to interview
the band during intermission with other reporters. She begins
to sense something sinister might be about to happen after she
overhears an argument between Gringas and the owner of the concert
venue. The next day, Callie stays home from trick-or-treating
to work on her article while listening to her ipod. She is thus
deaf to the world, the phone ringing and, more importantly, the
hypnotizing flute of Gringas as he lures all the children from
their trick-or-treating.
There is a parallel back story about how
Gringas became a piper centuries ago and a real feeling of suspense
in this satisfying retelling. For another retelling of the Pied
Piper, try Donna Jo Napoli's Breath.
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