It’s been months and months and months: I have been trying
to write a blog post about fairy tales. But each time I think about it, a new “fractured
fairy tale” comes in – today Frogged
by Vivian Vande Velde and Rump: The True
Story of Rumpelstiltskin by Liesl Shurtliff are sitting on my desk – and I convince myself
that I have to read more before I write. Alas, it cannot be done. At least not
in this lifetime.
Maybe, though, I can just say something quick. First, I have
high standards for fractured fairy tales. My two favorites are Into the Woods, the Stephen Sondheim and
James Lapine musical, and the Fables
series of comics created by Bill Willingham. I like well-written and well-thought-out works. And these
two fit the bill. So it may come as a surprise that I really enjoyed A Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom by
Christopher Healy and illustrated by Todd Harris. The story details the true
stories of the Princes Charming (otherwise known as Frederic, Gustav, Liam, and
Duncan). At first, the guys are all stereotypes (Federic is a fop, for
instance), but I think this series will get better. And I think I like how the stories
are re-imagined. I believe that the book has already been optioned for a movie.
I hope they can avoid Disney-fying it.
Second, if you like this sort of thing, children’s
literature is awash with retellings and re-imaginings of fairy tales. Several
years ago, The Sisters Grimm series by
Michael Buckley was very popular. More recently, many people have lauded Adam
Gidwitz’s A Tale Dark and Grimm and In a Glass Grimmly. (I found the Sisters
series not to my liking and Gidwitz’s stories a bit too gruesome.) But the list
truly goes on and on, and I’m not even thinking about picture books or books in
the Dewey 398s (fairy tales).
For starters and just in recently memory, Chris Colfer from
the television series Glee has
written at least one book in his Land of
Stories series; Sara Mlynowski has two books out in her Whatever After series – Fairest of All and If the Shoe Fits (they look really fun but I haven’t gotten to them
yet); Wendy Mass has her Twice Upon a
Time series; E.D. Baker has written The
Wide-Awake Princess series; just last week I was reading Jane Yolen’s new
book of fairy tale poetry, Grumbles from
the Forest.
In the YA section of you library, you’ll find Jessica Day
George’s Princess of the Silver Woods;
Marissa Meyer’s Cinder and its sequel
Scarlet (a series that looks
thrilling – it mixes fairy tales and cyborgs); and Sarah Cross’s Kill Me Softly. Of course, on
television, there were two fairy tale-based series on in recent seasons (I
didn’t watch them and have forgotten their names) and those battling Snow White
movies in theaters. That new Jack and the Beanstalk movie hit movie theaters
recently. And for grown-ups, Phillip
Pullman has written a hefty new book: Fairy
Tales from the Brothers Grimm.
You can take me to task and tell me all the books I’m
missing. I know there are so much more. Someday, maybe, I will catch up on all these
and then we can get all Jungian on each other and discuss archetypes. It’ll be fun.
(One more thing, for an insightful essay on the works of the
Brothers’ Grimm, check out this article from The New Yorker: Http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/23/120723crbo_books_acocella?currentPage=all.)
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