Honk If You Still Love Fairy Tales

What if you're not on board with the publishing industry's newly dismissive attitude toward picture book fairy tales for 5- to 8-year-olds? What if you—and your kids—are still in love with fairy tales and their happily-ever-afters? Fortunately, there's a lot of good stuff already in print and still more at your local library.


Picture Book Fairy Tales and Folktales

Since many folk- and fairy tales have been around for a few centuries, illustrators are the place to start, most notably illustrator Trina Schart Hyman, whose romantic renderings continue to appeal to girls wanting a good princess fix. For that matter, her Caldecott Honor book Little Red Riding Hood has never been beat. Neither has her Sleeping Beauty. Or her Snow White. Besides which, her dragon in Caldecott winner St. George and the Dragon is pretty much the coolest one I've ever seen.

Kinuko Craft is the new go-to illustrator for classic fairy tales, though some have argued that her artwork has more adult appeal than child appeal. My favorite story she has illustrated is Marianna Mayer's retelling of Baba Yaga and Vaselisa the Brave—featuring the scariest witch of all time! Gennady Spirin is another fairy tale illustrator whose work, I feel, has a real adult sensibility. Then again, one reason to collect the literary fairy tale is because the art can be so sumptuous.

Paul Galdone brilliantly illustrated many folktales. The Three Billy Goats Gruff is a good example of his robust, loose-line style.

Look for Errol Le Cain's illustrations, as well, with their art deco feel. I especially like his Cinderella.

Or find books illustrated by Margot Zemach, particularly The Funny Little Woman and The Three Wishes. Also track down Duffy and the Devil, retold by Harve Zemach. As The New York Times Book Review said of this Caldecott-winning book, "Margot Zemach draws like an intoxicated angel" (qtd on Amazon).

James Marshall created some of the best—and funniest—versions of fairy tales and folktales ever, e.g., his Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, and The Three Little Pigs.

Other folk- and fairy tale illustrators of note include Susan Jeffers, Ruth Sanderson, and Caldecott winners Gerald McDermott and Paul O. Zelinsky. Not to mention Anita Lobel—look for her illustrations for Princess Furball, as retold by Charlotte Huck.

As for authors, four big names in folktale retelling are Robert D. San Souci, Rafe Martin, Eric A. Kimmel, and Aaron Shepard. I'll recommend The Talking Eggs for San Souci (a Caldecott Honor book), The Rough-Face Girl for Martin, Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock for Kimmel, and One Eye! Two Eyes! Three Eyes! for Shepard. These and other writers will introduce your child to world folktales, a great way to look beyond the European tradition.

A publisher called Barefoot Books is well known for its collections and single titles of world folktales, so watch for their stuff and check out their catalog.

Or try Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters, a Caldecott Honor variation of the Cinderella story set in Africa. And illustrator Rachel Isadora is single-handedly rewriting the Disney canon, producing well-told versions of well-known tales, all set in Africa—most recently The Twelve Dancing Princesses, The Princess and the Pea, Rapunzel, and Hansel and Gretel.

A few other favorites of mine are Mr. Semolina-Semolinus by Anthony L. Manna and Christodoula Mitakidou, illustrated by Giselle Potter; The Language of Birds by Rafe Martin, illustrated by Susan Gaber; and East of the Sun, West of the Moon, whether illustrated by P.J. Lynch or Mercer Mayer.

For a gritty, funny American backcountry tale, try The Old Woman and the Willy Nilly Man by jill Wright, illustrated by Glen Rounds.

Of course, we must also acknowledge the greatness that is The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith! And the equally wonderful The True Story of the Three Little Pigs.

Some more standouts, in my opinion:

--Bearskin, by Howard Pyle, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (look for the multicultural families!)
--Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like, by Jay Williams, illustrated by Mercer Mayer
--The Fearsome Inn, a Newbery Honor book by Isaac Bashevis Singer, illustrated by Nonny Hogrogian
--The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship, a Caldecott winner retold by Arthur Ransome and illustrated by Uri Shulevitz
--The Frog Prince, translated by Naomi Lewis, illustrated by Binette Schroeder
--The Gunniwolf, retold by Wilhelmina Harper, illustrated by William Wiesner (not the newer version, please no!)
--Heckedy Peg, by Audrey and Don Wood
--Henny-Penny, retold and illustrated by Jane Wattenberg (with photos)
--Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, retold by Eric A. Kimmel, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman
--Iron John, retold by Marianna Mayor, illustrated by Winslow Pels
--King Bidgood's in the Bathtub, by Audrey and Don Wood
--King Grisly-Beard, by the Brothers Grimm and Maurice Sendak
--The Lady and the Lion, retold by Laurel Long and Jacqueline K. Ogburn, illustrated by Laurel Long
--The Little Red Hen Makes a Pizza, retold by Philemon Sturges, illustrated by Amy Walrod
--Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China, a Caldecott winner retold and illustrated by Ed Young
--The Magic Nesting Doll, by Jacqueline K. Ogburn, illustrated by Laurel Long
--Mirandy and Brother Wind, a Caldecott Honor book by Patrician C. McKissack, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney
--O'Sullivan Stew, by Hudson Talbott
--Ouch! retold by the wonderful Natalie Babbitt, illustrated by Fred Marcellino
--Puss in Boots, translated by Malcolm Arthur, illustrated by Fred Marcellino
--Snow White, retold by talented middle grade author Josephine Poole, illustrated by Angela Barrett
--Snow White, illustrated by Charles Santore
--Sugar Cane, A Caribbean Rapunzel, by Patricia Storace, illustrated by Raul Colón
--Tam Lin, retold by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Charles Mikolaycak
--The 3 Bears and Goldilocks, retold by Margaret Willey, illustrated by Heather M. Solomon
--The Three Billy Goats Gruff, illustrated by Janet Stevens (note the biggest goat in shades and a black leather motorcycle jacket)
--Three Sacks of Truth, retold by Eric A. Kimmel, illustrated by Robert Rayevsky
--The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen, retold by Stephen Mitchell, illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline
--Tom Thumb, retold and illustrated by Richard Jesse Watson
--Tops and Bottoms, a Caldecott Honor book illustrated by Janet Stevens
--The Twelve Dancing Princesses, retold by Marianna Mayer, illustrated by Kinuko Craft
--The Twelve Dancing Princesses, illustrated by Jane Ray
--A Weave of Words, retold by Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Raul Colón
--The Well at the End of the World, retold by Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Rebecca Walsh
--The Wild Swans, translated by Naomi Lewis, illustrated by Anne Yvonne Gilbert

There are many more, but I'll stop there! For Cinderella variations, see my annotated list in this post: "How Cinderella Got Twittered."



Original Folktales, a Contradiction in Terms

These would be stories by writers who love fairy tales and folktales and have written their own—I've done one myself. Hans Christian Andersen is the most famous such author, with his The Little Mermaid (the original is very sad), The Emperor's New Clothes, and The Snow Queen, among others. I also really like James Thurber's delightful tongue-in-cheek tale, Many Moons, whether illustrated by Louis Slobodkin or Marc Simont. And Jane Yolen has written some books I treasure, most notably Good Griselle and Dove Isabeau.

And then there's Eleanor Farjeon's long and lovely story, Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep, illustrated by Charlotte Voake. Did you know, too, that Ursula K. LeGuin wrote an original picture book folktale? It's got trolls in it! Look for A Ride on the Red Mare's Back, illustrated by Julie Downing. Or perhaps you'd prefer a fairy godmother story by Charles Dickins: The Magic Fish-Bone, illustrated by Robert Florczak.


Collections, Adapted or Academic

Basically, fairy tale collections fall into two categories: adapted collections for children, often used as read-alouds, and lengthy collections of tales for scholars or serious fairy tale fanatics (um, like me!). Just note that a lot of the collections really are for grown-ups, so the stories can be fairly mature, especially when it comes to violence. The Brothers Grimm are famous for that.

Since most of the adapted collections for young readers I own are out of print, let me just recommend that when you choose a collection, you should read some sample stories first to make sure the reteller has a way with words and hasn't completely slaughtered the plots in doing the adapting. The most poetic reteller I've come across is Geraldine McCaughrean, who's done collections of the Greek and Roman myths, for instance. If you want a highly simplified collection, I will suggest DK's A First Book of Fairy Tales, edited by Mary Hoffman and Anne Millard, illustrated by Julie Downing.

Look, too, for collections of stories from different countries. As a child, I loved my collection of Japanese fairy tales, also the selections from the tales of the Arabian Nights that my grandma gave me for Christmas one year. Now you can get stories from every continent and many individual cultures, as well. For instance, being from Los Angeles, I'm quite fond of Jane Curry's collection of California Indian stories, Back in the Beforetime.

Grimms' Fairy Tales are available in various editions, but a couple of classics are The Juniper Tree, selected and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, and Tales from Grimm and More Tales from Grimm, illustrated by Wanda Gág of Millions of Cats fame.

For those of you who worry that the fairy tales are all about guy heroes, with passive princesses around every corner, try these feisty feminist collections: Tatterhood and Other Tales and The Maid of the North, both edited by Ethel Johnston Phelps; Fearless Girls, Wise Women, and Beloved Sisters, edited by Kathleen Ragan; and Not One Damsel in Distress, collected and retold by Jane Yolen, with illustrations by Susan Guevara. (The Phelps books are for older children, the Ragan collection seems geared toward adults, and the Yolen collection is for kids in about 3rd-6th grades, I'd say.)

Of course, I can scarcely mention fairy tale collections without referring you to Andrew Lang's classic series, named by color: The Red Fairy Book, The Blue Fairy Book, The Yellow Fairy Book, etc. These are densely told, so are not necessarily appealing to all of today's younger readers, but you sure get a lot of stories. Older kids with a strong interest in fairy tales might go for these.

In addition, I would suggest you get your hands on Jane Yolen's comprehensive collection for grown-ups and older children: Favorite Folktales from Around the World.


The Rise of the Retelling

I am happy to report that when one door closes, another door opens. Or maybe a window. Sorry for the cliché, but it does apply in this case—the demise of the picture book fairy tale in contemporary publishing coincides rather uncoincidentally with another trend, the rise of fairy tale retellings for middle grade and young adult readers. It's like when you're watching Peter Pan and everyone yells, "I do believe in fairies!" I won't make a lengthy list here, but a few key titles are Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine and Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. See also Adam Gidwitz's new book, A Tale Dark and Grimm, which deliberately incorporates some of the Grimms' gorier tales into a single long story starring Hansel and Gretel, here re-imagined as a prince and princess.

The retelling trend is heartening, as is the knowledge that publishing decisions come in waves—and that our libraries already contain a treasure house of picture book folk- and fairy tales. Long live the fairy tale, in whatever shape it takes during the next century!


Note #1: On Monday, I'll be hosting a discussion of fairy tale retellings over at the Enchanted Inkpot.

Note #2: The definitions of the terms "fairy tale" and "folktale" overlap, but the latter refers specifically to stories collected from the oral tradition and more recently has been used, I think, to refer to stories about animals or those tales beloved of smaller children, such as Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Three Little Pigs, and Goldilocks and The Three Bears. In popular usage at least, fairy tales have come to mean mostly the princess tales, especially the classics coopted by Disney—Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Snow White. Fairy tales also tend to feature magical powers and spells, more than the simple inclusion of talking animals. It may interest you to know that in the original story, Rapunzel is not actually about a princess, despite the long golden hair and her depiction as a princess in the new Disney movie, Tangled. (On a historical note, the French nobility had such a craze for fairy tales during the 1600s that some of the aristocrats wrote their own, though these often ramble, tending to be more courtly than well plotted. Madame d'Aulnoy is the best known of these writers.)

Note #3: See also my annotated roundup of trickster tales from earlier this year.

Note for Worried Parents: Trina Schart Hyman's illustrations occasionally show semi-nude female figures, e.g., in the wood carvings. Jane Ray's folk art-style versions sometimes include breast-feeding women. And Grimms' tales, if not adapted, are pretty darn grim, with violence, child abandonment, betrayal, cannibalism, etc.

Update #1: At her blog, Seven Miles of Steel Thistles, YA fantasy writer Katherine Langrish has been asking guest authors to talk about their favorite fairy tales. This week's guest is the marvelous Megan Whalen Turner. And look back over the previous ten posts in the series! (Thanks to ccwtaylor of Sounis for the link.)

Update #2: Check out this article by Marjorie Ingall in the New York Times Review of Books, "When Stories Had Sharp Teeth," in which she talks about three recent children's books inspired by Grimms' fairy tales.

Update #3: When it comes to the demise of the fairy tale (in general, not in picture book publishing!), folk- and fairy tale expert Jack Zipes begs to differ. Thanks to Amy of Amy's Library of Rock for the link to this article.

Update #4: Bildungsroman has posted a terrific list of fairy tale retellings!

Once Upon a Time: Classic Fairy Tale Retellings

Between Shrek and Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted, fairy tale retellings might seem to be an invention of the turn of the millenium. But we can go clear back to the 1920s and 1940s for a quartet of early gems in the retelling corner of the children's fantasy treasury.

You've heard of Arthur Rackham, right? You may not have heard of Charles Seddon Evans, though. C.S. Evans wrote novel or rather novella-length versions of Cinderella in 1919 and Sleeping Beauty in 1920 to accompany Rackham's illustrations. Evans was actually an editor (and later Chairman and Managing Director) of the Heinemann publishing firm.

Evans's retellings might easily have fallen short of Rackham's masterful work, but they are surprisingly strong in their own right. The style is a little old-fashioned, but it's still a lot of fun. Here is an excerpt from Sleeping Beauty:

The first thing [the king] did was to summon all the magicians of his own and neighboring countries, promising a rich reward to the one who could show him a way to defeat the old fairy's malice. The magicians came in scores, some with long beards reaching to their feet, some without any beards at all, some with bald heads, and some with matted hair that looked as though it had not been combed for centuries. For days there were so many magicians about the palace that they were as common as cats, and it was impossible to enter any room without surprising one or the other of them, sitting in deep reflection and looking as wise as only a magician can look. But nothing came of their thinking, and one after the other they gave up the task and departed, having first asked for their traveling expenses.

The story of Sleeping Beauty needs a bit more padding than Cinderella does, so Evans is at his leisure to fill us in about things like the food on the menu at the christening feast. Alternatively droll and painterly, Evans gives us menu items such as "sardines from Sardinia" and "eagles carved of ice hovering over silver dishes filled with apricots." Evans has a knack for fleshing out this well-known story with just the right details, such as presenting the words of the proclamation banning spinning wheels from the kingdom.

All of this makes for a pleasant, leisurely retelling, more of a drawn-out version of the original rather than a true novelization. As for Rackham's illustrations, they are all done in silhouettes, which feels like a lost art form these days. Spreads showing the entire palace and various people in it are especially striking, as are a couple of rather terrifying illustrations of hapless princes trapped in the brambles and turning to skeletons.

We get a lot more description in Evans' Sleeping Beauty than is common in today's fast-paced work, but all of it is very pretty, and certain young readers will enjoy the detailed depiction of the palace—for example, when the hundred years have passed and the prince is making his way through the somnolent rooms. In such scenes, Evans captures Perrault's tone, then extends it.

Evans' Cinderella is arguably the better of the two books, perhaps because he has more plot to play with. Here is Cinderella's father describing the new stepsisters to his daughter, already sounding worried:

"One is called Charlotte," answered her father, and the other Euphronia."
"I like the name of Charlotte," said Ella miserably. "Are they big girls or little ones?"
"Well, you see," said her father, "correctly speaking, they are not girls at all. That is to say, child, they have—ahem—arrived at years of discretion. You must not expect them to play ball or anything like that, or run about the garden with you. They are—what shall we say?—a little sober in temperament; but excellent creatures, nonetheless—excellent creatures. You will get on very well together, I'm sure, with a little give and take on both sides."
"Just a minute, father," pleaded Ella. "Do tell me some more about my new sisters. I cannot understand all the big words you use. Do you mean that they are grown up?"
Her father nodded. "In point of fact, adult," he said, and his tone was so gloomy that Ella had to smile.

Together with Cinderella, we get to know the stepsisters all too well, adding weight to the injustice of her situation. Arthur Rackham's illustrations are again presented in black silhouettes, although he uses a little gray to add dimension to the grander scenes. Cinderella attends the ball for two nights running, allowing the story to build more suspensefully. It also makes the romance a bit more credible. Evans gives us an all-too-real concern from Cinderella herself after the second ball: "It is the Princess he loves... If he could see me now in these ragged clothes, or find me at my drudgery in the kitchen, would he recognize me? And even if he did know me again, would he be horrified to think that he had danced with a kitchen-maid?"

Fortunately, the prince is not so shallow as all that. "He felt sure that she must be in some trouble, otherwise she would not have run away from the ball so suddenly." He resolves to find her and help her. And he suspects she might have been the poorly dressed girl the guards saw running away.

One of my favorite parts of this book is that Rackham and Evans promenade the shoe-aspiring girls in batches. On one page, we are told, "First of all came the princesses," and we are shown two princesses in silhouette. The next page says, "and then the duchesses," with three duchesses shown below. "And then the countesses," six of them. "And so on to the plain gentlewomen," (ten women), "until it was the turn of the servants in the kitchen, but the slipper would not go on the foot of any of them" (twelve servant girls and a cat). That's in the palace, but of course we know the search will broaden its reach and lead us to "happily ever after."

The Rackham and Evans books are very nice, and I do recommend them; however, they have to step aside modestly when they see the next two books coming... Eleanor Farjeon's clever, whimsical, often-funny voice makes her Cinderella retelling, The Glass Slipper, and her Rumpelstiltskin retelling, The Silver Curlew, true classics.

Even if you think you've never heard of Eleanor Farjeon, you might know who she is—she wrote the poem "Morning Has Broken," which was set to music and performed by Cat Stevens. (She is also the author of a long and luxuriously fantastical story about jump ropes, elves, and sugar candy currently available in picture book format. Charlotte Voake is the illustrator of Farjeon's Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep.)

It's worth noting that in their early editions, Farjeon's two retellings are illustrated by another famous artist, Ernest H. Shepard of Winnie-the-Pooh fame.

Now, cynical modern readers might find The Glass Slipper—which was originally a play in 1944—too adorable to bear, but anyone who likes slightly old-fashioned, kinda girly books like Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess and The Secret Garden or Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes will be happy to discover this tale.

Ella is so very sweet, the Princess of Nowhere... She talks to the objects in the kitchen, and they answer. Her stepmother finds out that Ella has a little picture of her mother and uses it to keep her under control. Ella's bed in the kitchen is a sort of cupboard, so the stepmother locks her into it when the girl defies her. Here's an early encounter with Cinderella, who is wishing she could sleep in:

"Cockadoodledoo!" crowed the Rooster.
"Cockadoodledoo!" mocked Ella. "Well, I won't! Everybody orders me about, but you shan't!" And down she lay with her fingers in her ears. That seemed to finish the Rooster, and he didn't crow again. But now all round the kitchen went the funny little stir that meant the day had begun and the Things weren't being attended to. The tall clock in the corner seemed to be ticking a little more impressively than before, and Ella couldn't shut it out:

Tick-tock!
Tick-tock!
The Grandfather Clock
Agrees with the Cock!

And as it began to strike seven:

Bing-Bong!
Bing-Bong!
It's exceedingly wrong
To stay in bed long!

Ella sat up again with a little sigh. "All right Grandpa. I know. You never let me off, do you?"
"I never let anybody off," ticked the Clock.

As the Things stop fussing and Ella begins her day, her father sneaks in the kitchen door from outside, hoping for a quiet moment with his daughter before his wife catches him there. But of course, she does.

Some of this may sound a bit twee, but I have to tell you, the story unfolds so delightfully that it works. One touch I like is that Farjeon incorporates a fairy tale trope by having Cinderella help an old woman in the snowy woods. In return, the hungry girl finds a magical meal. Later the woman turns out to be her fairy grandmother.

We also get some giddily colorful characters at court, such as the king's fool (AKA the Zany) and a tenderhearted herald. Of course, Farjeon creates her own version of the dreadful and silly stepsisters:

"I'm not going to be a wallflower." The Sisters pranced about, practicing curtsies. "Nobody's not going to ask me to dance, so there!"
"Nobody's going to neglect me," said Arethusa.
"Nobody's going to reject me," said Araminta.
"I'm going to be the most beautiful bloom in the whole of the room, so there!"
"Excepting for me! People will pass the remark, 'She's just like a hothouse rose'—so there!"
Minta tossed her head. "If I don't get lots of introductions, look out for ructions!"
"If I don't get first prize for airs and graces," said Thusa, "I'll smack their great big ugly faces. I'm not going to be a wallflower.""
"No more am I not going to be a wallflower!"
"So there!" The Sisters flopped on the floor in a heap, with not a curtsy left between them.
Ella came timidly to the door. "The bath is ready, madam."
"Dip, dip, dip!" said the Stepmother.
The Sisters gathered themselves up, piled Ella's arms with towels and soap and sponges and perfume and rubber ducks, and pushed past her to the bathroom, where she had to scrub their backs for them. They were much too lazy to do it for themselves.

If The Glass Slipper is delightful, The Silver Curlew is strange and marvelous. It has a more modern sensibility than the retelling of Cinderella, almost an edge. And yet, that's a subtlety not everyone will notice. The most obvious and appealing thing about this book is its humor.

Here Farjeon combines the story of Rumpelstiltskin with a nursery rhyme about the man in the moon. Only in her version, Rumpelstiltskin (or rather Tom Tit Tot) has become a little black imp, clearly kin to devils and demons, while the miller's daughter is pretty Doll Codling, the laziest girl in all the land—but also a girl with a real knack for motherhood, when she gets the chance.

More important is Doll's younger sister Poll, who is wiry and adventurous and clever. She's the real hero of our story.

The tale's comic centerpiece is Nollekens, King of Norfolk, an overgrown child and towering sulker who clashes less-than-majestically with his new sister-in-law and nearly spoils the whole thing when it comes to naming names. His temper is a running joke that eventually offers up a tidy tidbit of a message, though not in a pompous way.

And who is Charlee, the daydreamy fisherman who wanders up and down the beach, followed by a parade of puffins? When Poll saves a beautiful silver bird from the imps of the Witching-Wood, it is Charlee who helps her figure out how to care for the injured bird. The curlew is even the subject of one of the quarrels between Poll and the king:

"I'm not featherbrained!" cried Poll, stamping her foot at him.
"You are featherbrained!" cried Noll, stamping his foot at her. "And no wonder, sitting over that silly bird of yours, morning, noon, and night. I've a good mind to have it banished."
"Don't you touch my bird! Don't you touch my bird!" squealed Poll.
"I wouldn't touch your bird with a pair of filigree sugar-tongs," said Noll.
"You haven't got a pair of filigree sugar-tongs."
"I shall have some made," said Nollekens, "especially not to touch your bird with. Nursing a sick curlew all the year round!"
"It's getting better," Poll declared.

Other passages are quietly poetic:

[Poll] unclosed her eyes, which felt a little sticky from being so fast-shut. At first the moonlight made everything swimmy and she could only see a sliding silver movement over the grass that seemed to be the wind made visible. Then as her eyes cleared Poll caught and held her breath. What did she see? She saw the Silver Curlew floating above the flower-beds like a large moth. It rose a little, dipped, rose a little higher, and slid to earth again. Poll watched its movements anxiously. It stepped through the dewy grass as though it were stepping through seaweed, and stopped beside the fountain to wet its bill. Refreshed, it began to try its wings again.

Soon the deadline for Doll's guessing the spinning creature's name comes calling, the adventure escalates, and Poll must slip into the Witching-Wood, disguised as an imp, in order to save her baby nephew.

Besides the characters, the humor, and the poet's masterful use of language, Eleanor Farjeon's greatest accomplishment is to make something new out of an old story. She even manages to twine another tale through it using a nursery rhyme. There's an artistry and a grace to The Silver Curlew that transforms it into a gift of a story for any young fantasy reader, even 50+ years after its initial publication.

While you can enjoy all kinds of fairy tale retellings in the 2000's, don't forget the earliest of these books. Sometimes they're the best of the bunch.

A Review of Thornspell by Helen Lowe

Fairy tale retellings are almost always done from the princess’s point of view, so it’s nice to read one from the prince’s perspective. Offhand, the only other book I can think of with a similar point of view is Alex Flinn’s Beastly, a modern-day retelling of "Beauty and the Beast." Of course, in the case of "Sleeping Beauty," the princess is out of commission for much of the story. Hence Thornspell, Helen Lowe’s retelling of the rose-covered fairy tale about an eerie hundred-year enchantment.

As a boy, Prince Sigismund reads stories of Parsifal and the Grail quest and dreams of becoming a knight-errant. Raised quietly in a castle on the west edge of the kingdom while his father goes south to fight a war, he looks out over a forbidden forest, wondering about the legend of a hidden castle there. Eventually he comes under attack by an enchantress calling herself the Margravine zu Malvolin, who appears at the castle gate and tries to enlist Sigismund to her cause. The boy barely escapes and becomes very ill, but he is helped by shadowy figures who appear to wish him well. Sigismund also begins to dream of walking through the legendary castle in the wood.

In response to the near miss, the king sends Sigismund a bodyguard and trainer named Balisan. The man is mysterious and powerful, and he seems to know a lot about magic. He introduces Sigismund to the fairy who healed him, the Margravine’s adversary.

In time, Sigismund journeys to the capital city and his father’s castle. There he is befriended by a smiling youth named Flor who, if readers are paying the least bit of attention, will immediately strike them as the back-stabbing type. Malvolin’s attempts to stop Sigismund from freeing the princess in the wood continue, but with the help of his allies and a magic sword, the prince ultimately triumphs.

Sigismund is such a likable boy, then hero, that I think you will enjoy spending time with him. The only thing I didn’t love about this book is something I’ve seen popping up a lot lately, and that is an obsessive need to explain every little plot point and bit of magic in detail, dialoguing it to death. Really, as long as a story hangs together, long explanations and swathes of backstory are simply a distraction. There’s a Hercule-Poirot-gathering-everybody-in-the-library feeling to some of the discussions in this book, is all I’m saying. (Of course, J.K. Rowling did it for pages with her ghostly Dumbledore near the end of Book 7.)

I’ll note that Balisan teaches Sigismund meditation practices to bring out his heritage of magical power. Again, I’ve seen this mixture of Eastern religion and European fairy tale magic in other fantasy I’ve read lately. Since our modern world is becoming a real cultural mix, I suppose such blendings are inevitable. I recently read a book where it was handled very badly, but Lowe manages to pull it off, mostly by making Balisan a magical figure from another land.

Quibbles aside, Helen Lowe’s Thornspell is an excellent addition to your library of fairy tale retellings—my favorite subgenre. Girls who like fantasy and fairy tales will want to read this one. And, while it isn’t a guy book the way the Alex Rider books are, boys who read fantasy should also like Thornspell, putting themselves in the place of good-hearted prince Sigismund as he struggles to defeat an old and evil adversary.