Recommendations for Fairy Tales Retold

A lot of this information gets posted here and there on other threads, but I thought it might be useful to have the information in one place. I have a number of recommendations, but I will start with one: How to Spin Gold: A Woman's Tale. Although I enjoy YA fiction in the fairy tale genre, a good retelling for adults is always nice. This is a lovely retelling of Rumpelstiltskin.

I don't know how far back in time one has to go to pick a "fairy story" that's being retold..but The Alchemy of Stone is very delicate and literate take on the Pygmalion/Pinocchio trope..though not a specific retelling, ala Deerskin.

The Princess Tales by Gail Carson Levine - very short, very funny, and each tale creates a unique spin on come common fairy tales, such as Sleeping Beauty, The Princess and the Pea, and many others.

Ella Enchanted another book by Gail Carson Levine wasn't too shabby for a YA book. I liked her take on Cinderella and thought the ending was interesting (a little women's empowerment there).

Are there any good re-tellings of the Pied Piper?

Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast by Robin McKinley was a pretty decent retelling of Beauty and the Beast of course. I enjoyed it. Not so much a YA book though.

#5 by jldarden> i would HIGHLY suggest the novel Peter & Max by Bill Willingham. it's part of the overall world of Willingham's Fables comic series, but you don't really need to have read the comics to follow this one. it's quite twisty but oh so very good. i highly recommend the comics series as well, especially for anyone over the age of about 16-17 who is on this thread! ;)

Hey, jldarden. I haven't read any for the Pied Piper. But I typed it into google and got a list of "retellings" from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_accounts_of_the_Pied_Piper#The_Pie...

And this site mentioned a couple (mostly YA):

http://www.library.illinois.edu/edx/classics_retold.htm

Thanks, all. My TBR list is growing!

#5: For a more "literary" and satirical version of the Pied Piper, you might look for Marina Tsvetaeva's Ratcatcher. I've been trying to get my hands on a copy and would love to hear how it is from anyone who's read it.

no5- Pay the Piper: A Rock 'n' Roll Fairy Tale is a re-telling by Jane Yolen

#5 -- Wild Magic by Cat Weatherill was pretty good, as I recall.

Can't believe I just found this group! :p

Shannon Hale has a number of books that retell Grimm fairy tales, my favorite of which is The Goose Girl.

I also recently read Tender Morsels which is a sort of reworking of Rose Red/Snow White. A more grown-up story, not for children.

And I also have a book I thumb through for stories: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

ETA: Gregory Maguire's books Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister and Mirror Mirror, and Beastly by Alex Finn.

#13 by UnrulySun> And I also have a book I thumb through for stories: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me

that is near the top of my wishlist. how do you find the stories? with a lot of anthologies it can be seriously hit or miss. would you say most of the ones in that are better than average?

I may not be the best judge, since I don't often read anthologies or short stories anyway. But the ones that I have read are pretty good. So far I have stuck with known (to me) authors and they haven't disappointed.

thanks. looking forward to getting ahold of it (i basically try to get any anthology with work by Gregory Maguire or Neil Gaiman, which is a pretty long list).

I was inspired to pick the book up again today, and I read Neil Gaiman's "Orange" which was good. I think I like best his way of telling the story in such a way as to make the most oddball, fantastical, magical happenings seem commonplace. I mean, of course you glow orange and levitate when you use spray tan.

I also read "Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child" by Joy Williams, which broke my heart. I learned something new about James Audubon as well.

"Little Pot" by Ilya Kaminsky (whom I have liked before), while interesting, was more of a very short autobiographical vingette than "fairy tale" type story.

And yet another collection of fairy tales retold..."Snow White Gets Her Say" by me, chris wind.

What would have happened if the girls and women in the classics had been feminist?

The collection includes remakes of Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Thumbelina/Tom Thumb, The Enchanted Pig, Sleeping Beauty, The King’s Daughter, The Fisherman and His Wife, and a composite Wicked Witch tale.

Snow White Gets Her Say

huh, you must have just added the book, as it doesn't touchstone yet.

Sounds interesting.

>17 UnrulySun: UnrulySun I though the collection was very well done, despite the inevitable places where a writer's vision just didn't gel for me. Baba Iaga and the Pelican Child is one of the strongest stories in the book.

I reviewed it last year, if you'd like to see a more extensive response: The Things We Are Not Meant to Know

The venerable Jack Zipes has a wonderful fairy tale collection Don't Bet on the Prince.

I've already said it, but Daughter of the Forest is a nice retelling of The Six Swans.

Straw into gold by Gary Schmidt.

Rumplestiltskin from Rumplestiltskin's perpective. What happened to the stolen child why it happened and the effect on all concerned. Found it in Hay on Wye for 80p A fabulous story ...read it to my now 11yr old in one sitting.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Straw-Into-Gold-Gary-Schmidt/dp/0547237766/ref=sr_1_5?s=...

Snow White Gets Her Say

touchstone works now. It looks interesting.

For a quick, satirical retelling of several fairy tales Politically Correct Bedtime Stories: Modern Tales for Our Life and Times by James Finn Garner. I just read his other one, something like "Once Upon an Enlightened Time" (I don't remember the exact title). Both were pretty funny.

And for a short story rec I was pleasantly surprised by Edward Carpenter's "Happily Ever After." It's also a retelling of several fairy tales combined into one (Cinderella, Snow White, Frog Princess, Sleeping Beauty). It's first person narration, with a wicked queen as the lead.

Both aren't long reads, but if you're in the mood for just something short I'd recommend either of these.

I finished The Snow Child last night ... a retelling of the Russian fairytale Snegurochka (also know as The Snow Maiden) as well as various other versions of this story. The tale utilizes magical realism rather than the standard revisionist fairy story. Eowyn Ivey has a gift for creating a picture of Alaska c. 1918, yet giving it an almost mythical feel. Recommended for lovers of magical realism who can spare time from reading Dodo or Pushkin, or Proust (non of whom are magical realists).



The Snow Maiden, 1899, Viktor Mikhaylovich Vasnetsov

Edmund Dulac's The Snow Maiden (perhaps not the same story)

26: I loved the Politically Correct Bedtime Stories! My brother and I found it in the library when we were 10 and 13 (respectively) and demanded that our father read them to us. He rolled his eyes as we begged for a bedtime story (in the most hammed-up way we could manage), but we know he enjoyed it as much as we did.

I just picked up a copy of The Faery Reel, has anyone read through this one yet? It also has Gaiman and several other big names.

It's one my to read list... you'll have to let us know how it is.

I just read Cinder by Marissa Meyer which is a retelling of Cinderella. But it takes place in the future. And Cinder is a cyborg (aka half human half robot). So good. I highly recommend it!

I really like all of the Datlow and Windling collaborations; I've got "The Green Man" and "The Beastly Bride" and "Coyote Road" as well as "Faery Reel". It's the best of the best, and they really are nice short stories easy to read at a sitting if you're impatient or pressed for time. They also have some YA books: "Swan Sister" and "Wolf at the Door."

Has anyone ever heard of a re-telling of Cinderella that takes the form of a letter from the evil stepmother, explaining it all away as having been endurance training for Cindy's own good - and ends with SM offering to help her escape from the prince, who has turned out to be evil and sadistic too. I THOUGHT it was a Tanith Lee story and I'd seen it in her "Red as Blood: Tales from the Sisters Grimmer, but no. Otherwise that's a wonderful book full of nice dark and scary re told tales.

If only I could remember where I'd read it... and that I knew how to format my titles here into links.

Oooh - and one of my favorite re told tales, "Enchantment" by Orson Scott Card about Sleeping Beauty, and it's about Baba Yaga and modern witchcraft too. Really a wonderful book.

KaterinaBead, I think this sounds like the story you're looking for: http://www.whatsthatbook.com/index.php?xq=7138

The Reason for not Going to the Ball (A Letter for Cinderella from her Stepmother) by Tanith Lee.

Sounds like it was part of a horror anthology.

>33 KaterinaBead:

Yes, I thought Enchantment was truly exceptional.

Oh, thank you! What a wonderfully quick answer to a nagging question - I was beginning to wonder if I'd just imagined the stepmother's letter version of the Cinderella story.

At least I was right about the Tanith Lee authorship.

Not really a fairy story retold, but "Olympos" and "Ilium" by Dan Simmons are all about the Trojan War, happening again. Except of course everything is all different and strange, as well as featuring a robot who loves Proust and another robot who's into Shakespeare, plus a resurrected history teacher brought back to take notes for a Muse. I love a story where my favorite characters get to have a different outcome.

I wanted to pop in to recommend Deathless by Catherynne M Valente. Wonderful retelling of several Slavic fairytales and folktales, chiefly the story of Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless.

For those interested, I have a more detailed review of it on my own thread, here (161).

@ 22Rozax Dec 9, 2011, 11:36pm I've already said it, but Daughter of the Forest is a nice retelling of The Six Swans.

-- Love this book! I voraciously read anything by this author (Juliet Marillier). ... A side note -- when I recommend this book to others, and ask, "Do you know the fairy tale of the six swans?" I almost always get a confused look -- I guess not a lot of people know that one :)

>5 jldarden: Indexing by Seanan McGuire has a piece about the Pied Piper.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik is absolutely fantastic! strong female characters, riffing on Rumpelstiltskin, as well as other fairy tales.