Tag: Cinderella

When Cinderella’s Slipper Fits

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday2 Comments

After sharing my very short Cinderella story last week, I thought it would be fun to share a scene from the Cinderella portion of The People the Fairies Forget (more background here).  This scene starts at The Nightingale, an inn run by the heroine of this section, Catherine.  She’s a cousin to Jack, the hero of the Sleeping Beauty section.  Tarragon, my fairy and narrator, has been hanging out at The Nightingale recently, but hasn’t revealed his magical abilities.

Earlier in the story, Prince Roderick threw a ball, and invited every eligible woman in the country to attend (it was a large ball).  Catherine, though engaged to be married, attended the ball for the sake of the food and the dancing.  Tarry came too, for the same reasons, and while they were there they saw that the prince’s favorite dance partner had mysteriously run out on him, leaving a glass shoe behind.

A few days later, they’re hanging out at The Nightingale, when…

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…we were interrupted by a sudden explosion of apples.

            Another of The Nightingale’s staff had come through the door, carrying a box of apples that had just been delivered.  He tripped on the threshold, dropped the box and sent red apples tumbling around the room.  No one looked surprised, including him.  I had already learned that his name was Richard Samuel Jones, and that this sort of event was normal for him.

            “Are you all right, Sam?” Catherine asked, bending down for an apple that had rolled near her feet.

            “I’m fine,” Sam said, rising to a crouch to gather up apples.  As he did, he remarked, “There’s all kinds of excitement going on out in the street.  Royal heralds and everything.  They’re going door to door.” Continue reading “When Cinderella’s Slipper Fits” →

A Retelling of Cinderella

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday8 Comments

To continue with the fairy tale theme of this week, for Fiction Friday I have a very short story I wrote, retelling Cinderella, with some pointed observations thrown in.  This actually started out in Spanish, as a class assignment, and then I rewrote it (and expanded it) in English.  I wrote this about four years ago, but a lot of the ideas eventually made their way into Book Two of The People the Fairies Forget, “Cinderella’s Substitute.”

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Once upon a time in a far off kingdom there lived a maiden who was very beautiful and very kind.  Fairy tales always begin the same way, and the maidens are always very beautiful and very kind.  Often their name is Ella, as was the case for the maiden we’re talking about.  This particular maiden, as do most of them, had long blond hair, very fair skin and eyes of the deepest blue.  She didn’t have any initiative, spirit or goals for her life.

Continue reading “A Retelling of Cinderella” →

A Magical Retelling of Cinderella

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews6 Comments

When I reviewed Ella Enchanted, I said it was “one of the best retellings of Cinderella I’d ever read.”  There was actually a very specific reason I didn’t just say it was the best retelling.  That reason is Silver Woven in My Hair by Shirley Rousseau Murphy.

I read this originally from the library when I was…maybe nine?  I don’t really remember.  Young.  I read it several times, and then it somehow disappeared off the shelf.  But miraculously, I remembered the title.  I usually don’t.  I usually remember something like, there was a bit in there where the girl is watching the royal family come back from the island and she sees the goatherd, and then she invites him into the kitchen at the inn to have dinner and it makes her stepfamily mad but he just laughs so it’s all right…oh and then they had a picnic later on in the book, and there was that really good part about the owner of the sword.

And that’s not going to help anyone find the story they’re looking for.  But fortunately I remembered the title, and by the time I was in high school the wonderful world of online booksellers existed and I was able to buy Silver Woven in My Hair for my very own, and I spent an entire afternoon rereading the whole book.  It was lovely.

It’s one of the best retellings of Cinderella I’ve ever read.  It’s a story about Thursey, and her terrible stepfamily.  The royal family was coming back from that island because they were there while the queen and the prince recovered from being captured in a war.  Thursey’s father went to the war and never came back, so this Cinderella actually has a reason to stay where she is–even though she knows he’s probably never coming back, she can’t bring herself to leave, just in case.

Thursey doesn’t have a sparkly fairy godmother, but she does have friends who want to help her go to the ball at the palace.  There’s Anwin the monk, and there’s Gillie the goatherd, who’s funny and charming–and pretty far from a sparkly fairy godmother.  🙂

One part of the story I love is that Thursey is a Cinderella who loves Cinderella stories.  Her family runs an inn, and she collects stories from the travelers who pass through–all the different Cinderella stories from different cultures, Cendrillon and Aschenputtel and Catkin and so on.  Even though Thursey’s life isn’t very good, she never stops dreaming.  The ball is one aspect of the story, but Thursey’s dreams have a lot more substance than dancing a single night at a ball.

The characters, from Thursey to Gillie to the nasty stepfamily, are well-drawn and life-like.  The story is very grounded in reality, in a practical world where dishes have to be washed and goats have to be fed and there’s none of the impossible and imcomprehensible leaps that the original fairy tales often make.  Yet there’s also something whimsical about the tale.  For some reason the word “gossamer” keeps coming to mind, and I think it has to do with the writing style.  Murphy has kept some of the poetry of the old tales, while giving us characters and a plot that are more tangible.

Silver Woven in My Hair isn’t exactly a fantasy…or it could be.  Murphy leaves it up to the reader to decide whether some elements are really magic or not, and I’m not entirely sure what I think.

But even if you decide it’s not a fantasy, it’s definitely a magical story.  And a marvelous tale.

A Multiplicity of Jacks, and One Tom

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews1 Comment

I really, really wanted to love The Secret History of Tom Trueheart by Ian Beck.  But I didn’t.  My feelings were much more mixed.

I really do love the premise.  Tom has six older brothers named Jack, who all go on adventures in the Land of Stories.  How fun is that?  First, the idea that you can walk through a gate and enter a magical land where fairy tales happen to you, and that there’s a family where they have this tradition of going off on adventures…love it!  And I love the idea of gently poking fun at the way fairy tale heroes (non-princes, at least) are always named Jack.

Tom is the youngest (making him the seventh son–very fairy tale proper, that) and the smallest, and he’s convinced that he’s the least brave.  He’s the only one who hasn’t gone off on adventures, but when all his older brothers mysteriously disappear, then it’s up to him to find out what happened.  I’m not going to try to claim that that’s terribly original, but it’s from the children’s section, and I like stories about characters who don’t think they’re brave and have to find qualities in themselves they didn’t know they had in order to save the day.

So far we’re doing great.  But.  (And you knew this was coming.)  But…we have to read what happened to go wrong with each Jack.  And we have to read what happens when Tom ultimately helps them.  Don’t forget, the Jacks are in the Land of Story to embark on fairy tales.  So what this ultimately turns into is a lot of retelling of fairy tales.

We get the first half early on in the story: Jack gets halfway into Sleeping Beauty’s castle (or whatever) and gets into some kind of trouble.  The book goes on, Tom has his adventure, we come back later, and Tom helps Jack rescue the princess.  (Sorry if that was a spoiler, but I doubt it surprised anyone).  The trouble is, nothing all that original happens to the fairy tale itself.  Tom is thrown into it, but it’s not really that different.

Tom’s story is original, when we’re following him, but when we’ve also got six Jacks to get through, I felt like I spent way too much of the book just reading stories I already knew.  This might have been better with about half as many Jacks, and only half as many fairy tales.

That points directly to my other problem: while I love that idea of six characters named Jack, they do run together.  Beck tried to distinguish them, by giving them all a nickname like Jacques or Jackson or Jake, but I was still getting them mixed up.  I’m not very good with character names though, so that might just be me.

Like I said, I have mixed feelings on this book.  I love the premise.  However, I’d only recommend reading it if you’re also in the mood to reread the Brothers Grimm or Charles Perrault, because that’s more or less what you end up doing, in between Tom’s adventure.

I recently found out there are two sequels, and since the premise is so good, I just might investigate them.

Author’s site: http://tomtrueheart.com/

Obedience–But With Backbone

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews4 Comments

Cinderella, in her traditional form, is a character who drives me absolutely up the wall.  Come on, woman—I know you lived in a pre-feminist culture, but don’t you have any backbone at all?  Your life’s awful—so do something about it!  And the fairy godmother—where was she all these years while Ella was being mistreated?  The fairy only shows up when the girl wants to go to a party?  (Because obviously that’s something of paramount importance.)

But, like all great fairy tales, Cinderella does have that spark of eternal appeal.  Who can’t relate to the dream of being lifted out of your ordinary or even unpleasant life, because that one person (the prince, the book editor, the boss for the dream job, the head of the club…fill in your own relevant personality) sees you and says, yes, you’re special above all others.  That’s the core of Cinderella.  But Cinderella herself is irritating.

So when you can take that eternal spark and improve on the character and the plausibility—well, as I said when discussing Wildwood Dancing, then you’ve got something.  And Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine is one of the best retellings of Cinderella I’ve ever read.

Ella is cursed at her christening—if anyone gives her a command (from “eat this cake” to “go jump off a roof”) she has to obey it.  And with that one brilliant stroke, Levine has a heroine who, like the traditional Cinderella, does everything her wicked stepfamily tells her to do—but who also has a mind of her own.  No one could accuse Levine’s Ella of lacking backbone.  She obeys, but I don’t think I’d describe her as obedient.  She can think for herself and, as much as she can around the limits of her curse, takes control of her own life.

There’s a good plot, with ogres and adventures and a kind of quest in Ella’s search for a way to overcome her curse, but I think what mostly stands out in my mind are the characters.  Ella, of course.  And her fairy godmothers—both of them—her more-than-usually complex wicked stepfamily, her absentee father, and, of course, Prince Charmont—because what’s a Cinderella story without a true love, right?

Ella Enchanted probably belongs in the juvenile category, rather than young adult.  But, kind of like the original Cinderella, it has a wide appeal, even if you’re not really the target age group.  So don’t be scared off just because it’s shelved in the kids section.

I unfortunately can’t quite just ignore the movie here.  There is one, but let’s all just pretend that there isn’t.  Don’t see it.  Really.  I did, and I think I spent most of it twitching and saying, “No, no, no, that’s wrong.”  Besides getting the details wrong, it got the spirit wrong, and while I can sometimes forgive a movie for changing the facts a little, it’s much harder to forgive a movie for maiming of the spirit of a story.

Because what Ella Enchanted really is is a very practical, plausible (once you accept the existence of magic) retelling of Cinderella.  The movie isn’t.  But the book is, and it’s well-worth the read.

Author’s site: http://www.gailcarsonlevine.com/