Tag: Fairy Tales

The Girl Who Followed the Birds

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday2 Comments

For Fiction Friday this week, I have another story-within-a-story from my NaNoWriMo novel.  Within the novel, this story reveals quite a bit about how my lead character is currently feeling about her life and especially her love interest.  Outside of the novel, it is, I hope 🙂 an entertaining Brothers Grimm-esque fairy tale.

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The Girl Who Followed the Birds

This is a story about once upon a time in a mountain village.  It was a small village where there lived simple people.  They knew their mountains, they knew their business of goatherding and farming, and they knew each other.  They knew very little else.  In this village there lived a girl, who all her life had known how the rest of her life was likely to be.  Her parents raised goats and a few crops like everyone else, and she did her part to help.  Someday she would marry the boy who lived next door, and they would have their own cottage and their own goats and plot of farmland, and so would their children after them.  It wasn’t that she had to marry the boy next door, but they had lived and played and grown together all their lives; she had always expected she would marry him one day, in an abstract sort of way.  One spring morning when they were both sixteen, he offered her a cluster of blue mountain flowers and she looked into his blue eyes and the abstract became the very real and she knew that she didn’t only expect to marry him, she very much wanted to—someday.

It was a fall day when her sweetheart asked her to marry him, and he would have said that it was a perfect and beautiful day.  It was also a day when the birds were in the village. Continue reading “The Girl Who Followed the Birds” →

Once Upon a Snow White Retelling

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews10 Comments
Walt Disney and the Seven Dwarfs

Has anyone else noticed a sudden explosion of interest in Snow White?  It’s always been Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty who get all the press, but the powers that decide these things seem to have finally noticed Snow White too.

Since you know how much I enjoy retold fairy tales, I’m sure it won’t surprise you that I’m watching and enjoying ABC’s show, Once Upon a Time.  It’s a story about fairy tale characters living in the small town of Storybrook, Maine.  They were cursed by the Wicked Queen from “Snow White,” trapping them in our world with no memory of who they really are.  The Queen is running the town as Mayor, and Snow White’s daughter, Emma, who escaped the curse and is now grown up, has to fulfill a prophecy to fight the Queen and bring everyone’s memories back–even though, so far at least, she doesn’t really believe all of this either.

The episodes generally follow a pattern of two related stories, one in our world, one in the past in the storybook world.  And by the way–there are Disney references galore!  They’ve been going through origin stories for the major characters, and they’re doing just what I love most about retold fairy tales–filling in the bits the Brothers Grimm ignored, fleshing out the characters and answering the questions that the original fairy tales will make you ask.

How did Snow White meet the Prince?  How did Jiminy Cricket become a cricket?  Why does Rumpelstiltskin want babies?  Why did the Huntsman agree to kill Snow White to begin with?  Why did the Queen hate Snow White?  All the parts that don’t make sense are where fairy tale retellings can do wonderful things.  Once Upon a Time has answered some questions, and is still teasing about others.

It’s been a great show so far, often exciting and funny, and with some good mystery to it too.  I’m really enjoying the characters.  Snow White is very sweet but also strong.  Her prince gets much more character development than he did in the original Disney movie.  Emma is tough, with a chip on her shoulder and the occasional hint that she’s hiding something softer under her hard exterior.  Rumpelstiltskin is wonderfully smarmy, and the evil Queen is, well, evil.  There’s also a sweet boy named Henry who has complicated connections to everyone, and more understanding of what’s going on than any of the adults.

If you haven’t watched the show, it’s not too late to catch up.  Six episodes are streaming on ABC.com–it’s not all of them, but they seem to have kept the ones you’d need to catch up with the larger storyline.

When I said Snow White is getting a sudden surge of popularity, I didn’t just mean this show, though.  There are also two movies coming out!  There’s Snow White and the Huntsman, with Charlize Theron as the Queen and Kristen Stewart as Snow White.  And there’s Mirror Mirror with Julie Roberts as the Queen and Lily Collins as Snow White.  I’ve seen trailers for both; Snow White and the Huntsman looks like it’s trying to be really, really epic, and just coming out kind of strange.  Mirror Mirror appears to be going for humor, and looks much more like it’s succeeding; that one I’m excited for.

But neither one is out yet.  If/when I see them, I’ll have to let you know how they were.  🙂

In the meantime, watch Once Upon a Time.  That one I can say is excellent.

The Lazy Girl and the Enchantress

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fiction Friday1 Comment

As you know if you were reading this blog during November, I wrote a retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” for National Novel Writing Month.  My narrator, Lyra, was a storyteller, so within the novel I wrote several short stories for her to tell.  I want to share one with you today–you may recognize the beginning, as I put up an excerpt in November.  But today I’m posting the whole story.  🙂

Writing stories for Lyra was particularly interesting, because I had to think about the kind of stories she would tell.  For one thing, she has a more poetic style than I do (if that makes any sense!)  She also lives inside of a Brothers Grimm story, and has been reading that type of story her whole life.  So when I wrote stories for her, I wanted to create something that was very Brothers Grimm-influenced, but hopefully makes a bit more sense to a modern audience!

This story isn’t based on any particular fairy tale, but throws some traditional elements together–with twists.

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Once upon a time, there was a shopkeeper’s daughter who was very beautiful.  It was a sad fact that because she was beautiful, people’s automatic inclination was to do things for her.  That might not have been so bad in itself, but she had realized this tendency early on and loved to take advantage of it.

When her mother asked her to clean the house or to help with the laundry, she’d make endless excuses to get out of it, preferring to spend the time combing her hair or trying on different dresses.  When her mother did insist on her working, she was so slow about it that the good woman would eventually give up in exasperation and do the job herself.

When her father asked her to mind the shop, she would avoid helping customers if at all possible, and when she couldn’t avoid it she was as slow as you could imagine.  She asked the customers to pack up their own purchases and couldn’t be bothered even to do the counting to hand out change.  You may expect that service was slow and the customers ended up waiting around, whenever she was minding the shop.  The men, however, so enjoyed looking at her that they didn’t often complain.  Her father still knew that he was losing business because not everyone was willing to wait—and he wasn’t winning customers to his shop from the women in town.

One day the prince of that country passed through the town and his party stopped at the shop to buy fresh supplies for their journey.  It happened to be a day when the girl was (in theory) helping in the shop.  The prince saw her, and was sure that he had never seen anyone so beautiful, which may have been true.  He had been reading too many stories, and become convinced that such a beautiful face could only indicate a kind nature, a worthy spirit, and a personality that would match his own—in other words, that her beauty proved she was his soul mate, which it didn’t at all.

He proposed to her at once.  She was lazy but she wasn’t stupid, and she was quite sure that the wife of a handsome prince would have all the dresses she could ever want, and no work to do at all.  She accepted, and off they went to the royal castle. Continue reading “The Lazy Girl and the Enchantress” →

2011 Reading Challenges Wrap-up

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations7 Comments

It’s the end of December, and time to report on Reading Challenges (before I dive into my reading for 2012, of course).  I met all my goals this year, thanks to some careful reading in December to finish out the last few.  🙂  I really enjoyed all the challenges, and the nice feeling of accomplishment it gave to my reading whenever I read something that fit a list.  Not every book I read for the challenge was excellent, of course, but I did find some good ones, and I got to read many books (and types of books) I’ve wanted to, but tended not to get around to.

So I’m calling that a success!  A little more detailed reflection on each challenge below.

Here’s my final list for the year.  Linked titles go to my review of the book.   If you see something you’re curious about that doesn’t have a review, let me know!  If I don’t feel like I have enough to say for a full post, I’ll at least let you know what I thought in a reply-comment.  Rereads are designated with an R for all but the Library challenge, and aren’t counted.

Here’s what I’ve read in 2011 Continue reading “2011 Reading Challenges Wrap-up” →

Sympathy for the Devil

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews1 Comment

I found Troll’s Eye View in a very writerly fashion–I was doing research to see if anyone had come up with the same angle as I have for retelling “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”  Subtitled “A Book of Villainous Tales,” it’s a collection of short stories, retelling fairy tales from the villain’s point of view.  That includes “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” although calling the oldest princess the villain seems like a stretch (granted, she didn’t mind people being beheaded, in the original version).

The book is edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and has some impressive writers included, like Garth Nix, Jane Yolen and Neil Gaiman.

There were some excellent stories in here, although I was dissatisfied with a number of them too.  I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but it’s a slim book, and they fit fifteen stories into it.  I ended up feeling that several were nice ideas that didn’t get much development.  I think I’m the wrong age for those too.  I love children’s books, and very often find ones that are completely enjoyable to me as an adult.  Many of these stories, I think, really are better for just kids, who wouldn’t mind a simpler narrative.

And there were the excellent ones.  “Castle Othello” by Nancy Farmer is really clever meld of Bluebeard and Shakespeare, with a good twist to the ending.  Neil Gaiman contributed a dark poem based on “Sleeping Beauty.”  Nix and Yolen both had some good humor, although I think the shortness of the stories limited their scope.  Ellen Kushner’s “Twelve Dancing Princesses” retelling (actually, “The Shoes that Were Danced to Pieces” was how she titled it) was a clever idea, although another one with limited development–and not the same as my idea, fortunately.

My favorite, by far and away, was “A Delicate Architecture” by Catherynne M. Valente.  This would not have been the case when I was a kid, and in fact I think it probably would have given me nightmares!  But as an adult I can appreciate the creepiness of some of the images, and the beauty of the writing.  It starts out almost as a more poetic Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with a little girl describing the wonderful creations of her father the candy-maker.  There’s beautiful, vivid imagery…until the story takes a darker turn, and then the images are just as vivid, but turn into nightmares.  (Spoiler warning, because I can’t resist telling you about it!)  The little girl becomes a young woman, until finally she learns that her father’s fanciful tale of creating her from sugar is all too true.  After that she’s treated not as a person, but as a cooking implement, and hung up on the wall of the kitchen at the royal palace, to be used for the desserts…and that’s the image that would have given me nightmares as a child!  Finally she becomes a gnarled old woman, who escapes into the woods to build a house out of candy…  It’s an excellent story, and makes me want to read more by Valente!

The book on the whole was more mixed.  But it was also a quick read, and worth it for the good ones!