Faerie Magazine #20 On Newstands

The newest issue of Faerie Magazine should now be appearing at your favorite booksellers or in your mailbox if you are a subscriber. 

Here is the description for this issue:

Faerie Magazine Issue #20 - Featuring "Steampunk" - find out what it's all about; Word of Froud - "The Picture of Something that was Not There - yet Was", "Diamonds and Toads" from Heidi Heiner at SurLaLune, All about "Instructions" - a charming new title by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess, Learn the legend of "The 1,000 Islands" and enjoy the photography or Ian Coristine, The Magical Universe of Myles Pinkney and so much more...

As you can see, my column in this issue is about Diamonds and Toads.  Here are the first two paragraphs:

While Cinderella is lauded as one of the most widely dispersed fairy tales with hundreds of variants around the world, another tale type rivals her in its quiet popularity. In the academic world, the tale is classified as ATU Type 480, “The Kind and the Unkind Girls,” although this is not the title of the best known variants. Savvy fairy tale readers will more easily recognize titles such as Mother Hulda (Frau Holle), The Fairies, Diamonds and Toads (Toads and Diamonds), and Father Frost.

There are over 1,000 documented variants of the tale with over 900 alone listed and categorized by Warren E. Roberts in his ground-breaking dissertation, The Tale of the Kind and Unkind Girls, first published in 1958. More variants have been discovered since, but Roberts’ research of the tale and accompanying conclusions are still upheld today over fifty years later, a testament of his painstaking work.

So find the issue and read more about it and all of the other interesting stuff found inside.