Cinderella Smith by Stephanie Barden

 

Cinderella Smith by Stephanie Barden and illustrated by Diane Goode is currently a bargain ebook priced at $1.99. It's a cute book playing loosely with a few Cinderella plot devices to tell a middle reader story. This is bargain priced for the release of the sequel, Cinderella Smith: The More the Merrier.

Book description:

Cinderella Smith has a problem with a capital P. She loses shoes almost as quickly as she puts them on her feet. But now she’s lost the most important shoe of all: her shiny,ruby red tap shoe. Without it she won’t have a chance of being chosen Pumpkin Blossom Fairy for the fall dance recital—and that means no special tutu, no crown, and no solo!

The school year is starting out with big problems too. Her new teacher laughs at her name, she’s sitting at the smart-boys table, and her old best friend is ignoring her. Now the new girl, Erin, has asked for her advice on wicked stepsisters. And Cinderella doesn’t have stepsisters—wicked or otherwise!

The recital is just around the corner and the stepsisters are on their way. Can Cinderella and Erin solve the capital P problems in time?

Here's the slight review I wrote for it last year when I received an ARC to read:

When I was working as a full-time librarian, this is the type of book I was always hunting for to please both my young precocious readers and their parents. Cinderella Smith is fun--and I enjoyed the fairy tale tie-ins that were not belabored either--and fits the bill. Cinderella is so named since she has a regular habit of misplacing footwear. At this time the book falls inbetween my nieces ages--too young for the oldest and not old enough for the preschoolers. But I am holding onto it for I know it will be just what my sister wants for her daughter when she reaches precocious reader age as the girls in my family seem to do. The main character isn't snotty or annoying as I am told some other popular characters are by frustrated parents (I admit I am not as frustrated with them myself) but she still feels real enough for young readers. She also isn't a commercialized tween-wanna-be like some of the other books in this age group. Yes, it's wholesome, but that is what most parents want and most girls enjoy. There is scope for discussion and learning, but the book can simply be entertaining, too.

PS: I often enjoy Goode's illustrative work, too--I have her illustrated version Noel Streatfield's Ballet Shoes in my personal library. She has illustrated a few fairy tale picture books in the past, too. I should do a post on those some day.

Bargain Book: 14 (A Taylor Jackson Novel) by J. T. Ellison

14 (A Taylor Jackson Novel) by J. T. Ellison is bargain priced as an ebook for a short time at $1.99. This one barely qualifies to appear hear, but I bought it myself since it is set in my hometown of Nashville and it features a Snow White killer. So Nashville and a fairy tale named killer is enough to part me from $1.99! This is the second book in the series. The first and third, listed below, are also bargain priced temporarily.

Book description:

Ten victims, each with pale skin and long dark hair. All have been slashed across the throat, the same red lipstick smeared across their lips.

In the mid-1980s the Snow White Killer terrorized the streets of Nashville, Tennessee. Then suddenly the murders stopped. A letter from the killer to the police stated that his work was done.

Now four more bodies are found, marked with his fatal signature. The residents of Nashville fear a madman has returned, decades later, to finish his sick fairy tale. Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson believes the killings are the work of a copycat killer who's even more terrifying. For this monster is meticulously honing his craft as he mimics famous serial murders...proving that the past is not to be forgotten.

All the Pretty Girls (Taylor Jackson)

Judas Kiss (A Taylor Jackson Novel)

Favorite Adaptations: Jim Hines' Princess Series

Here is Rachel's entry in the Favorite Adaptations giveaway. This is one of the more recently published recommendations sent by readers. And while we are here, if you have somehow missed Jim's Striking a Pose (Women and Fantasy Covers) and recent Posing Like a Man blog entries, you have missed out on some humorous social commentary--which Hines is known for anyway.

   

One of my absolute favorite recent adaptations is the set of Jim Hines' Princess books. Starting with the Stepsister Scheme, he takes a Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty who are post-their-own-stories and casts them into a Charlie's Angel-esque adventure that calls for all their strength and smarts.

Although the books take place after the fairy tales that Hines draws from (he also covers The Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, and The Snow Queen in the later books, with references and characters from other stories), he gives the stories and characters such depth and diversity that I grew to love them over the course of the books. Hines offers readers a choice of role-models, and none of them are passive, waiting to be rescued, or simply wimpy. Danielle (Cinderella) is now married to a prince and starts the series pregnant. She's clever and warm and somewhat motherly throughout the series, offering the most "traditional" female role in the books. She's also heroic and brave and active. Talia is a martial princess, more drawn to weapons than romance, and takes to training the other two princesses with the conviction that she is really the only thing keeping them alive when they're in danger. And Snow is magical, flirtatious, and sassy, and usually the one with a ready quip for any situation.

Hines' characters are all from older versions of the stories--so poor Talia/Sleeping Beauty wasn't awakened by a kiss, but by giving birth to twins. And although Hines sticks with the original stories, the characters become their own twists on their stories, giving a reader a lot to think about when following a well-worn story.

There are four books in the series, and in my opinion each book is stronger than the last. They are well worth reading, both for the originality imbued in classic fairy tales, and for their wonderful, tenacious princesses.

Rachel Ayers
http://fairylayers.blogspot.com/

Favorite Adaptations: Wolfland by Tanith Lee

Here is a guest post by SurLaLune reader Luna, who is from the Philipines. This is yet another ping on my frustration nerve because Red as Blood or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer is still out of print and the used copies are selling for crazy prices that Lee will never see a cent for anyway. This book needs to be back in print! One of the top joys of ebooks is that they don't go out of print, can be around forever for purchase and the authors can still receive royalties for them. Everyone wins in that scenario, except used booksellers (sorry to them!). I own a hardcover myself so I cannot complain, but this would be a top recommendation for me if it was more readily available to all of you.

Tempting the Gods: The Selected Stories of Tanith Lee Volume 1 is rereleased this July but it's not a reprint of Red as Blood.

But now for Luna's wonderful explanation of why she enjoys Lee's work.

My current favorite adaptation of a fairy tale is ‘Wolfland,’ Tanith Lee’s version of ‘Little Red Riding Hood.’ This story can be found in Lee’s 1983 collection Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer.

I enjoyed the story’s lush Gothic atmosphere and its depiction of Red Riding Hood (named Lisel in this version) as a more realistic and complex figure: petulant, impetuous, sometimes disrespectful, but also capable of boldness and intelligence. Lisel and her grandmother Anna are not peasants but are both fairly rich, and although the forest still plays an important role, the description of Anna’s chateau and household brings considerable mystery and elegance to the story.

What I appreciated most about this retelling, however, was how Lee reimagined the grandmother, Anna, as a strong and dominant figure and how she merged Anna’s character with that of the wolf. In fact, Anna comes across as a more vivid and engrossing character than Lisel. It was refreshing to find a fairy tale in which an older woman is portrayed as wise and powerful but not necessarily evil, in which marriage is not romanticized, and in which women are able to take revenge on brutal men.

It’s too bad that Lee’s ‘Red as Blood’ is apparently out-of-print; aside from ‘Wolfland,’ it has other very dark and interesting versions of well-known fairy tales such as ‘Cinderella’ (retold as ‘When the Clock Strikes’) and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ (retold as ‘Beauty’). Dark retellings of fairy tales are very popular these days, so many readers would relish the tales in Lee’s collection even if it came out almost 30 years ago.

Favorite Adaptations: Truly Grimm Tales by Priscilla Galloway

Hello, all! I am gradually getting back into the groove of "normal" living--actually I am still far enough away from it to be rather stressed, but it's possible to take some time each day to resume the blog. I hope. Moving has been horribly disruptive and my nest is still not settled. We bought a fixer upper and the process is ongoing although we now live in one abode instead of two half an hour apart. I'm taking volunteers for door painters, by the way.

I have been needing to finish sharing the Favorite Adaptations series from early April and announcing a winner. I am sorting through my emails, looking for entries and I will post them all this week and make an announcement of the randomly drawn winner, too. For now, enjoy this entry from Lela:


With all the excitement over the Rumpelstiltskin character on "Once Upon A Time" it was fun to revisit my own favorite version of this story.

Looking back, I believe that I first came to be aware that there were alternate versions of fairy tales through Little Red Riding Hood. I remember being quite satisfied when I finally came across a telling where the wolf eats up Little Red and her grandmother and no Huntsman came to slice open the poor wolf who was only acting as my beloved "Wild America" TV shows said nature intended. I realize now that I was quite a judgmental child when it came to fairy tales--I had little sympathy for a silly girl who ignored explicit instructions on how to stay out of danger and a grown woman who lived in the woods and didn't have enough sense to keep the door locked when a wolf came knocking.

I don't remember what particular fairy tale collection introduced me to what my young mind accepted as the "real" story of Little Red. However, I vividly remember my introduction to the idea that not only can the plot of fairy tales be tweaked and twisted, but that the very nature of their telling can be changed as well.

Like most libraries, my childhood library had a special section for new books and I usually started each visit there. I remember standing in front of those clear plastic shelves and seeing the cover for Priscilla Galloway's Truly Grim Tales. The title and the image of the red hooded girl in a wolf's mouth caught my attention; I pulled the book down, read the first story, and felt a thunderclap shake my mental landscape.

This anthology contains fairy tale re-imaginings full of the sorts of twists familiar to those who love a good variation on these familiar themes--Jack's giant requires human bones as a medicine for a devastating genetic condition that causes giant bones to weaken and break, Snow White's step-mother is forced to provide for her family by working in a slaughterhouse before winning a beauty contest. But it is that first story in the book, "The Name" that will forever stay with me.

This version of Rumpelstiltskin does two things that have since become my favorite things in a fairy tale retelling. I was astounded and delighted to find that the tale was being told in first person. Fairy tale characters are often cyphers by their very nature--shorthand versions of curious girls, bad mothers, and lazy fathers. So to actually get inside the mind of Rumpelstiltskin (recast in this story as the crippled son of a nobleman whose cold and distant father thwarts his love affair with a poor girl) was stunning to me. I'd always been curious about and sympathetic toward this particular fairy tale character and it was powerful to not only hear him speak, but to share his thoughts as well. Toward the end of the story he reflects on his own heritage, thinking that "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons, even unto the seventh generation. I had learned bitterly that those words were not the ravings of a vengeful God but were rather a statement of fact: how long it takes for evil to become neutralized, to be turned perhaps to good" (Galloway 14). Throughout the tale readers are shown a Rumpelstiltskin who is neither inexplicably fey or irredeemably evil, but utterly, fully human. This was my first encounter with a telling that fleshed out a previously shadowy character and I have enjoyed tales that take up this challenge of adding nuance to fairy tale dwellers ever since.

Second, this telling explains something that is rather inexplicable in the versions I knew. Part of the thrill of many fairy tales is that things just seem to happen due to the magic of the story or the predestined needs of the plot. In many tellings of Rumpelstiltskin you never learn just why the imp would go to all the trouble of getting this particular baby. In some stories there is a vague sense that he wants the child just because asking for it will cause pain to the mother and in others he is allowed the more sympathetic claim that "something alive is dearer to me than all the treasures in the world." But in "The Name" Rumpelstiltskin is a lonely old man who is actually trying to bargain with the daughter he was never allowed to know for the chance to raise his own grandchild. The emotional kick of seeing what had always been presented as a diabolical way to torment a young mother turned into a man's desperate desire for a second chance at a family was haunting to me. Fairy tales are full of unexplained mysteries that we often overlook in our familiarity with the stories and often prove to be interesting starting point for modern authors.

While I doubt that this story will impact readers well-versed in fairy tale imaginings such as The Bloody Chamber or the Datlow/Windling anthologies in quite the same way that it did me as a young teenager, I still think the story holds up well even after years of reading these collections. "The Name" reminds readers that even characters long held to be villains can become sympathetic with just a slight shift in perspective.

I am can be found online at http://inkyhooves.blogspot.com/ and am from the USA.

Lela Bradshaw

Crazy Cuddly Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood Dishes and Toys

12" Plush Red Riding Hood Big Bad Wolf 5 Piece Cuddly Playset

I saw this collection a few months ago and thought these pieces were rather cute. As always, I adore fairy tale themed things marketed to kids that are not from the Mouse House. Just personal taste... And then it's French, so I am certainly biased.

Crazy Cuddly Wolf Melamine Plate, Little Red Riding Hood

Crazy Cuddly Wolf Melamine 4 Piece Dish Set, Little Red Riding Hood

Crazy Cuddly Wolf Melamine Bowl, Little Red Riding Hood

The one above particulary makes me giggle since it is rather a topsy turvy play on the Red Riding Hood in the wolf's belly.

Crazy Cuddly Wolf Melamine Bowl, Crazy Cuddly Wolf

Crazy Cuddly Wolf Melamine Plate, Crazy Cuddly Wolf

Crazy Cuddly Wolf Melamine Spoon, Crazy Cuddly Wolf

Crazy Cuddly Wolf Melamine Spoon, Little Red Riding Hood

Crazy Cuddly Wolf Melamine Mug, Crazy Cuddly Wolf

Crazy Cuddly Wolf Melamine Cup, Crazy Cuddly Wolf