Children’s Fiction Review

The Fairy’s Return and Other Princess Tales by Gail Carson Levine, with illustrations by Mark Elliott. – Published 2009, HarperCollins.

Summary: The Kingdom of Biddle is a strange, yet magical place, where fairies have the ability to curse or bless, Kings make their daughters sit on top of glass hills, and golden geese hop out of tree stumps! This fiction omnibus contains 6 short stories that each put their own spin on several well-known fairy tales, including Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and more. Princesses, toads, and ordinary people all fight for their own definition of happily-ever-after…and it might not be what you’d expect!
Target Audience -The target audience range for this book is ages 8-12. In terms of content, the fairy tale source material and framing will be familiar to younger readers, while Levine’s plot twists will keep more experienced readers guessing how the adaptation will refresh an old favorite. The story is also punctuated with periodical illustrations, underscored by a quote from the text, that will provide an engaging visual appeal, especially for readers who are still building stamina in their independent reading. With this in mind, be aware that for readers below this age range, some of the vocabulary used may be too advanced, and that for readers above this age range, the stories may be perceived as too “little-kiddy”.
Strengths– The strength of this book is definitely its ability to subvert expectations. Levine’s style of storytelling is punchy and will keep readers in suspense as these fairy tales ride off the rails! For example, in the book’s first story, “The Fairy’s Mistake”, the classic tale, “Diamonds and Toads”, is reversed: the sweet Rosella is in awful pain having roses and gems fall from her lips as a “blessing”, and her wisecracking sister Myrtle enjoys terrorizing the townspeople with her newfound “curse” of snakes and frogs jumping from her lips whenever she speaks. The story shifts from a didactic “one good turn deserves another” predictable plot into a deeper understanding of what it would be like to be judged only by one good (or bad) thing about yourself, as both girls find ways to live with their new abilities.
Weaknesses- One more subjective weakness of this item for some may be its structure: as a collection of short stories rather than one continuous narrative, it may be frustrating to readers who would prefer one longer, more centrally focused story than 6 mini ones. Since it looks like a single volume from the outside, the atypical format may come as a surprise to readers and could cause them to lose interest in the book.
Creative Uses– Why not try using these short stories in a writing workshop as examples to formulate your own twisted fairy tales? Start by selecting a base fairy tale source as Levine does, and then have writers ask a “what if” question: give examples, like “What if the Little Mermaid didn’t give up her voice?”, “What if the witch in Hansel and Gretel was good, and everything was just a misunderstanding?” (Levine makes great use of irony in her stories), or even “What if you mashed-up Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs?”. The possibilities are limitless! If you like, put different fairy tales into a hat and let children choose one or two – they can either combine the two stories, decide to change a bad character to good (or vice versa), change the setting or the iconic elements (like Levine’s “Cinderellis and the Glass Hill” instead of Cinderella and the Glass Slipper), and rewrite (or illustrate) their own endings.

Read-Alikes

Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede – Take one improper princess and a sociable dragon, then add a tidy and kind witch, a stone prince, a lonely girl, and scores of wicked wizards – mix in a mystery plot to overthrow the King and you’ll have Dealing With Dragons. Princess Cimorene can’t stand doing things “properly” just because that’s the way they have always been done, and so she runs away to work for the dragon Kazul, resulting in many fantasy trope twists that turn usual stock “Prince Charming” and damsel-in-distress archetypes on their heads. Enjoyers of Levine’s The Fairy’s Return and Other Princess Tales will be drawn to the many strong female characters in this story and its exploration of out of the box problem-solving to save the day!
The Rumplestiltskin Problem by Vivian Vande Velde- This book is another fractured fairy tale short story collection, inspired by only one fairy tale (Rumplestiltskin), but re-imagined in several different ways. Vande Velde draws on different folklore traditions than just Western roots, and also experiments with placing different character roles in both good and bad lights from story to story, including Rumplestiltskin himself, the miller, his daughter, and King as well. For those who love the shorty story anthology format of The Fairy’s Return and Other Princess Tales, and want more stories that emulate a shorter fairy-tale structure/style, this is just the right book!
Half Upon a Time by James Riley- This tale follows a fairytale weary Jack…yes, that Jack, who has lived in the magical world that all fairy tales come from for all of his life. Things aren’t so “happily-ever-after” at the moment though, because a girl from Earth named May just sort-of fell into the Jack’s world by accident, and they’re both going to have to work together if they want to stop both of their worlds from being taken over by the Evil Queen and her legion of fabled villains! Witty and sarcastic, Riley formulates an entirely blended world of fairytale characters where one story melts into the next. It diverges from The Fairy’s Return and Other Princess Tales by giving readers a real-world and fairytale crossover, but its fantasy roots and cast of half-familiar, half-reimagined characters give the same sense of intrigue and suspense as ever. Older readers will enjoy trying to discern which characters are really what they seem to be, and which characters have turned over a fresh and exciting new leaf.