Fairytale Reading

[Mirtha Shikles]

Thechallenge is pretty simple. Each month has a fairytale assigned to it, and you can choose any retelling of that fairytale to read for that month, or read the original fairytale. If you are feeling ambitious, you can read both. ?

The fairy tale is another buoyant genre. The hero or heroine is tested sorely, but in the end, he or she is rewarded with happiness. And fairy tales have magic. The laws of nature are overturned and replaced by human desires. Human beings often believe their wishes will come true, and they often do so without reason. Reading offers a safe road to a variety of vicarious gratifications.

The question is: If you are well and at home and have enough to eat and can concentrate on a book, do you read toward or away from your fear? Reading for comfort and escape is readily explicable. But why read about what you fear? Since Aristotle used the word catharsis in his Poetics without explaining exactly what he meant, philosophers have puzzled over the undeniable fact that people take a weird pleasure from art that describes terrible events. Why do we enjoy weeping over the sorrows of characters in books? Why do gruesome stories of war, murder, and even uncontrollable contagions seem to relieve some of the pressure and anxiety of this real moment when the authorities scramble to find room for the growing number of corpses in New York City?

There are countless novelists that manipulate readers as mercilessly as television producers. They fulfill the expectations of their readers and their books sell like hotcakes. They serve an important purpose in the culture, just as comfort food does. In my own life, I have found that certain detective novels slide through me like water, and if I stumble across one I have already read, I do not remember it until late in the game, sometimes not at all. This kind of reading is like eating chocolate in bed. I am all for it. And yet, it may be that during moments when death is close and perhaps imminent, at least some readers crave an experience that is beyond what they expect, beyond the endlessly repeated platitudes on radio and TV and the Internet. My own tolerance for breathless reports on the virus has plummeted. I turn them off now.

Great list once again. When I was little there was a cartoon version of Fractured Fairy Tales that was one of my favorites and my daughter and I loved the Faerie Tale Theatre series of videos with Shelley Duval. Here is a list of Fairy links:

I loved the Jolly Postman when I was younger and can't wait to get it for my girls when they're a bit older. We just finished reading Goldie and the Three Bears, which was a big hit, and I just ordered a couple of the BabyLit books, which are always favorites around here.

I just finished reading Elizabeth Bunce's A Curse Dark as Gold, which is juvenile fiction (my 15 year old loved it). It is a take off of Rumplestiltskin with even more magic thrown in. When my girls were little, they loved Rumplestiltskin's Daughter by Diane Stanley.

As far as Fairy Tales retold, I'm really loving Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles. Who knew that what I was missing in my life was a cyborgian retelling of Cinderella? Also, because I know you are a big audio book fan, this series has a fabulous audio version.

Oh, I love retellings as well. Some of our favorites are: The Three Little Javelinas, Fanny's Dream, and CinderEdna. Along with the ones you mentioned, some of my favorites for adults/teens are: Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George, Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix, Bound by Donna Jo Napoli, Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier, and Toads & Diamonds by Heather Tomlinson.

Oh my! I am LOVING these posts with book suggestions for kiddos! I feel so deer-in-the-headlights when we hit the library and always kick myself for letting her rush out with a Diego or Dora book! And she really finds so much more joy from these kinds of books! THANK YOU is not enough! ?

I love this list! After reading this I took my girls right to the Library. Unfortunately we only walked out with Goldielocks and Just One Bear, but my oldest and I LOVED it! Had to read it again after we finished the first time per the request of my daughter, she's never done that! It's now in my shopping cart on Amazon. ? Thank you for sharing!!!

Each month has a fairytale theme. You can read the original fairytale, a retelling or both. Some people also watch movies associated with the prompts in addition to reading. Feel free to interpret how you want, and just have fun!

After Samson grew up, he decided he wanted a wife. The problem was, though, that she was a Philistine (a bad group of people if there ever was one). His parents tried to talk him out of it, but he insisted. On his way to get his wife, God gave him magical strength enough (since his hair was so long) to rip a lion in half and eat the honey it had inside it (ewww) . . .

In traditional fairytales, this is the part of the story where Hansel and Gretel shove the witch into the oven. It is the sudden, joyful turn of the story: all will work out in the end. In the story of Samson, the eucatastrophe is not a traditional one in that the main character dies, but it occurs nonetheless when Samson accomplishes his task by being given the strength to pull the temple down on the celebrating Philistines. That this is a joyful and not tragic occurrence is evidenced by the fact that his family buried him with honor among his ancestors. He had done what he wanted to do: he had overcome his limitations. Tragedy would have had Samson die an ignominious death at the hands of the Philistines.

Listing the features of fairy tales in the way above, you can probably can see the different ways fairy tales overlap with other modes of storytelling. The normalized magic and intuitive logic is present in magical realism. The non-setting is present in a lot of weird fiction. And the open artifice and flatness is a frequent feature of postmodern fiction and metafiction.

Great post! Your comment re: "flatness of character" reminds me of how Scott McCloud talks about character detail in Understanding Comics. In many comics and graphic novels, especially for kids, the hero/protagonist is drawn in a cartoon-ish style with few details, whereas the villain might be very detailed. Scott's theory is that we can "see ourselves" more easily in a character made of just a few lines, and we are more likely to "other" a character who is drawn in great detail. He argues that the most universal character in comics-language is the smiley face, which can be a stand-in for us all.

An interesting viewpoint! I spend a lot of time writing fairy tales, both rewriting traditional ones and assembling new ones out of pieces, so of course I have a bunch of "but what about xyz?" (for instance, in my reading fairy tales are almost all didactic, which is another departure from standard advice) but it's very interesting to see the form contrasted with traditional literary advice.

I do wish more people in the writing / writing advice world would be willing to take this kind of thoughtful, critical look at the world's traditional oral traditions. They are the bedrock of all fiction-- including fantasy, yes, but also literary realism, mystery, romance and everything else.

I often start my MFA courses with a discussion of fairy tales. It seems an obvious place to start, since fairy tales are some of humanity\u2019s oldest stories and likely the first stories that my students remember reading as children. But I also love starting with fairy tales because they violate more or less every single rule of fiction writing that is drilled into us in creative writing classes.

Instead of \u201Cshow don\u2019t tell,\u201D fairy tales prioritize telling over showing. Instead of demanding \u201Cround characters,\u201D fairy tales embrace flat ones. Instead of logical \u201Cworldbuilding,\u201D fairy tales operate with a surreal dream logic in abstract settings. Instead of starting \u201Cin media res,\u201D they start \u201Conce upon a time.\u201D Instead of \u201Ctelling the story only you can tell,\u201D fairy tales ask you to retell stories that have been told for centuries. So on and so forth.

Almost nothing you are taught about setting, character, voice, or structure in MFA classes or craft essays applies to the fairy tale form. And yet the form endures. Fairy tales still serve as source material for many of our novels and movies, and plenty of acclaimed contemporary writers deploy versions of the form. (I\u2019m currently reading Kelly Link\u2019s forthcoming story collection, White Cat, Black Dog, which opens with a terrific modern fairy tale.)

I\u2019m not suggesting that the traditional writing advice is wrong, per se. Plenty of brilliant stories are written with all the usual advice. But we should always remember that there are no writing \u201Crules,\u201D there are only standards that apply to certain modes of storytelling. Those modes wax and wane in popularity. They chance according to culture and history. And there are infinite modes we can choose from.

So what is the mode of the fairy tale? What is the form? Here I defer to Kate Bernheimer, a great contemporary scholar (and writer) of fairy tales who outlines four qualities in her essay \u201CFairy Tale Is Form, Form Is Fairytale.\u201D (The essay can be found in the Tin House\u2019s The Writer\u2019s Notebook, which I highly recommend as a craft book.) The four qualities Bernheimer describes are:

Flatness\u2014specifically flatness of character. Fairy tales don\u2019t delve into the psychology or interiority of characters, and typically limit them to one or two adjectives. The beautiful princess. The evil king. Etc. Similarly, fairy tales don\u2019t have traditional character arcs or worry about \u201Cdynamic characters.\u201D The evil witch at the start is probably going to be an evil witch at the end.

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