My love story with fairy tales—and with myths, their sometimes cousins, sometimes siblings, sometimes one and the same (depending on who you ask, and quite possibly the weather)—is long and convoluted. I was enthralled by them pretty much from the moment I learned to read, thanks to an early diet including Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, and Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain, and the fascination lasted throughout (and in many ways, shaped) my years at university.
And the older I got, the more fascinated I became by the way these stories change. Here is what I think: that change is essential to myths and fairy tales, an inherent quality that makes them what they are; and that the way they change functions as a mirror to us—revealing the assumptions that we take for granted, and the ones that no longer fit.
My favorite retellings are ones that take a well-known fairy tale, and unravel it just enough to look at the norms and expectations hiding beneath it, the system of values and morality that designates some characters as wicked and others as good, and—perhaps most of all—dictates what a happy ending looks like.
These are six books that do exactly that: take a fairy tale and pull one thread loose, to see what happens next, or tip the story on its side and see what new shape emerges. Coupled with lush, magnificent writing, these stories stitched themselves into my heart—making me smile and cry and, most importantly, question—and forever changing the way I see each of the fairy tales they retell.
Read the full article: https://lithub.com/six-retellings-that-pull-apart-fairy-tales-and-stitch-them-back-together-in-new-and-wondrous-ways/
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