There are virtually no good parents in the world of fairy tales. At best, there are saintly mothers who die immediately after giving birth, only to be replaced by an Evil Stepmother. I've read some brilliant analyses that point out that the Perfect Mother and the Evil Stepmother may, in fact, be one and the… Continue reading Essay: Horrific Parenting in Fairy Tales
Category: Fairy Tales
Book Review: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
Yes, I was always going to find another version of Beauty and the Beast to gush over, eventually. Here goes. The Story The Gentle Lord makes bargains with the mortals of Arcadia. Everyone knows that those bargains always come at a terrible price. Nyx's betrothal to the Gentle Lord was an outcome of one such… Continue reading Book Review: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
Book Review: Entwined by Heather Dixon
I obtained this book in my pre-Christmas scramble for any fairy tale retelling that wasn't checked out at the library. Entwined had the dubious honor of being the only one of a list of twenty that was available at the time. That's probably the only reason why I ended up reading this. I used to… Continue reading Book Review: Entwined by Heather Dixon
Master List: Modern Interpretations of Fairy Tales
***PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS PAGE IS NO LONGER UP TO DATE.*** For the up-to-date list, go here. I was thinking that as there's a good chance I won't get around to reviewing each and every version of a fairy tale that I've read, at least not any time soon. So instead, I've decided to make… Continue reading Master List: Modern Interpretations of Fairy Tales
Book Review: Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
If you read my introductory post, then you'll know that it was inevitable that I would review this book. Like nearly every other child who grew up in the developed world, I read the Narnia books when I was a child. Rather less typically, I was a bookworm with an unhealthy love of fairy tales… Continue reading Book Review: Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Fairy Tales (and Books, and Me)
Hi. I'm obsessed with fairy tales. And books. And mythology, and folklore, and variations thereof, and this blog was begun as a knee jerk reaction to a conversation with my grandmother about life. Ahem. Let me start at the beginning. I'm a graduate student of biology. Specifically, neurobiology. If you ask me about it in… Continue reading Fairy Tales (and Books, and Me)