Guest post on faery tales

We’ve got a guest post up at the fabulous Stella Ex Libris book blog, all about the faery tales of my youth…and how they’re perhaps not the stories you grew up with.

I love retold faery tales, and all the different permutations thereof – from Disney to Jim Hines’s Stepsisters to the truly brilliant work of Malinda Lo, so I jumped all over the opportunity to do this post.

Now, though, I’m yearning for the stories I grew up with – I guess I need to go dig out the storybooks from when I was a kid, or at least get my mother to tell me some stories over the phone.

How about you? What faery tales did you cut your teeth on? What retellings do you enjoy today? And why do you like those retellings? Are they darker or happier than the ones you grew up with?

Tags: , ,

  • Ben K

    Some of my favorite retellings were done by Jim Henson in his The Storyteller series. His The Soldier and Death is amazing.

    I also am very fond some of the animations I saw as part of the PBS series Long Ago and Far Away. They had a great Pied Piper, and some wonderful Hungarian folk tails such as Janko Raven, but my favorite was the stop motion version of Svatohor. Magical.

  • Ben K

    Interestingly, I can’t think of any books I’ve read which are in the spirit of the short films I mentioned above; they tell the story in interesting ways, but are mostly faithful to the original. I think such books are more often marketed to children than to adults, which is a shame. There are plenty of books that draw inspiration from fairy tales, and many of them are very good, but it’s not quite the same thing.

  • http://www.candlemarkandgleam.com Candlemark & Gleam

    I love the Storyteller series – some of those were just absolutely
    stunning. I should go rewatch them…

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen that PBS series. I wonder if I can find
    them online – especially the Hungarian ones!