The Lunar Chronicles Readalong: Cinder by Marissa Meyer

This post is part of so many things! It ties in so well with Fairytale Fridays and with A Way into YA but is actually part of this readalong...

I saw on Twitter a while back that Brittany was hosting a readalong of The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer, the first one of which everyone in the world seems to have read except me! It seemed like something fun to do and I am obviously a huge fan of fairytale retellings so Cinder had been on the peripheries of my TBR for a while. I also knew that the library had it in because I used to periodically pick it up and put it down again while the boys were in the children's section. 

I had been putting it off because so many people love it and I wasn't sure what I would think. For those who don't know, Cinder is part cyborg, living in New Beijing which is under threat of attack by the lunar people, from space. Her stepmother hates her and blames her for her stepsister's illness, but then she meets Prince Kai and everything starts to change... 

So far, so Cinderella, right? But there is a lot else in this story. I loved the sci-fi twist Marissa Meyer puts on the tale and I really liked the evolution of the story away from the 'marry the prince, live happily ever after' traditional fairytale ending. Obviously as this is a series, the last part of which isn't even out yet, I don't know how it will end. It may well end that way. Honestly I really liked Prince Kai so I have my fingers crossed, but I'm sure those of you who have already read Scarlet and Cress will be laughing at me. I thought I knew what would happen going in because of the Cinderella connection, and while I did up to a point there's so much more in the story than just that. 

Personally I've always found Cinderella to be a bit less than exciting as a character, but Cinder I really liked. Actually all of the characters were great, even if it was just because I hated them so much. I physically wanted to slap Cinder's stepmother Adri so many times. The woman is just awful! It's quite an achievement to make me really dislike a character - more so than loving them as I do that often - so I'm impressed with this series already and excited to start Scarlet!

Reading about The Lunar Chronicles I particularly like that each book introduces a new fairytale, I don't know why I haven't started before!

Check out the readalong fun at Book Addicts Guide.

The #AWayintoYA series so far:
Make Mine an Indie: Alma Books
A Way into YA Day 1: Science Fiction
A Way into YA Day 2: Backlist Books
A Way into YA Day 3: A Bit of Everything!
A Way into YA Day 4: Some More Great Books and a Giveaway! (win a copy of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green until Sunday evening, open Intl!)
A Way into YA Day 5: Across the Genres

Check back tomorrow for another amazing independent publisher of Young Adult fiction!

This is also my Fairytale Fridays post for this week.

Fairytale Fridays runs the 2nd and 4th Fridays of each month. Please link up your fairytale related posts (they can be old or new as long as you haven't linked them up before) below!

Fairytale Fridays: Fairytale Retellings!

I've already posted for Fairytale Friday this week on the top ten fairytale retelling on my TBR. I just wanted to add a few that I've already read and highly recommend!

The Bloody Chamber & Other Stories by Angela Carter (I don't have a review on the blog but I did my dissertation on it and it's basically the best)

Beastly by Alex Finn (Beauty and the Beast retelling most of you have probably heard of but the book is much better than the film in my opinion)

The Fables series by Bill Willingham & others

Godmother: the Secret Cinderella Story by Carolyn Turgeon (Cinderella. Obviously)

The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke (various short story retellings occasionally featuring characters from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell which I am still to read!)

Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon (again obviously The Little Mermaid)

Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales ed. Melissa Marr & Tim Pratt (short story retellings of various tales including Neil Gaiman's The Sleeper and the Spindle)

Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Beauty and the Beast, again you've probably mostly heard of this as it's been getting quite a bit of buzz on blogs recently but I loved it, it's a very unique twist on the tale)

And the Canongate Myth Series, but particularly the ones I've actually read;

Dream Angus by Alexander McCall Smith

The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Phillip Pullman

Link up your fairytale related posts below! They don't have to be recent posts, just one that you haven't previously linked for this event. Please spread the word using #fairytalefridays!

Fairytale Fridays: The Water-Lily.The Gold Spinners

Last Fairytale Friday I wrote about Little Red Riding Hood. As I mentioned in my discussion of Andrew Lang and his Fairy Books, I'm interested in comparing the well known fairytales with less well known ones and trying to ascertain why some have stuck and some haven't. In the interest of that I've decided to continue reading from The Blue Fairy Book (the one that contains Little Red Riding Hood) and have picked a less well known tale for this week.

All that the internet will tell me about The Water-Lily (or The Water-Lily. The Gold Spinners as Lang has called it) is that it originated in Estonia. You can read it online here. Go do that, I'll wait, and then we can talk about it.

All done?

So the concept of the story is thus: three maidens live in a forest with an old woman who makes them spin gold flax into yarn and never see or speak to men. One day while she's away a Prince stumbles across their cottage and falls in love with the youngest girl. After some events he steals her away from the cottage but on the way back to his castle the old woman (really a wicked witch in disguise) casts a spell and she falls into the river and is turned into a water-lily. After much mourning the prince asks a magician how he can restore her to human form. The magician tells him, he does it and they all live happily ever after.

After much reflection the only reason I can think of that this tale is less well known than some others is because it has been told less. According to Wikipedia it's only been included in three collections, the most well known of which is The Blue Fairy Book. Personally I really loved The Water-Lily. The Gold Spinners. It had a bit of everything I love - wicked witches, magic, transformations, people rescuing each other. I also really liked how the girls were kind of a bit pissed off about being made to constantly spin all the time but they weren't all 'oh woe is me, I must be rescued' like girls in fairytales often are. There's a bit when the girl is a water lily and she sings this little rhyme which could be taken as her waiting to be rescued but I read it more as her berating the prince for just forgetting her as soon as she wasn't immediately there any more and not doing anything to save her. Like, come on Prince! All it will take is you magically transforming into a crab, going underwater for ten days during which time your parents will have given you up for dead. What are you waiting for?

What have you read since last time? Link up below!

Fairytale Fridays: Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red Riding Hood is pretty iconic with her red cape and hood and getting eaten by the big bad wolf and everything. She's also been reincarnated several times, my current favourite probably being a tie between the character in Into the Woods and Ruby from Once Upon a Time.

I loved Little Red Riding Hood as a child, giggling through the 'what big ears you have' 'all the better to hear you with' bit and always a little squeak at the end when she is eaten up. Every time I heard it I was silently begging her to run away while all the while knowing that she wouldn't and getting some kind of gleeful delight out of knowing that she was about to be eaten up. Maybe kids are just mean but personally I loved all versions equally - those where she is saved and those where she isn't - I think the suspense of hoping that the Wolf won't beat her to her grandmothers and then hoping her grandmother will escape and then hoping that she will escape is enough. Once you reach the end of it it sort of doesn't matter whether she escapes or not, at least it didn't to me which is slightly odd because I always liked the reassurance of knowing that everything would be all right in the end, and I still tell my kids not to worry because the good guy will win when we're watching movies and they're concerned.


This week I read Andrew Lang's interpretation from The Blue Fairy Book, which is taken from the Perrault version, the earliest written form of the tale.  I've also read several other versions, particularly Angela Carters The Werewolf and The Company of Wolves where the emphasis is on the loss of innocence and the wolf marking a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood.

I particularly like the moral from the end of Perrault's version:

From this story one learns that children, especially young lasses, pretty, courteous and well-bred, Do very wrong to listen to strangers, and it is not an unheard thing if the Wolf is thereby provided with his dinner. I say Wolf for all wolves are not of the same sort; There is one kind with an amenable disposition. Neither noisy, nor hateful, nor angry but tame, obliging and gentle, following the young maids in the streets, even into their homes. Alas! who does not know that these gentle wolves are of all such creatures the most dangerous! 


I think it's pretty easy to take a lot of different meanings from the story, short as it is. Obviously you shouldn't talk to wolves, and I think we can all see the link between wolves and stranger and strangers and predatory people, but my absolute favourite interpretation of all time has got to be from the indomitable Mr. Dahl:

The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.
She whips a pistol from her knickers.
She aims it at the creature's head
And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.
A few weeks later, in the wood,
I came across Miss Riding Hood.
But what a change! No cloak of red,
No silly hood upon her head.
She said, ``Hello, and do please note
My lovely furry wolfskin coat.''

If you want to read the full poem (and you should because it's great) it can be found in Revolting Rhymes or here.

Fairytale Fridays is a two weekly link up for all things fairytale related. Feel free to link up your posts about fairytale, mythology, folklore, retellings, movies, art or anything at all fairytale related! Posts do not have to be written especially but they must be posts you haven't linked up before! The next Fairytale Fridays will be July 10th. 

Fairytale Fridays: Andrew Lang and the Fairy Books

I decided in the interests of not forgetting about it that I should make Fairytale Fridays every two weeks instead of once a month. Then I promptly forgot about it, obviously! However, this weeks topic was self-evident really.

I've been collecting the beautiful Folio Society editions of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books for a while now without really knowing much about them beyond that they are collections of tales from around the world, so I decided to change that this week! It also inspired me to do a bit more reading on the authors of the various collections that I own, which will be coming another week.

There are twelve volumes of the Fairy Books, each in a different colour. They were published between 1889 and 1910 and were among the first English collections of fairytales. Aside from Lang only Madame d'Aulnoy (originator of the term 'fairytales') had collected the tales from such a large variety of sources before which made his collections pretty much unique. He was also among the first people to edit the tales specifically for children which obviously is very influential as today fairytales are viewed as tales for children although they weren't originally.

Although Lang had final say on what went into each collection he didn't actually do much of the translation or retelling of the tales; most of that was done by his wife and other translators although he eventually took credit for the work. Although he didn't collect his tales from their primary oral sources he did give many tales their first telling in English, and there are many tales, particularly in the later volumes that I personally have never heard of.

The Blue Fairy Book published in 1889 is the first volume and contains Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Aladdin, Rumplestilskin, Beauty and the Beast, Goldilocks, Hansel & Gretel and Jack the Giant Killer as a sample of the tales modern audiences will undoubtedly have heard of. In contrast the last volume, The Lilac Fairy Book contains no tales whose titles sounded immediately familiar. I'm interested to read the later volumes that I have (Crimson and Olive) and try to draw some conclusions as to why these tales are less well known. Undoubtedly because they haven't received the Hollywood treatment, but it will be intriguing to see if there are any easily identifiable reasons why.

I currently only have three volumes in the Folio editions, but from time to time my wonderful husband gets hold of one for my birthday or Christmas and eventually I hope to have them all. Not only are the beautiful outside (and the traditional Folio box gives them that little something extra) but they are full of gorgeous illustrations. They're pretty much the quintessential concept of what a fairytale anthology should be in my opinion!

Do you have any beautiful editions of fairytale related work? I'd love to see them! Tweet or Instagram them using #fairytalefridays so everyone can see, and don't forget to link up your fairytale related posts and spread the word!

Fairytale Friday #2

Hello everyone! This post was meant to go up at the beginning of the day but it's been craaaazy here and I didn't manage to get it done. There will be my thoughts on Into the Woods later this evening hopefully but right now both the boys are taking a nap and I expect one or both to wake up any second so I thought I'd get the linky up so you can link up anything you've written! Just to remind you, it doesn't have to be a new post, just related to fairytales or folklore in some way - books, characters, movies, visits you've taken, anything really! If you're on twitter or Instagram please use #fairytalefridays to spread the word :-)

Fairytale Fridays: How Does a Fairytale Become a Fairytale?

Guys, it's finally the last Friday of the month! I thought quite a bit about what to write about for the inaugural Fairytale Fridays post and after toying with many of the ideas on my list of prompts I finally (prompted by a lot of watching of Once Upon a Time) decided to write about how a fairytale becomes accepted into the body of stories that we know as fairytales. 

As children we grow up with the 'classic' fairytales, and in my experience the study of fairytales will lead you towards stories such as Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast and Little Red Riding Hood, but there are a series of newer tales which have made their way into the fairytale canon and which as a child I loved at least as much if not more than the traditional tales. I'm talking about three specific stories, but I'm sure there are more that I haven't mentioned. The three which influenced me the most as a child are J.M Barrie's Peter Pan, L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. 

Again I'll bring this back to my recent watching of Once Upon a Time, which is really what got me started thinking about it. Obviously characters from Peter Pan and The Wizard of Oz feature in the series and it's interesting to see people's reactions. Captain Hook starring alongside Snow White, Red Riding Hood and Rumplestiltskin has never felt weird to me, and as a child I spent hours waiting for Peter Pan to come and whisk me away to Neverland. I believed much more in Alice's rabbit hole to Wonderland than in the Beast's castle. I think part of me always recognised classic fairytales as moral teachings and pretty stories and although I believed in the magic presented in them I didn't necessarily believe in the places or the people, whereas with Peter Pan, Alice, Oz and Narnia I most definitely did. 

Maybe if the point of fairytales is to present us with a universal truth or to transmit cultural values to the young, then the addition of tales to the canon is inevitable and necessary. Maybe Pan and Alice resonate with the modern world's struggle to hold on to childhood and innocence as concepts in the same way that Hansel and Gretel did with people trying to teach their kids that the forest was a dangerous place to be in alone?

The collection of stories we refer to as fairytales has been growing pretty much as far back as we can tell, and especially since they began to be written down. It feels weird to me to accept that that wouldn't and probably shouldn't be a finite thing - that we should always be adding new tales and creating new magic and ways to explain the sometimes scary world to our children. To me fairytales feel a little like something special, even something a bit holy which anyone shouldn't be able to just make their work part of, so I wonder what the standard is that I'm setting before I'll allow myself to accept something as a fairytale? It can't be as simple as the inclusion of magic, because there are plenty of books I read as a child which contain that element and which I don't think of as fairytales. Honestly, I think it has to be more than it meeting a bunch of criteria. For me, the fairytales which stick are the ones that somehow speak to my soul. The ones that make me believe in the possibility of magic and happy ever afters and wonderful adventures. Maybe the ones which still show me something about myself? I'm not sure. 

What do you think? 

Fairytale Fridays is a monthly meme for all things fairytale and folklore related! Please link up your fairytale posts here and make sure to visit some other participating blogs. I'm back on the last Friday of each month, so the next link up will be May 29th! Spread the word on social media using #fairytalefridays.