In this remake of the traditional tale, young Hannes, nearing the completion of his apprenticeship as a Piper, is given a final task as a test: rid the nearby town of Hamelin of its plague of rats. Hannes, eager to use the reward money for this task in a charitable cause, confidently sets out to […]
When her younger sister Alicia angers Queen Mary, Kate Sutton has to bear the brunt of the Queen’s anger. She is dismissed from her place as lady-in-waiting to Princess Elizabeth and exiled to a remote castle called the Perilous Gard, in the keeping of Sir Geoffrey Heron. As Kate explores the castle, she meets Christopher […]
Once again McKinley employs her magical prose in this collection of four short stories. Two of the stories are traditional — “The Princess and the Frog” and “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” — while two of them are original — “The Stolen Princess” and “The Hunting of the Hind”. The stories are very traditional in feel […]
This book retells the first part of the stories of the Mabinogion, the book of traditional Welsh myths. In it, Pwyll, prince of Dyved, makes a bargain with Arawn, lord of Annwn, the land of the dead. The two princes will exchange places and roles so that Pwyll may conquer Arawn’s enemy Havgan, with whom […]
Note: The moral and stylistic grades for this book of short stories are averages. The cover of this anthology calls it “classic fairy tales reimagined for adults” — an accurate description of the short stories included, if one implies a lot of change by ‘reimagined’. A few of the stories are straightforward retellings of well-known […]
In this truly charming novel, Gail Carson Levine treats another traditional fairy tale with her own very unique spin. Here, young Aza is most certainly not the fairest of them all . . . in fact, she’s remarkably plain, and large to boot. But she has a remarkably beautiful singing voice — and in the […]
In this sequel to Daughter of the Forest, Marillier continues the story of Sorcha’s family with the tale of Liadan, Sorcha’s youngest daughter. Raised in a loving family but surrounded by societal feuds, uncertainty, and danger, the independent-minded Liadan must make her own decisions about the future — even when they go in the face […]
This novel retells Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy-tale “The Six Swans”, setting it in medieval Ireland (and thereby drawing parallels to the Irish legend of the Children of Lir). The central character, Sorcha, is the only daughter of an Irish chieftain. She runs wild with her six older brothers and loves them devotedly. But when the […]
It’s very rare that I come across a book about which I can truthfully say both that I enjoyed it very much as a story in its own right, and that I would eagerly give it to a twelve-year-old. Usually I feel somewhat detached, as an adult reader, from books that are obviously geared towards […]
Despite its modern-sounding title, this book is a fairly straightforward retelling of the legend of Sleeping Beauty — with enough twists thrown in to keep the story interesting. Princess Aurore is cursed at her christening by a spiteful fairy, then gifted by her godmother, whose spell takes the edge off the curse. For all of […]