Grimm's Fairy Tales / Read by Award Winning Cast / 3 CDs / unabridged

  This audio was recommended quite heavily by Booklist and I couldn't agree more. These 21 tales are the original works of the Grimm brothers - not the Disney-fied movies we know of today. Each are read by a different narrator who provides each one with definite individuality.
  The familiar tales are there: Cinderella, Little Snow-White, Hansel and Gretel but also some lesser known ones The Shoes That Were Danced to Pieces (read by Alfred Molina!), The Six Swans (read by Davina Porter) and Rumpelstiltskin (read by Jim Dale!). The tales are divided by a small musical interlude and it helps reset your mind. The tales end abruptly. No 'and the lived happily ever after'. I listened to some of them with my younger son and his comment was "That's not nice". That perfectly fits in with these tales - not very pleasant things happen to some characters and not all of them deserve it. If you are looking for a fun night with younger children, this isn't it.
   Please take the time to listen to these wonderful stories. I cannot recommend it enough. They won't take much time but I bet you will still be thinking about them later.  

6 Degrees of Reading: Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Anderson, Aesop's Fables by Aesop and Myths That Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the Classic Myths of All Times for Young People by Suehyla El Attar.

Cinder / Marissa Meyer / 390 pgs.

For the PopSugar book challenge, I fulfilled the "read a book based on a fairy tale" challenge by listening to the audiobook version of Cinder by Marissa Meyer, the first book in the popular YA series, The Lunar Chronicles. The narrator, Rebecca Soler, does a wonderful job of making all the voices of the characters come alive and sound interesting. The book is a perfect mix of fairy tale and futuristic sci-fi dystopia and I enjoyed it immensely. I'm already listening to the second book of the series, Scarlet.


As you can imagine, Cinder is based loosely on the tale of Cinderella. A cyborg 16-year old girl, Cinder, is a virtual slave to her step-mother and two step-sisters in New Beijing. She works as a mechanic, fixing droids and portscreens when she meets the handsome Prince Kai. Although Earth has enjoyed over 125 years with no wars, it has succumbed in the last decade to a deadly plague. Prince Kai must deal with his ailing father, the Emperor, and an evil queen from the Moon with the ability to "glamour" people into doing exactly what she wants.

CHARMING / Elliott James / 391 Pages

In CHARMING, the author re-imagines a classic fairy tale character with an  paranormal twist; the first in his 'Pax Arcana' series. James writes a snarky, first person, narrative introducing readers to John Charming. Yes, as in Prince Charming, well ... sort of.

John was trained to be a modern-day Knight Templar, an entire family of Charmings no less, who hunt monsters and defend humans. Unfortunately a curse ended up changing all that, turning him into a fugitive. Now he moves from town to town, job to job, trying to stay off the Knight's radar and deal with what the curse has done to him. Then one day a tall, mysterious blonde AND a vampire walk into his bar ...

For those who like humor in action-packed, paranormal fiction or who enjoy Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden, first introduced in Storm Front.

Cinderella: Fables are Forever / Chris Roberson / 152 pgs. / Fairy Tales Challenge!

Cinderella is more than just a fashionista princess in this mash-up fairytale series.  Here Cinderella is a Master Spy travelling the world to seek out the whereabouts and secret plots of the other still existing Fairy Tale Factions. Of course, every Bond-like spy must have an arch-nemesis and this volume explores the rivalry between "Cindy" and the evil Dorothy Gale (yes, that one from Kansas) who goes by the code name "Silver Slipper". 

Book of Lost Things / John Connolly 342 p. Fiary Tale

12 year-old David turns to books for comfort after his mother dies.  When his father remarries, David is angry at Rose and his half-brother.  With the bombings of WWII, they move to Rose's house.  There the books talk to David.  When he slips through the hole in the sunken garden, he enters a make believe world that is melded with his imagination.  Talking wolves, trolls, harpies, Snow White are encountered as he makes his quest to see the king for the king's Book of Lost Things is thought to help him return home.  Connolly has incorporated many traditional fairy tales with twists into this story of coming-of-age and maturity.

Usborne Illustrated Grimm's Fairy Tales / Ruth Brocklehurst (ed.) / 303 pgs. / Fairy Tales Retold Challenge!

15 classic fairy tales are put together with full color illustrations in this nice treasury.   This version is very kid friendly and is easy to read to young children.  All the tales are very short and can be read in less than 10 minutes. Perfect for your little one's bedtime story!  This volume contains: Snow White and Rose Red, Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestiltskin, Hansel and Gretel, Tom Thumb, The Elves and the Shoe Maker, and many more.  I hope Usborne publishes more stories.

Fables: Homelands (Vol. 6) / Bill Willingham / 190 pgs / Fairy Tales Challenge

The Fables are preparing for war.  They are on edge waiting for the Adversary's next attack.  In the meantime, Little Boy Blue goes undercover and sneaks back into the homelands to look for his long-lost love Red Riding-hood and to find out who is the main power behind the Adversaries.

Fables: The Mean Seasons (Vol. 5) / Bill Willingham / 166 pgs. / Fairy Tales Challenge

The battle is over and the war is on pause, for now, but time and life is moving on.  Fabletown is preparing for a mayoral election; and Bigby (the Big Bad Wolf) and Snow White are awaiting the birth of their babies. 

This volume has a great backstory about Bigby's service during WWII, with lots of action behind enemy lines.  It also focuses more on the characters as fabletown is changing and the birth of the babies are changing the lives of the major players.  Its a nice break from the War storyline, since no matter what awful things happen life still does go on.

Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers (vol. 4) / Bill Willingham / 231 pgs / Fairy Tales Challenge

The evil empire known as "The Adversary" has found Fabletown and has begun their attack.  An army of Pinocchio-like wooden soldiers have descended on Fabletown and it is up to the residents to figure out how to destroy the puppets without destroying their town or letting the human world find out about them and the war.  The Fables are also wondering who made these puppets? and does this mean that Pinocchio's maker Gepetto is still alive? and is he working for the Adversary? 

Great artwork, snarky commentary, lots of action.  My only complaint is the Wooden Soldiers were annoying.  They are single minded so their comments are short and terse and just got on my nerves after awhile because of the repetitiveness of the dialog. 

Fables: Storybook Love (vol. 3) / Bill Willingham / 190 pgs. / Fairy Tales Retold Challenge!

While Snow White is recovering from her head wound, Bigby (The Big Bad Wolf) is left in charge to make sure that Fabletown runs smoothly.  Things have been returning to normal at The Farm, and Fabletown has been quiet, until a Human Reporter shows up and threatens to expose the truth about Fabletown and it's inhabitants.  Bigby and several other fairy tale creatures launch an "Oceans 11" type scheme to break into the reporter's apartment to find out what he really knows about them.

Meanwhile, Goldilocks is still on the loose and is still trying to hunt down Snow White to finish the job that she started when she shot Snow in the head.  Snow White and Bigby are put under a spell and left out in the middle of the woods.  When the two come to, they have no idea how long they have been out, where they are, and what happened during the elapsed time.  As they make their way back to civilization and avoid being killed by Goldilocks the two open up and become closer friends.

Fables, vol. 2: Animal Farm / Bill Willingham / 112 pgs. - Fairy Tales Retold Challenge

Snow White and Rose Red travel to "the Farm" which is located in Upstate New York, to check on the other Fairy Tale Creatures.  The non-human fables (ie talking animals, giants, goblins, etc.) have to live on the farm to keep them hidden from normal humans.  However, after hundreds of years of isolation, the farm animals are restless and are plotting a revolution to take over the Fable government to force all of fable-kind to attack the Adversary and take back their homelands.  Unfortunately, for Snow White and Rose Red they stumble across the revolutionary plans and become political prisoners.

Kill Me Softly/Sarah Cross/331 pgs/Fairy Tale Retelling

This is a YA title and is the story of Mirabelle.  She has been raised by her two godmothers and told that her parents had died while she was a child.  She runs away days before her 16th birthday and goes to the town where she was born - Beau Rivage.  She finds that most of the teens in this town are cursed and discovers that she is also cursed.  She also meets 2 brothers, whose curse is deadly.  She falls in love with one of the brothers even after she finds out what their curse is.  The typical girl too stupid to live but it does get somewhat better towards the end of the story.

Enchanted / Alethea Kontis / 308 pgs / Fairy Tale Challenge

Sunday Woodcutter is the youngest sibling of six sisters who are all named after a day of the week.  She lives in a world where magic and fairy tales are common place and she has the power to make her written stories come true.  Sunday meets an enchanted frog who becomes her friend and eventually they fall in love breaking the spell.  However, the frog prince comes from the royal family that is in a feud against Sunday's family.   

Full of magic and tales; I got the feeling that the author had some kind of bar bet to see how many fairy tales she could incorporate into one story. 

This is a 2013 YALSA Best of the Best Pick!

Fables: Legends in Exile (vol. 1) / Bill Willingham / 144 pgs.

Fairy Tale characters are living among us normal people in New York City.  They have been pushed out of their homelands by invaders called "the Adversary" and are trying to keep their identities a secret and patiently wait for the day they can return home.

In this first volume, Rose Red disappears and her apartment is torn up and covered in her blood.  It is up to the Big Bad Wolf, the towns detective and Snow White (Rose's sister & Deputy Director) to solve the case.  and figure out what happened and why.

Great illustrations  I love it when the characters are detailed and their bodies are proportional.  The character's personalities are quirky

Whoo-Hoo Double Points!! A New Series AND a Fairy Tale!!! (It's almost like I planned this or something :")

Cinder by Marissa Meyer. Audiobook read by Rebecca Soler. 8 Disks.

 
 A young 16 year old girl named Cinder is the best mechanic in the city of New Beijing. She is an outcast because she is a cyborg due to an horrific accident in her childhood. Because of her reputation, the Prince comes to see if Cinder can fix the royal android. Her stepmother interferes and when Cinder's younger sister is infected with the plague which is decimating most of Earth's population, Cinder is sent to the plague testing facility as punishment. What is found there may change the world as everyone knows it.
  As the story unfolds there are glimpses of the conventional Grimms' fairy tale. Cinder is a wonderful heroine. Facing some of the toughest obstacles of growing up, being different and 'adults' just don't understand anything, Cinder comes through with shining colors. There are hilarious one-liners, a burgeoning romance with the Royal Prince, lots of skillful world building (Did you know there are people living on the moon?) and a good mystery about what exactly did happen to the Lunar princess all those years ago.
   I cannot wait to listen to the sequel. What will happen with Cinder and the Prince?  Is Cinder the answer to the plague as the doctors think? And where is the princess? This is a great book for people looking for a not so grim dystopian world. Enjoyable for adults young and old.
  6 Degrees of Reading: Splintered by A.G. Howard, The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia McKillip and Tam Lin by Debra Dean.

Cloaked/Flinn/341 pages

Alex Flinn is a master of retelling fairy tales and Cloaked is like a fairy tale "mash up"!  The Frog Prince, The Six Swans and The Elves and the Shoemaker, just to name a few. Johnny is just an average guy working at a hotel shoe repair counter when a famous party princess comes to town. Add a talking fox, hungry giants, six enchanted swans and a magical best friend that has loved him forever and you have a  fun "once upon a time" novel.  This is a 2013-2014 Truman Award nominee and would highly recommend to young readers that like fairy tales with a little humor and adventure thrown into the mix.

Scarlet/Marissa Meyer/454 pgs/Fairy Tales Retold

This is the second title in the Lunar Chronicles and is based on the fairy tale of Red Riding Hood.  Scarlet's grandmother has gone missing and with the help of a street fighter by the name of Wolf, Scarlet goes looking for her.  The story is actually two stories - you get the continuing story of Cinder (the first book in series - based on Cinderella), a cyborg who finds out she really isn't what she appears to be and is running away from the Lunar Queen who wants to see her dead.  This is a YA book but does include a lot of violence.  The series is very good and I will continue to read - the next one is Cress and is due out next year.

Brides of Rollrock Island /Margo Lanagan/305 pages

Rollrock is a lonely, magical island where poor fisherman make their living from the sea and where Misskaella,the outcast little girl who has grown into her magic, weaves her magic spells. And her magic always has a price. Misskaella can bring brides  from the sea, she can draw hauntingly beautiful women from the seals that lie in herds on the beachs of their lonely little town. The fishermen can have and hold a sea bride and tell themselves they are the master, but they become transformed and encaptured by the new wives and nothing is quite the same. This book is a fairy tale but also a tragic tale of human nature. The author has told the story from different characters viewpoints and how they  have been affected by the decisions of the fishermen and Misskaella. The tale is tragic and moving but it was not an easy book to read. For older teens and adults that enjoy fairy tales.

Top Screwups Doctors Make / Joe & Teresa Graedon / 262 pgs

This is another good book by the Graedon's who are pharmacists of the "peoples pharmacy" fame. It is full of practical advise for going to the doctor and/or the hospital. They include a very helpful list of drugs that may cause memory loss so if you are worrying about Alzheimer's, you might check your regular medications for "anticholinergic" properties from the list on page 164.
They then discuss many common diagnoses such as cholesterol, celiac, thyroid, depression, asthma, diabetes, osteoporosis and others. they point out things to watch for and possible alternate causes or things to try. It's just a practical book. They used to have the drug interaction book that was very helpful as well.

Beastly by Alex Flinn/304 pages

Since this seems to be the year for retelling fairy tales, you might want to go back and read this Beauty and Beast remake by Alex Flinn. This book has been around for a few years and they even made a movie.  We did it again for our young adult book discussion and overall, gave it a thumbs up. Flinn has given the fairy tale a modern twist with a handsome, popular, rich boy living in New York City, Kyle Kingsbury. Kyle is superficial and believes that looks are very important. After making fun of the wrong person, she casts a spell on Kyle that seems impossible to break. The author  keeps some of the original themes, living in the castle, the roses and "Beauty's" father handing her over to the Beast. The group liked the modern twists, each chapter started with chat room dialogue from a support group for teens that have been transformed, i.e. mermaids, frogs, a little far-fetched but hey it's a fairy tale. Flinn has recently released a new novel "Bewitching" that tells the story of Kendra, the witch that put the spell on Kyle and turned him into the beast.