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There is something so frustrating about a story that is so close to being satisfactory but doesn’t quite make it. Mechanica is a perfectly serviceable retelling, I imagine, but doesn’t have the emotional substance to make an impact. When I read a book I want to be swept away to another world, brought far from my own experiences, and caught up in the emotions of the characters. I don’t want “serviceable.” Now, I haven’t read Cinder, but from what I could tell this really isn’t very similar. Whereas Cinder is a futuristic dystopian-ish (I think?), Mechanica has much more of a traditional fairy tale feel. Think: 18th century but with magic, fae, and some adorable steampunk creatures. Also, that book has a significant focus on the romance aspect of the story. This one…doesn’t (but more on that later). I actually really enjoyed the first 20% or so of the book... Read more »
The post Mechanica: Review appeared first on The Midnight Garden.
We recently received two issues of Storytime Magazine (Luma Works), a monthly British children’s magazine which launched in September 2014 with the tagline “Classic tales to read, love and share.” Each issue is filled with retellings of fairy tales and folktales, plus distillations of classic children’s novels (such as E. Nesbit’s “Five Children and It” in Issue 4 and Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” in Issue 5). The stories are accompanied by colorful, often full-page illustrations as well as interactive moments inviting the reader to color a rainbow, count beans, find a specific flower, etc. Even more thematic activities and downloads are available at Storytime‘s website.
The contents are organized by headings such as “Favourite Fairy Tales,” “Famous Fables,” “Storyteller’s Corner,” “Around the World Tales,” “Myths and Legends,” “Poems and Rhymes,” “Brilliant Books,” “Storytime Playbox,” and “Story Magic.” These categories seem to shift slightly from issue to issue, but each edition follows the same basic format, containing about six stories, a poem, and thematic activities and games.
Storytime‘s retold short tales originate in a range of diverse cultures: Issue 4 features a Mayan quest story, an African tale about trickster Anansi, and a Cornish mermaid tale; Issue 5 includes an Aboriginal creation story, plus Greek mythology and an Aesop animal parable. The magazine format (complete with exciting cover blurbs: “Famous Fables! Four animals learn about friendship” and “Jungle Adventure! See how Mowgli escapes from Shere Khan”) gives the tales a fresh perspective, and the absence of advertisements keeps the focus on the stories themselves.
Overall, each issue feels like substantial reading material — either to be devoured straight through all at once, or savored slowly, story by story.
The post “Classic tales to read, love and share” appeared first on The Horn Book.
Fool: A Novel Christopher Moore
What Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal did for the gospels, Fool does for King Lear.
I originally picked this up because when I saw Moore had a new one out, The Serpent of Venice*, I put a hold on it, only to discover it was a sequel. So, of course I went back and read Fool.
Now, I’ve never read Lear, but that’s ok. Moore’s book might have been smarter and funnier if I were more familiar with the source material, but it’s plenty smart and plenty hilarious without it.
Basically, Fool is a hilarious retelling of King Lear form the Fool’s perspective. The Fool sees everything around him, and in Moore’s version, ends up driving most of the plot (with some help from the Weird Sisters, on loan from MacBeth.)
Much like Lamb, while the commentary and the book are very smart and well done, it’s also super-raunchy and full of swearing, sex, and anachronism. This is Moore at his best. Slightly offensive, very “earthy” and extremely smart. This reminds me that Moore is one of my favorite authors for a reason.
*If Fool = Lear, I assume Serpent of Venice = Merchant of Venice
Book Provided by... my local library
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The Jumbee Pamela Keyes
After her father dies of cancer, Esti and her mother move down to her father's house on the island of Cariba. Esti's father was a renowned Shakespearean actor and Esti has long feared having her own career in his shadow. Cariba's high school has an excellent theater program that Esti hopes will launch her in her own right. In the theater she is coached by someone she cannot see and no one else can hear. Most inhabitants of Cariba say the theater is haunted. Is Esti's acting coach really the Jumbee everyone is talking about?
This is an excellent retelling of Phantom of the Opera with a liberal dose of Shakespeare. I loved the modern high school setting. I also really liked the West Indies setting-- Keyes has lived in the Caribbean and captures the physical beauty of the islands as well the culture well. I liked the insight into things like how one scares away evil spirits or enters another's home but also the tensions on the island with its slave and sugar plantation past as well as tension between island natives and wealthy interlopers from the US. Keyes strikes the right balance of tragic and creepy with Alan's character. Because it's a retelling, I knew how it was going to end, but Keyes keeps the suspense up so well and had me si invested in the characters that I kept turning the pages faster and faster to see how it would play out.
Book Provided by... my local library
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Jane April Lindner
This is a retelling of Jane Eyre. I've never been a huge fan of Jane Eyre and I must say that I enjoy this retelling much more than the source material.
Jane Moore is a freshman at Sarah Lawrence, but after her parents die in a car accident, the stock they leave her turns out to be mostly worthless and she's forced to drop out. She finds a job at a nanny agency and given her quiet, plain nature and lack of interest in pop culture, she's assigned to the moody rockstar, Nico Rathburn.
The main criticisms I've read or heard of this book are that there's no spark and the love affair seems weird and rushed and that locking up the not-quiet-ex wife in the attic and some other plot points doesn't make sense in modern times.
I'm not going to fully disagree with either of these, although I bought the love affair much more in this version than in the original. I never saw the love between Jane and Rochester until Jane's like "I LOVE HIM!" and I was like "Really? I mean, I know you do because I know enough about this book to know that you two end up, but... really? Where did that happen?" I also have NEVER understood Rochester-as-romantic-hero. (I also don't understand Heathcliff.) I do, however, like Rathburn. Lindner goes to great lengths to make Rathburn more bark than bite, moody and secretive, but actually very nice, just protective of his family and privacy. In the end, he ends up being a bit more Darcy than Rochester (and Darcy's a man I can get behind.)
And... locking up your not-quite-ex-wife because she's schizophrenic and mental institutions are horrible places? They're nicer than a locked attic room, and come with trained medical professionals. That part and some others (just dropping out of school instead of loans? Haiti?) require a little more suspension of disbelief, but I gladly did it. Lindner follows the original fairly closely and not everything transfers well to the modern day. To make it work better, there would have to be huge differences with the source material, and that's not where Lindner chose to go.
So... final verdict? I actually loved it. I certainly liked it much better than the original and I just couldn't put it down. Knowing the original material, I didn't mind the really mind some of the wackier plot twists that I would have if it were a completely original work.
Very much love.
ARC Provided by... a coworker, who picked it up at ALA.
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By:
Darcy Pattison,
on 5/13/2010
Blog:
Darcy Pattison's Revision Notes
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I’m currently reading Alan Gratz’s book, Something’s Rotten. It’s a blatant take-off on Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Every character is named after a Hamlet character, the main character named Hamilton. The plot echoes Hamlet: Hamilton’s father was murdered and he suspects his uncle, who has married his mother. And the book works! Why? It’s the power of myth.
Think of the movie, “O, Brother, Where Art Thou?”, which is a retelling of the Odyssey, the famous epic poem by the Greek Homer.
Or, look at the series, The Grimm Sisters. Sabrina and Daphne are the last living descendants of the Grimm Brothers, the famous collectors of folk and fairy tales in the 18th century. The sisters discover that the Grimms tales are based on true crimes. The sisters take on the “grim” responsibility of being detectives. The Author Michael Buckley says, “It’s what happens AFTER the happily ever after.”
3 Reasons to Borrow Mythic Power
Why would these two authors draw on tales that are woven into the warp and woof of our culture?
- High Interest. Because readers already know the basic tale, the fun is in how this author gives it a twist. Gratz sets Hamlet in Tennessee, where the Prince family owns a paper mill.
- Easily Plotted. Maybe. Again, the readers already know the basic plot. Or do they? The fun and challenge of basing a novel on a familiar myth is in adding twists and contemporary updates. In some ways, it’s simple, the plot is a given. But if all you do it repeat the old plot, it’s not going to gain wide acceptance.
- Emotional Power: Think about why these stories have lasted for hundreds of years. It’s the emotional power inherent in the story of a brother poisoning a brother and seizing his family and fortune. The Grimms fairy tales are boiled down to their essence by years of oral transmission until what is left shines brightly in our imagination. These authors are borrowing the power of myth, but then bending it to their own wills as they transform the story into a contemporary novel. You can do it, too.
For more reading:
- Any of Donna Jo Napoli’s books: she takes a familiar fairy tale and sets it in a specific country and specific time period. She spends lots of time doing the research on the historical setting.
- Winners of the Mythopoeic Award. This organi
CinderHazel: The Cinderella of Halloween
Written and illustrated by Deborah Nourse Lattimore
Scholastic, 1997
ISBN: 0-590-20233-2
CinderHazel is a witch who absolutely adores dirt. In fact, it’s the only thing she’s really interested in. When her stepmother and stepsisters fly off to the annual witches’ Halloween ball, she doesn’t even care about being left behind - who wants to hang out with a bunch of annoying, excessively clean witches anyway? But then her fairy godwitch appears to tell her about all the filthy fireplaces over at the palace - and what’s more, the prince everybody’s over there hoping to meet just happens to be the King of Dirt. Before she knows it CinderHazel is on her way to the ball, destined for a series of misadventures and - just maybe - her very own ‘filthily ever after’.
This quick and silly read-aloud is cute and fun, and will really appeal to those little kids who are appalled by anything girly or pretty.
Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty Jody Gehrman
First things first-- this is
Much Ado About Nothing, but set in Sonoma County and told from Beatrice's (renamed Geena) point of view. There's no wedding, but a giant sweet sixteen party. No one fakes their death, but they might return to boarding school earlier than planned. The evil Don John is just the bigshot local guy whom everyone worships. The coffee is hot, but the revenge is cold.
A fun and excellent summer read, and a really well done retelling. It stays true to the plot and elements, but if I hadn't known it was a retelling before reading it, it would have taken me a really long time to get it, because it keeps the source material in the background (much like
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason). I most enjoyed the subplot of Geena and her father. The sequel,
Triple Shot Bettys in Love which I'm very much looking forward to reading, is a retelling of
Cyrano De Bergerac.
Book Provided by... my local library
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By:
Lucy Coats,
on 4/30/2009
Blog:
An Awfully Big Blog Adventure
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"Imagine, if you will, a handful of families in Africa at the very beginning of the Human Race," said the BBC trailer. So I did. Inconceivable, really that that small group should have engendered the billions who live on the earth today. But it set me to wondering (as I occasionally do) about another thing entirely. Who told the first story? And when? We know that our early ancestors were certainly artists--the evidence is there in the caves of Lascaux and elsewhere. We know that the 'dreaming tracks' of the Aboriginal Australians go far far back in the history of mankind, mapping the land and territory in song lines--the rhythms of which correspond exactly to the walking pace of a human being. But story. Formal story. How did that happen? I am no anthropologist, and don't pretend to be. I have only my (fertile) imagination and my knowledge of a fair few world myths to go on. But one thing I am utterly sure of is this: that the first stories were told to make sense of the frightening world in which our ancestors lived, and the cataclysmic events around them. How to encompass the fear of an African storm with its terrifying dark sky full of fire and noise? How to tame the power of an all-destroying flood? Why, make it manageable by setting it within the bounds of story. We started telling stories to come to terms with the world around us. And if all story started in the heart of Africa with that same handful of families, then it is hardly surprising that we find the same mythical story themes in every culture. They are, most possibly, hard-wired into our DNA at the deepest level.
The most ancient stories not only make sense of the world, they also give us clues to pre-historical events, set out taboos and ways to behave (or not behave) and much more. They give us all the potential to share what Joseph Campbell called 'those fixed stars, that known horizon'. Myths--whenever they started--are one of the most important repositories of knowledge we possess, and every child, in every culture, should have access to a wide spread of them as part of their education. Most British schools teach Greek myths as part of KS2, and this is very good. Certainly my book Atticus the Storyteller's 100 Greek Myths has been a perennial favourite since its first publication in 2002, and the recent popularity of the Percy Jackson novels mean that Greek myth is thriving as never before. But what I find incomprehensible is that the majority of our schools are not encouraged within the curriculum to explore the myths of this land. Most children know about King Arthur from one source or another--and nothing wrong with that, except that he and his knights of the Round Table are the creation of a 12th century historian and a 15th century jailbird, stemming from the romance tradition of the medieval minstrels. But of the orally handed down pre-Christian epics of Cuchulain and Finn MacCool, Pwyll and Llew and Mabon, almost nothing is known by the average schoolchild in the UK, because there isn't the time for teaching it. This is, in my opinion a disgrace, and I do my best to counter it with every visit I make to a school, hoping to make a difference, and the children always respond with huge interest. This is a drop in the ocean, but I do not despair. There is always room for hope. The rise of fantasy novels since JRR Tolkien has meant that both modern children's and adult literature is full of clues to these things. The myths of this land of ours are there for the finding--and in my case, there for the retelling. Writers will go on plundering the mythical treasure chest, and reshaping its contents to suit the conditions of the modern world. Even if we no longer need to make sense of the thunder by telling fantastical tales about it, the parallel evolution of story and humankind is not finished yet, and it never will be as long as there are ears to listen to all the infinite number of tales there still are in our future lives. Do you think that our small handful of ancestors in Africa could ever have imagined such a thing?
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Sounds like a book worth checking out. I read Jane Eyre years ago in college, and while I don't remember all the details, I do remember wondering what was so great about Rochester. I'll have to re-read it and see whether my feelings have changed.