{"id":29039,"date":"2015-05-15T06:30:21","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T18:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=29039"},"modified":"2015-05-12T21:17:57","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T09:17:57","slug":"a-few-fairytale-retellings-ive-enjoyed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2015\/05\/15\/a-few-fairytale-retellings-ive-enjoyed\/","title":{"rendered":"A Few Fairytale Retellings I’ve Enjoyed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thornspell\"<\/a>My novel, Thornspell<\/strong><\/a>,<\/em> is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the prince — one of the fairy tale’s less commonly explored aspects. Nonetheless, it probably comes as no surprise to you that I love fairytale retellings.<\/p>\n

\"Beauty_RobinMcKinley\"<\/a>A few of my favourites include Robin McKinley’s Beauty<\/strong><\/em> (Beauty and The Beast), which has the distinction of being one of the first fairytale retellings I encountered and remains a firm favourite \u2013 although her Deerskin<\/em> <\/strong>(adapting the traditional Donkeyskin) is also a powerful and compelling read.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>Another longstanding favourite is Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s The Godmother <\/strong><\/em>draws on an array of fairytales, including Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Hansel and Gretel, to name just a few — a wonderful read.<\/p>\n

\"ash_malindalo_500-200x304\"<\/a>Other more recently enjoyed reads include Juliet Marillier’s Wildwood Dancing<\/strong><\/em>, (The Twelve Dancing Princesses), Malinda Lo’s Ash<\/em> (<\/strong>Cinderella) and Grace Lin’s Where The Mountains Meets The Moon<\/em>,<\/strong> which draws on Chinese folklore in a Junior fiction retelling.<\/p>\n

\"Raven<\/a>Alan Garner’s The Owl Service <\/strong><\/em>is an eerie retelling of the Celtic fairytale \/ myth of Blodeuwedd from the Mabinogion \u2013 but I suspect Maggie Stiefvater may be drawing on the same tale for part of her new The Raven Boys <\/strong>series, which I’m also very much enjoying. (Although it’s yet to be completed so I may be proven completely wrong regarding Blodeuwedd!)<\/p>\n

\"Eight<\/a>I have also always loved Diana Wynne Jones’s retelling of the story of Brunnhilde and Siegfried in Eight Days of Luke<\/strong><\/em>. Perhaps I am interpreting “fairytale” too broadly here since both the Mabinogion and the tale of Brunnhilde and Siegfired may be counted as myth \u2013 but if so it is the same blending that infuses Thornspell<\/em><\/strong>, where I have worked the Arthurian cycle into the fairytale retelling.<\/p>\n

\"EverAfter2\"<\/a>Stepping away from novels briefly, I very much enjoyed Juliet Marillier’s short story By Bonelight <\/em>(published in the collection Prickle Moon<\/em><\/strong>), a retelling of the Russian Baba Yaga fairytale that won both the Aurealis and Sir Julius Vogel Awards. And when it comes to film, I can’t go past Ever After \u2013 <\/strong>my “best ever” retelling of Cinderella.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My novel, Thornspell, is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the prince — one of the fairy tale’s less commonly explored aspects. Nonetheless, it probably comes as no surprise to you that I love fairytale retellings. A few of my favourites include Robin McKinley’s Beauty (Beauty and The Beast), which has the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-writers","category-recommended-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29039"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29048,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29039\/revisions\/29048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}