from Regina Marler at the New York Times: Field Guides to Fairies
Dawn is breaking on the Y.A. aisle of the bookstore, and the dew is suspiciously glittery. Look quickly and you may catch the hoofprint of a magical steed and the flutter of a wing. A recent crop of fairy-themed novels and reworked fairy tales is proving the surprising resilience of an age-old genre.
These aren’t gift-shop fairies. They’re capricious, twilight creatures that travel between the fairy realm and our own, meddling in human lives. In Cyn Balog’s “Fairy Tale,”a clairvoyant high school girl discovers that her perfect boyfriend is actually a changeling — a fairy child raised by unsuspecting humans. Malinda Lo’s somber and lovely “Ash” is a lesbian retelling of “Cinderella.” Lisa Mantchev’s theatrical fantasy “Eyes Like Stars” pits a plucky orphan, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith, and her fairy attendants against the wiles of Ariel and a stuffy stage manager. In Aprilynne Pike’s “Wings,” the new girl at school is mortified to realize she’s sprouting a set of perfumed flower-wings. (Through some pact with the goblin lord, Pike scored a cover blurb from Stephenie Meyer, author of “Twilight.”)
Read More here
via Sabrina Rojas Weiss at MTV: Action-Packed ‘Vampire Academy’ Will Suck You In: The Book Report
I can’t be the only Twilighter who’s experienced this: A year and a half after telling everyone about my new obsession, friends and family are just now coming up to me and asking, “Have you read ‘Twilight’?” Welcome back to the world, cave-dwellers. I’ll forgive them for not listening to me the first time, but now that they’ve all caught Cullen fever, maybe they’ll pay attention to my other recommendations.
And if, like me, you were constantly frustrated with the fact that, for all her bravery, Bella always had to rely on others to protect her from dangerous vampires, Richelle Mead’s “Vampire Academy” is the perfect antidote. In this book and its three sequels, the vampires are the ones who need protecting from the likes of Rose Hathaway. She’s a Dhampir, half human and half vampire, in training to be a guardian of full-blooded vampires called Moroi…
Read More here
By Meredith Jean Morton at News Chief: From ‘Cinderella’ to Graphic Novels-Modern children’s literature has come a long way from fairy tale classics
Children and books have a long history together, from summer days spent with a stack of page-turners in a backyard hammock, to reading on school nights with a flashlight under the covers. However, in today’s world, books face competition for children’s attention with video games, the Internet, television and other pastimes.
Many adults recall growing up reading tales of princesses, knights in shining armor and evil witches. However, current children’s books have taken a step away from fairy tales and are gravitating toward solving the trials of real life.
Lexi Esham, 7, of Auburndale said she enjoys reading books where she has commonalities with the characters.
Even the fantasy series like “Harry Potter” have a correlation with the problems faced by some children today. In “Harry Potter,” the title character has a childhood of oppression, but has the opportunity to escape into a world of wizardry, witches and wonder. However, even in this world, Potter and his friends overcome the typical childhood issues of bullying, homework, obeying authority figures and choosing a career path.
Read More here
I think it’s interesting to see children actually moving away from fantasy books; when I was little there wasn’t very much choice. I had The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patrica Wrede and Dinotopia, and that was it. I love seeing the wide variety of fantasy available now. And the paths the fairy stories are moving down seems very cool; I love the re-imaging of Cinderella. As for the Vampire Academy series, the author’s right, the thing that bothered me about Twilight was she had to be rescued for the first three books. But someone on my Christmas list is definitely getting Vampire Academy book 1.
What do you think of all the re-imagining (not just the fairy stories, but Alice in Wonderland too)? What did you read when you were little?
