Systematic Student:
travel

The free-verse poetry is as powerful as even, invoking images and emotions within the reader easily. I've read several authors who use verse to tell their stories, and none of them are as powerful writers as Hopkins. The intensity she writes with with astound you. It is painful, stark, real. This much honest emotion in a story takes my breath away, even as is breaks my heart. None of these children have had an easy time with life and the legacy Kristina has left for them is heartbreak, addiction and destruction. Not very hopeful, is it?

Life is never all about you. There will always be other people hurt or affected by our decisions, and I think it is important to realize this. You are always able to chose your own actions, but you do not get to chose your consequences for yourself or those around you. I once again commend Hopkins for an amazingly powerful story, one that will stay with me for a long time.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad is a book I've been meaning to read 'for real' since my senior year in high school. It is the one of only two books I have ever been assigned and not read completely. (The other is A Diary of Anne Frank and I feel horribly guilty over that one)

So, I started Heart of Darkness for my AP English class, like I was supposed to, and then got bogged down in Conrad's endless description. So, I skimmed the rest, asked my English teacher for 'help' because I, 'didn't understand' the message, wrote my thesis paper, and got an A.:) No one ever knew.

But, I always felt like I hadn't been fair to Mr. Conrad's book. I owned my AP copy, it's not even 80 pages, and I figured I could just read it and mark it off my slate of unfinished (shameful) reads. I even hoped that if I gave it another chance I wouldn't hate it so much the second time.

Although it will never be one of my favorite books, I will say that Heart of Darkness was improved the second time around. I liked it much more this time (although that isn't saying much, since I loathed it the first). One of my earliest concerns with this book is the narrative voice. The narrator and the storyteller are two different people. People are sitting around a fire, listening to a man tell a story about his trip through the heart of the African Congo, and one of the men around the fire is telling it to us. It's weird, and it makes the descriptions and language that much stranger, because really... Even back then, who talks like that around a campfire?! I don't really see the point, and I thought it made the story more stilted than it needed to be.

I also felt that a lot of the book was superfluous, which in a 78 page book is a problem. Nothing really happens until the end of the book. Now, I'm perfectly willing to admit my part in this. I know that I read this book faster than I should have, and that I missed some of the important parts to the story. But, I don't care. I still found a lot of it dull, meandering and pointless.

There is a surprising amount of depth to this story. I missed it entirely the first time, because I was intentionally blocking out any meaning to the story, and I think I barely touched it this time, but I was impressed by what Conrad is able to convey in just 80 or so pages (closer to 40 or 50 if you consider that I felt the first half mostly irrelevant). But, once Kurtz becomes an important and active part of the story, I think you can learn a lot. Although I didn't love this book, and I doubt I ever will, I'd like to read it at least once more to try and glean more because I think there is more that this book could teach me.

Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang is the story of young Emmajin, the eldest grandchild of the Great Khan. Her closest friend is her cousin, Suren, the eldest grandson of the Khan. Strength and fighting skills are valued in their culture, and Emmajin desperately wants to be allowed to serve in her grandfather's military. She would be the first.

Her grandfather gives her an important assignment. She is to become the companion and guide to the young traveler Marco Polo, and his father and uncle, who are traveling with them. She is basically a spy — sent to extract secrets that will make it easier for her grandfather to conquer their lands, and fulfill the prophecy from the Gods that their empire would unite the world.

Predictably, as Emmajin gets to know Marco better, she stops thinking of him as a stranger, or enemy and begins to consider him a friend, and then — more.

Although I found several parts of this story to be fairly predictable, I still really enjoyed the book. I thought that Emmajin was a great character, and we see a lot of growth in her over the course of the story. She really comes into her own. In the beginning, she is enthralled by the stories told in the courts about the mighty battles their warriors fought, and the grand acts of heroism and valor in battle. She can't imagine anything more rewarding or wonderful than being involved in something like that. But, as the story progresses, and she begins to learn more about Marco Polo's European ideals, and his desire for peace, she starts to question her belief systems, and view their culture from the eyes of an outsider. Eventually, Emmajin learns the hard way that battle is not all glory. The enemies have faces, lives, and stories of their own.

I loved watching her learn about differing points of view, and realizing that there isn't only one way of doing things. I thought Emmajin was a very well drafted and carefully thought out character. Unfortunately, she was about the only character I thought was fully imagined. Suren is Emmajin's best friend. They've been inseparable since they were tiny, and continue to be close as they grow. But, Suren is only ever fleshed out in relation to Emmajin. It's almost like he is only fully a person when sitting next to Emmajin. I felt like that about most of the other characters, including Marco Polo. To toss in a bit of philosophy, it reminded me of Idealism, which is the idea that there is no real reality. Everything we know/see only exists in relation to us. Sort of like The Matrix, except we aren't really plugged into any machines.

I wished that there had been more character development outside of Emmajin, but my biggest problem with the story was the ending. I thought that the ending was unrealistic. I don't want to go into details, because that really ruins the story, but I didn't believe it at all. I stopped believing what was happening as soon as Emmajin was sitting around the fire at the camp with Marco Polo, her grandfather and other members of the court and hunting party. It just would not have happened like that, and I feel like the author just needed a quick and happy resolution.

I do think this is a book worth reading. I wish the author had stayed a little truer to her characters when writing the ending. I think it was a disservice to both the characters and the reader to end it as she did. That being said, overall, I still enjoyed Emmajin's character and her discoveries about her world, and I enjoyed following her interactions with people.

*Disclaimer: I received this book through Around the World Tours.

Pirate Treasure and The Lost City of Atlantis are the first two books in the middle grade adventure series, The Traveling Trunk Adventures written by Benjamin Flinders.

In the first book, Pirate Treasure, Ethan and Dallin's father brings them a gift; an old looking chest, said to have previously been owned by pirates. Although confused at first (because pirate chests don't really fit in with their awesome jungle themed bedroom, complete with vines) they open the chest and start to play around a little. When they jump in the chest and close the lid to hide from their little sister, they are amazed, and more than a little scared to open the lid and realize they are no longer in their bedroom, but in what looks like the cabin of a ship.

After their adventures in the first book aboard a real life 18th century pirate ship, the boys manage to unlock the mysteries of the chest and return home. A short time later, they return to the chest and find themselves in the City of Atlantis, listening to men preach in the streets that the city is doomed and will fall any day unless drastic changes are made.

While reading these two books, there were a few moments when I just had to roll my eyes at the unlikeliness of their situations. I found that the adults in these stories were just a little too dumb to be believable and people in both books were a little too willing to help these brothers out. They patiently explained unfamiliar words and phrases, and accepted whatever the boys told them as explanation.

However, these books are designed to be read and enjoyed by young middle grade readers, and I think they were written perfectly for that age group. They are quick reads with eye catching illustrations, and the language is on level with what kids that age would understand and enjoy.

I wasn't exactly sure how I felt about these books immediately after finishing, until I thought about how much I would have loved these books as a kid. I was fascinated by history, and loved the idea of kids being able to go back in time to live through, and maybe alter, history. In 5th grade, when I just knew I was going to be a writer someday, I wrote a little mini-series of (awful) time travel stories and this brought all those memories back.

I would definitely recommend this series to younger kids, whether they are interested in history, like the idea of traveling through time, or just like the idea of an adventure. They might not switch between adults and children as smoothly as other MG books I've come across, but they are perfect for children and would easily be enjoyed by many MG readers, boys and girls alike.

Each book also contains a little bit of historical fact at the end of the chapter. Pirate Treasure includes a pirate glossary. How cool is that?! With this book, on International Talk Like a Pirate Day (Sept. 19) you can totally sound legit!!

*Disclaimer: I received these books from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Hope in Patience by Beth Fehlbaum was not an easy book to read, but it was definitely powerful. It's about Ashley, who spent the years from 9-15 suffering sexual abuse from her stepfather and neglect from her mother. After a particularly horrific night, she moves to Patience, Texas to life with the father she's never known and his family.

One of the things I most appreciated about this book is that Ashley isn't magically fixed because she's now in a loving environment with people who care about her, and has an understanding therapist who is helping her move on. Ashley is still a bit of an emotional wreck. She has good days, better moments and really bad times. There are still times when she crawls into her wardrobe to sleep, she sleeps much better with her door locked at night, she has trouble talking about what happened, and anything related to family, and she doesn't like to be touched.

I get really annoyed by books where problems are solved too easily, and there is no real conflict. Anyone who went through what Ashley did is going to experience side effects, some of which will likely never go away. Ashley is not one of those characters. Her pain is very real, still fresh and it's always close to the surface. With the help of her dad and her step-mom, both of whom are incredibly loving and supportive, she is starting to heal. Her rather unconventional therapist, Dr. "Matt" is also helpful. His moments surprised me. I've never heard of any of the techniques he used in therapy (drop kicking teddy bears) but it seems like he understands what is needed to connect to Ashley, and he uses that to reach her. And it helps. He helps break the 'spinning' where her mind rushes and rushes, immobilizing and terrifying her, he helps her learn to acknowledge her emotions instead of carving them out onto her skin, and he helps her begin to accept her past so that she can embrace her future.

The only complaint I have with this novel, is that I feel too many big 'issues' were tackled at once, and many of the characters used to illustrate that issue were just a little too one-dimensional. We saw people dealing with homosexuality and homophobia, religious zealots, racial prejudice, many small minds, chauvinists, and etc. I understand the point of these characters. It's more on the theme that you are not alone, and not the only with suffering. But, I felt that most of these characters had little, if any depth and it was almost too much. There were a few characters that I didn't think helped the story along, but most of the characters (even some of the 'flat' ones) helped Ashley in some way or another. So, overall even that's still positive.

I'm interested to see where else Ashley's story will take us. I didn't realize this until after I had finished the book, but this is actually the second book in Fehlbaum's Patience Trilogy. The first, Courage in Patience is, I believe, out of print and the third (still tentatively titled Living in Patience) will not be released until next year at the earlies. When I started Hope, I didn't feel like I had entered into the middle of the story, and the author gives us enough background that we aren't lost. As I said, I didn't even realize this was the second in a trilogy until I was searching the book on Goodreads. Whether you start at the beginning first, or just pick up this one, it's definitely a book I think is worth reading. I plan to look for the first in the series soon, and I'll be anxiously awaiting Ashley's conclusion.

I also feel like I need to mention that I think Ms. Fehlbaum is incredibly brave to have put this type of emotion and personal experience on paper, and let strangers read it. Congratulations. This is an amazing story. The pain is very real, but so is the hope. This is a story to say that you are not alone, that there is always hope.

*Disclaimer: I received this book through Traveling ARC Tours.

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner is the first book of The Queen's Theif series. In this book, we meet Gen, short for Eugenides, named for the God Eugenides, the patron God of theives. When we meet him, Gen has been locked in the King's prison for an unknown length of time, although it's clear he's been there a while. We don't know much about Gen, and he doesn't bother to tell anyone too much about himself beyond the boast that is responsible for his current predicament; "I can steal anything".
He is taken from the prison by a man close to the King, and told that he is going to help him as a theif, or... else (cue omnious music). With no other choices, Gen leave the King's City with a small group of travelers on a journey with an as yet undisclosed destination. We know what Gen knows, which is simply that his expertise as a theif will be required.
The book is narrated by Gen, and we learn about him as the novel progresses. I loved his internal dialouge, and the way he speaks and interacts with the people taking him on the quest. Although he's a theif, just 'realeased' from prison, Gen has a strong moral compass, and seems very genuine, and very sincere. It is clear from the beginning that there is more to Gen than meets the eye, but very little information is given to us. Most of it we are left to wonder about, puzzle over, and wait until Gen sees fit to let people know more about him.
The book is very well written. We are given enough information throughout the story that I never felt frustrated by what I didn't know. I knew enough to be comfortable with the story, and I trusted that everything would be clear in due time. This is not one of those series that leaves you guessing about important details and facts for two or three books at a time. I thought Turner handled it brilliantly.
The characters are also fairly vibrant, even the supporting characters. But, my favorite part of the book was learning about their myths and legends. There are several occasions, as Gen's group is traveling where they sit beside the fire and tell legends and stories of the God's and the creation of the world. I've always been fascinated by mythology, and I loved Turner's versions of those myths. Most were similar to the Greek legends, and it's clear that Turner borrowed from them, but the myths do not feel stolen. They feel created. I could easily believe that these were genuine legends believed and honored by people thousands of years old.
I'm anxious to read the next books in the series. Not because I'm desperate to know what happens next because the author left us with a huge cliffhanger, because there isn't one. The Thief could easily be a story all it's own. This storyline is finished and although it is clear there is more to life for these characters than that which we have seen, this story is finished, and could easily be read on it's own and then left. But, I'm eager to read the remaining books in the series because the writing was beautiful, the characters engaging and the world is a treat to be in. I'd definitely recommend picking up this book. It's probably right close to the border between MG and YA, so it's just fine for younger readers, but there's enough to the story that older teens and even adults can enjoy it too.

*Warning — this review might be a little more spoilerish than normal. I'm not giving away anything major that I didn't know before reading the book, but the way we learn the information within the story makes it seem like you aren't supposed to know yet... I'm just saying. You've been warned.

I seem to be a little behind in my YA fads lately. I waited until all three books of The Hunger Games were out before I read them, I just read my first zombie book (more on that later!) and now, I've finished my first reading experience with fallen angels.

Fallen by Lauren Kate is an interesting novel, combining reincarnation with the idea of fallen angels. I think I liked the idea. I say 'I think' because Kate keeps so much information away from us readers, that it's hard to really know what the story is about. I was about 120 pages into it when I was asked what it was about, and I had to reply with 'I don't really know'. They looked at me weird, and asked if that was really my bookmark, because I couldn't possibly be that far, and not know what the book was about. But, other than mentioning the main character and the mysterious reasons for her trip to reform school where she meets two boys who
both warm and confuse her, all I could do was guess as to where Kate was going with things.

I also felt that with how long it too us to get there, that the resolution was more than a little rushed.We spend the whole book building up to this climactic crescendo. To be musically nerdy for a moment, we are building up to this huge fortissimo, but it only lasts for about 2 notes before dropping down to a nice mezzo-forte. That's a lot of build up, and not a lot of delivery.

However, the book is written well enough that I didn't always mind. I found myself captivated by her writing style and the world she created. Her descriptions were breathtaking, and I found myself wishing that I could visit this decaying monstrosity that much have been stunning at one point.

Even though I didn't always completely understand/connect with Luce, I liked her as a character. I actually thought the characterization in this novel was great. I especially loved Penn. She was wonderful. I thought that most of the characters were real and well portrayed, and it was great getting to know them. I look forward to reading more about them in Torment. Oh, and I also have to admit that a lot of what drew me to this books (and the sequel) was the covers. I think they are stunning! Love them!

Even with all the flaws and faults to this story, I definitely enjoyed it. The characters were awesome, the writing beautiful and the story just interesting enough to let me over look what I didn't love. I'm definitely looking forward to Torment, and hopefully having a few more questions answered!

*Disclaimer: I received this book through Star Book Tours.

Firelight by Sophie Jordanis a unique shape-shifter/paranormal YA read. Instead of werewolves, vampires, fairies or angels, Jordan has introduced us to the Draki, 'people' that have evolved from dragons. They can shift between human and dragon form almost at will, but shhh! Don't tell anyone, because no one else knows. The humans who hunt the Draki don't actually know that they appear human most of the time.

Other than the actual premise (shape-shifting dragons) not much of this story is terribly unique. We have our 16 year old heroine, trying to find her place among her family and her pride (group of Draki). She also happens to be extra special, even for a Draki (because why would we want to read about a mediocre heroine?!) She is the first Draki is generations who has the ability to breathe fire, which naturally makes her pretty popular among other members of the pride. Pretty early into the story, she is uprooted from the only home, and the only people she has ever known, and has to try and fit into a completely new setting. She deals with a mother and sister who don't understand her and don't really try to relate to her. Then, there's the whole 'forbidden love' thing. Yup, she falls in love with a human boy. But more than that, he and his whole family are hunters. And more. You see where this is going?

Regardless of what that last paragraph sounds like, I actually really liked this book. A lot. I liked it in the same way that I really liked Twilight and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and this type of chick lit in general. I didn't read it to be 'literarily edified' or to read the 'best written book of all time'. I read it to be entertained, to read a good story, and to have some fun. Which, I did!

The writing was engaging and entertaining. The story begins with out main character, Jacinda, and her best friend going for an illegal flight as dragons. The rules for flight are very specific. Because they are hunted, they keep strict regulations on appearances as dragons and flying is only allowed at night. But Jacinda absolutely loves flying, and just can't resist getting in some extra flight time in the morning. Well, this ends up being a very bad idea. This lovely morning also happens to be the morning the hunters have come down, and it's all Jacinda can do to get her and her friend safely away from them.

I don't want to spoil too much of the story, because I really liked reading it without knowing much more than the basic premise (shape-shifting dragon, who is special enough to breathe fire, falls in love with dangerous human boy) so I won't say much more about the plot, but it's definitely an enjoyable read, well worth the few hours it took to read it. It's also a book where I enjoyed the actual reading experience more than I enjoy the book. (Does that make sense?!)

It's a pretty fast read, and one that, once I started, I didn't want to put down again. I think I ended up staying up until about 3am reading this one, because I really wanted to know how it ended. Sadly though, the ending was the worst part of the book. Not because it was bad, but because it was incomplete. This book is a planned series, and that is very obvious from the very unsatisfying ending. Jordan leaves a lot of ideas left unexplored and there are several story lines that are just left completely unresolved. It's made me incredibly anxious for the next book in the series to come out, and this one hasn't even been released yet! Sigh... It's going to be a long wait!

If any part of it sounds like something you are interested, or it's the style of book you normally like (YA paranormal/fantasy romance) then I definitely recommend you pick it up. It was an enjoyable read, and a story that I'll be following as it advances more. If you have read it, what did you think?

*Disclaimer — I received these books from the publisher in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

I enjoy historical fiction. I love reading about a time period before my own because it gives me a little taste of what life was like for someone with very different experiences. And, I'd much rather experience it vicariously than permanently give up electricity and running water.

So, when I was contacted by Earthshaker Books to review a prehistoric adventure following young Zan-Gah, I was thrilled. It sounded like something that would be a fun read, and even if I didn't end up loving them, I have four younger brothers, and between them, one brother was bound to be interested. My initial feelings after finishing these two books? I'm keeping them (sorry bro... Maybe, if you're nice to me, I'll let you borrow it.)

The two books, Zan-Gah: A Prehistoric Adventure

and Zan-Gah and the Beautiful Country

by Allan Richard Shickman were a lot of fun to read. When we first meet Zan, he is a young boy trying to determine his place within his tribe. He wants to be a man, with a man's responsibilities, but at such a young age, that's hard. Zan is a great character. Although he is young, he's already well on his way to becoming a remarkable man. He is learning the courage does not mean a lack of fear, but rather accepting those fears and facing them anyway. He goes with the men of his and the neighboring tribes to hunt the lion that has recently killed a child. He's the both the youngest and the smallest person involved, and he's scared. He refuses to let that hold him back and ultimately, he is the one who brings the lion down. Doing this earns him the name Zan-Gah as an honor.

After the celebration over the defeat of the lion, the narrative breaks away to tell us a little of Zan-Gah's past. Zan has a twin, Dael, who has been missing for about a year. Zan-Gah begins to have disturbing dreams that convince him his brother is actually alive. Now that he has become more of a man, Zan-Gah decides it is time to set out to find his brother, save him, and bring him back home. The search for his brother and all that happens to him as he travels is detailed in the first book. Zan-Gah meets many new people, makes friends and enemies, learns, grows, suffers and triumphs.

I was really rooting for Zan-Gah to find his brother and bring him safely home. Reading this, you really want Zan-Gah to succeed. Which, to a degree, he does. Zan finds his brother and brings him back to the family. It took Zan-Gah over a year to find and free his brother from captivity which means Dael has now been a prisoner for over two years. And his captors did not treat him well. Dael does go home, but he returns to his people broken and withdrawn.

The second book begins with what little humanity Dael regained after being set free fleeing, leaving him angry, bitter, broken and uncaring. He is so full of anger and, all he can think about is exacting his revenge on those who he believes wronged him. And that includes Zan-Gah. Zan-Gah cares deeply about his brother and it hurts him that Dael is in so much pain but masks it with these darker emotions and refuses to let anyone close. Although Dael's character angered me in the second novel, I respect that Shickman didn't sugarcoat anything here. Being d in captivity for two years damages a person. It is impossible to be the same after surviving something like that, and as much as he angered me, I can't really bring myself to blame Dael. He didn't ask to be broken.

I very much enjoyed the story told within these two novels. For the most part, the story was told very well and I thought the characters were wonderful and real. None of the characters felt like overused cardboard stock characters. Each character has their own personality and unique way of looking at life. I was impressed at how much life Shickman was able to give his characters. The differences between the various tribes we meet within the course of the story are also amazing. He gave them each distinct characteristics that definitively set them apart from each other.

There were times however, when the flow of the novel seemed slightly disjointed or abrupt. There were a few times when the story would be moving along at a good pace, and then I felt like Shickman backtracked to give us important information that would become relevant in a few pages, even though it had little, if anything, to do with the current action. But, it needed to be said before it was too late so he just kind of stuck it in. The transitions weren't always smooth.

While reading this, there were also times that I felt like I was reading a very well written history text. I actually enjoyed that aspect of the writing, and thought that it was exactly what this book needed. I think I would have found most other narrative forms awkward or overdone. However, I don't know how much a young reader would enjoy that and the book is marketed at children ages 11 and up. There are many scenes that involve the harsher aspects of life during the prehistoric era which might also be harder for a young child to understand and cope with. While I wouldn't keep this book away from the children (and do plan on asking my 11 year old brother if he'd like to read them) I think these are books that parents would do well to read along with their child (especially if they are a young 11 or so) or at the very least, be aware of the potential questions and concerns that might be raised by the reading of these books, and be available for questions.

Overall, I was very pleased to have read these, and am interested to see what Allan Shickman does next.

Alright everyone, here it is!

My interview with Jennifer Echols, the wonderful author of Forget You! Click HERE to read my review!

Jennifer was kind enough to agree to an interview after I read and loved Forget You. She is also the author of several other books for teens, including Going to Far, another romantic drama, and several romantic comedies, including Major Crush, and The Ex Games.
You can learn more about Jennifer and her books at her website, found HERE.

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First, I would like to say a huge thank you to Jennifer for agreeing to take part in this interview. It's great to have this chance to talk with you.

Ashley, I really appreciate the interview. Thank you!

So, when did you first start writing stories?

I think I was working on my first novel in third grade or so. My mom was reading Watership Down, which is about rabbits. My novel was about squirrels.

What did you want to be when you grew up? Have you always wanted to be a writer?

I was interested in writing, art, and music, and I pursued all three into college. My first college major was music education and composition. I wanted to be a composer and a high school band director. I was so interested in music intellectually, but I just wasn’t good enough. Writing was a creative outlet I felt much more comfortable with. In fact, I wrote a short story about band for the college literary magazine, people seemed to like it much better than any music I’d ever written, and I never looked back.

Why do you write young adult novels? Was that a conscious choice, or something that just sort of happened?

I finished writing my first novel when I was 20 and still reading YA myself. After that I wrote YA and adult, back and forth, but I guess YA was a part of me when I got my start and I never left. I still think YA novels are some of the best books out there.

Do you have any plans or desire to switch over to the Adult side of the aisle?

Since selling my first YA novel, I have written three adult novels, but they haven’t sold. Every time this happens, it breaks my heart, but publishing is a hard business and I knew this going in.

You already have several published novels out. Both comedic and dramatic. Were there any unique challenges to writing Forget You that you hadn't come across before?

This book is probably the one that’s most personal to me. The characters and events are fictitious, but I have felt all Zoey’s pain before. I have been that good girl who makes bad decisions. So I’m finding it a little harder than usual to share this story and listen to what other people say about it and about her.

Which of your books was the most challenging for you to write?

Endless Summer, because it is a sequel, and everything had to match what I’d written in The Boys Next Door.

Do you ever just sit back and think, "Wow. I'm a writer!"

Yes I do. Every single day I make sure that I reflect on the long, hard road I traveled to get here, and I am thankful that I finally have the career I always wanted.

I love getting new book recommendations. So, I have to ask. What do you read? What are your favorites?

Kiss It by Erin Downing and The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting were absolutely wonderful. And I hope everybody will check out the amazing When the Stars Go Blue by Caridad Ferrer, which is coming out in November. One of the coolest things about being an author is that you get to read other writers’ novels before they’re published!

Are there any books you can identify that have had the most impact on you as a person, and as a writer?

The best class I ever took was an American Moderns course at Auburn University. We read The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner, The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, A Lost Lady by Willa Cather, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and the collected poems of T. S. Eliot. Every one of these books made me see the possibilities of writing in a new way. The only book we read that wasn’t new to me was The Great Gatsby, and this wonderful professor made even that seem brand new. Have you ever taken a class like that?

Do you have a current work-in-progress? If yes, is there anything you can share with us about it now?

I’m finishing my next romantic drama for MTV Books. It will be published in July 2011, and it is called This Novel Has Such A Fabulous Title That I Can’t Even Tell You, or possibly OMG This Is The Best Novel Title Ever. My editor and I haven’t chosen which one yet but I will let you know.

Well, thank you so much Jennifer for answering all my questions!
My final question, just because I love them, what is your favorite pair of shoes?

In 2005 I ran my first 10K and the end of my middle toe kind of fell off. It was just a really bad blister. So I went to a local running store and said to the owner, “Please choose a pair of shoes for me that will not make my toe fall off,” and he did and I am on my fifth pair. They are Nike Equalons. This is probably not what you were asking, LOL!
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This was an awesome interview! Thanks again Jennifer for taking the time to talk to share with us! I'm looking forward to your new release, and to picking up some copies of your older books. And, if I ever decide to run a 10K, I'm definitely going to be looking for some Nike Equalons!

Summary from Goodreads:

Every night, Shahrazad begins a story. And every morning, the Sultan lets her live another day — providing the story is interesting enough to capture his attention. After almost one thousand nights, Shahrazad is running out of tales. And that is how Marjan's story begins...

It falls to Marjan to help Shahrazad find new stories — ones the Sultan has never heard before. To do that, the girl is forced to undertake a dangerous and forbidden mission: sneak from the harem and travel the city, pulling tales from strangers and bringing them back to Shahrazad. But as she searches the city, a wonderful thing happens. From a quiet spinner of tales, Marjan suddenly becomes the center of a more surprising story than she ever could have imagined.
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While in the early stages of planning fairy tale fortnight, Ashley contacted Susan Fletcher, asking her if she'd like to be a part of the event. Susan didn't have the time to contribute an author interview or a guest post, but she did donate a signed hardcover of Shadow Spinner from her personal collection. How cool is that?!

If you need further proof of how awesome it is, you can read Ashley's review (click!) . In case you haven't already guessed, she's definitely a fan.

In order to win a signed hardcover copy of this book, you must


Leave a comment telling us and Susan why you want to read her book.
Be sure to include your email address so we have a way to contact you if you win!


*Open Internationally
*Ends May 5th May 8th!

Help us welcome today Diane Zahler, author of The Thirteenth Princess a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses and A True Princess a retelling of The Princess and the Pea. (in my blog to read Ashley's review of A True Princess ).

Diane grew up in Ithaca, New York, where she spent most of her time reading children's books. She loved fantasy, but she especially loved fairy tales. In high school, she started working in the children's room of the public library, and kept reading fairy tales. After college, she went to New York City, got a job in children's book publishing and (what else?!) read more fairy tales before she finally decided to write her own! She loves to travel and often finds inspiration for her writing from the places that she visits.

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What made you decide to write fairy tale retellings?
I’ve loved fairy tales for as long as I’ve been a reader, and I also love a lot of the retellings I’ve read, especially the ones by Robin McKinley and Shannon Hale. So it was a natural fit for me when I started thinking about writing my own novels for young readers.
Would you consider a non-fairy tale retelling? Do you have any ideas?

I’m working on an idea now for a non-fairy tale retelling, but it’s in such an early stage that I don’t want to jinx it by talking about it (and I haven’t worked out the details).

Can you tell us anything about your current writing project?
I’ve finished a third retelling, Princess of the Wild Swans, which is based on The Wild Swans (versions by both Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm brothers). And I’m partway through a fourth, which has a well-known fairy tale as its inspiration but goes off on some wildly different angles.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses has always been my favorite fairy tale, and I've thought about it a lot. But a thirteenth princess has never occurred to me. Where did the idea for Zita come to you from?
There’s not a lot to the original story, if you recall. Twelve princesses are cursed to dance until they die; they’re rescued by a soldier. Not much detail there. So I felt like I had a lot of freedom to play around with it. Fairy tales are often about abandonment and betrayal, so I wondered: what if there were another princess, but she wasn’t allowed to be part of the family? Zita is abandoned in plain sight, living in the servants’ quarters below her sisters’ bedchamber, but she never loses her desire to be connected with her family, and she never loses her determination to help them.

Is there a fairy tale you would love to retell, but haven't been able to find the right inspiration for? One that you are maybe working on, just waiting for everything to click?
I love Rapunzel. It’s been retold in various forms, but I still feel there’s a lot that can be done with it. It’s on the back burner for now, but maybe soon…

Are there any fairy tales that you absolutely do not want to retell?
Well, there are some that have been done either to death or so beautifully that I wouldn’t want to go there – Cinderella, for example, and Beauty and the Beast. And some fairy tales are just too weird or grotesque to approach, especially some of the lesser-known Grimm tales. What amazes me is how MANY fairy tales there actually are.
Check out this Wikipedia list! I could write a dozen a year and not run out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fairy_tales (Try Foundling-Bird or The Iron Stove for bizarre Grimm stories.)

Silly/Random questions:

~Rapunzel is named after lettuce; what odd thing would you be named after if you were in a fairy tale?

Chocolate, without a doubt. But in another language, so it sounds princess-y: Suklaa (Finnish)? or Siocled (Welsh)?

~ Using that name, give us a line from your life as a fairy tale: I was named after the food of the gods, because my mother loved chocolate more than any other food. But I never managed to live up to the sweetness of my name.

~Best fairy tale villain and why? I started thinking about this and immediately wondered: Why are the villains mostly women? There’s Bluebeard, and the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, and Rumplestiltskin, if you’re looking for wicked males. But, though I don’t want to retell the story, the queen in Snow White has a malevolence all her own. It’s based on envy of her stepdaughter’s youth and beauty, which strikes me as particularly nasty. In the Grimms’ original tale, this villain was Snow White’s mother, not her stepmother, which makes her all the more evil.

~Favorite tale from childhood? Favorite tale as an adult? Least favorites? The Twelve Dancing Princesses and Rapunzel, as a child. As an adult, maybe Beauty and the Beast – one of the few with a heroine whose courage and love help her to save another. I’m not crazy about Jack and the Beanstalk or The Frog Prince (kissing a frog – ick. But in the original version, the princess throws the frog against a wall).

~If you could be any fairy tale character, or live through any fairy tale "happening," who/what would it be? If you consider A Thousand and One Nights a kind of fairy tale, I’d most like to try riding a flying carpet. Ever since reading E. Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet, it’s been my preferred mode of travel. So much easier and more romantic than the subway or JetBlue!

~Would you rather:
- — eat magic beans or golden eggs? Golden eggs, definitely — scrambled - — style 50ft long hair or polish 100 pairs of glass slippers? The hair, by a length. One long braid.

- — have a fairy godmother or a Prince Charming? A fairy godmother – I could wish for the prince, if I wanted him.
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Thank you so much for participating with us Diane! It's been a real pleasure to work with you!

We have a copy of A True Princess to giveaway to one lucky reader today! Diane was generous enough to provide us with a copy of the book (via the publisher) as well as some really neat bookmarks to go along with both A True Princess and her debut novel, The Thirteenth Princess.


One person will win a copy of the book and a set of the bookmarks. Then, winners will be drawn for the remaining bookmarks.


Rules:


You must leave a MEANINGFUL comment on this post. Let Diane know you appreciate the time she took to contribute be involved with us.
Include a way to be contacted.


Open Internationally
Ends May 5th May 8th!

Today's interview is with Zoë Marriott, author of The Swan Kingdom (read Ashley's review) , Daughter of the Flames (which Ashley also loved) and the upcoming Shadows on the Moon (which both Misty and Ashley are eagerly awaiting). Zoë has known that she wanted to be a writer since she was finished reading her first book; The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. She thinks she was about eight, but she decided on being a writer and hasn't changed her mind since then. And boy, are we glad that she didn't! Help us welcome Zoë to the blog today!!

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The Swan Kingdom is my favorite retelling of The Six Swans/The Wild Swans that I have come across. You talk about what inspired you to write this one down in your guest post. I loved what you did with the story to make it your own, but your interpretation of the ending to this story is largely responsible for how much I love this book. Without spoiling anything, can you talk about that? Can you share where or how that idea came to you?

So hard not to spoil!! Argh! Okay... well... basically, in the original version of the story, I didn't think the heroine really got a very happy ending. Or enough credit! She's clearly an extraordinarily brave and strong young woman, loyal the her brothers to the end despite all the suffering she's gone through — but she gets stuck with this prince who pretty much *kidnapped* her, and then was going to burn her because he thought she was a witch? That's true love for you, right? And she never gets justice for the wrong done to her family by her stepmother, or any closure, or even to see the land of her birth again! I suppose a few hundred years ago women weren't supposed to care about thing like that, but I was sure that for someone like her, the fate of the people she had left behind much have weighed on her mind very heavily. And then, it also made sense to me that in order to reverse such a powerful curse on her brothers through almost nothing but willpower and knitting, she must have had some fairly strong magical power of her own! So I wanted to try and bring those elements into the resolution of the story and bring everything full circle.

Did you have the changes you brought to the story in mind before you started writing, or were these things that came to you after?

Wow, that's a good question! I think some of them were always there, because they grew from the questions I had about the story — the questions that made me want to retell it. I mean, for example: just who was the mother of these royal children? In fairytales the real mother nearly always gets erased in the first line and replaced by a wicked plot-point. But it seemed to me that, particularly in The Wild Swans, where the father is pretty much a non-entity and yet the children are remarkable, that the mysterious, dead mother must have been remarkable too. So I always new that in my version the mother and particularly her death would be significant and happen 'on-screen' as it were.
In other cases, the changes to the story were due to things that happened to be marinading in my brain at the time. When I was working on the first draft of the story I was watching a BBC documentary series about British pre-history in which there was a lot of information about the hunter-gatherers who built all our long barrows and stone circles. The experts talked about ancestor worship, and about the way that cave art seemed to show animal and human spirts all together, as part of nature. But then as people started to farm and develop agriculture and a more sedentary life, the idea of ownership and kingdoms appeared, and there was a massive shift in the way people lived. Did the hunter-gatherers disappear? Or were they absorbed into the farmer population? So those ideas worked their way into the book, and gave me an interesting and, I think, unique magical system and backstory for the Kingdom.
Is there a fairy tale that you just need to retell, but are waiting to retell, or holding off for now? What are some of the other fairy tales you've considered retelling? Are there any fairy tales that you absolutely do not want to retell?
Sooo many! I've always wanted to retell Beauty and the Beast, but I'm horribly intimidated by Robin McKinley's legacy. I mean, how is anyone supposed to live up to THAT? And there are a lot of less famous stories, for example, from Japanese mythology, that I have ideas about. The one I've never really been interested in is Sleeping Beauty — there's so little for the princess to do, and the idea of falling conveniently in love with your saviour bugs me. But I'd never say never. I always hated Cinderella too, until she started whacking me on the back of the head with a pick-axe demanding I tell her story properly!
You've also written a non-fairy tale story, Daughter of the Flames. How does the writing and the research differ between the two genres? Which do you prefer writing? Do you prefer creating a completely new story and creating the world to fit the story, or taking an existing story at making it your own?

This isn't a very interesting answer, but I can't really put my finger on any significant differences in the process between writing an original fantasy and a fairytale relling. Possibly because I don't stick very closely to the specific events of my fairytale frameworks (as you may have noticed!) which means I still need to come up with my own plot, my own characters, my own emotional conflicts and arcs. Probably more importantly, I don't really think that writing a fairytale retelling is a get-out-of-jail card when it comes to setting. It's easy to slip into that non-specific, Eurocentric, Tolkien-esque world we all know so well. But that is a thin, bland sort place where I don't have much fun as a writer. Creating the world of Shadows on the Moon, for instance, required as much (actually, far more!) thought and research than the world of Daughter of the Flames.
Your most recent book, Shadows on the Moon comes out this July, and I'm crazy excited for it. It's a Cinderella story, but she is most assuredly not your typical Cinderella. You mention why you wrote her this way in your guest post, and I am dying to read about it. There are many fairy tales with rather weak heroines. Are there any other stories that you would like to retell to give the heroines a chance to be strong?
Actually, I think the female characters in fairytales tend to get a bit of a bad rep, overall. In a lot of original folk stories, young woman are cunning, resourceful, brave and loyal. Often men are the weak ones who need to be rescued. Look at Janet in Tam Lin, Kai and Gerda in the Snow Queen, the heroine of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, all those clever young witches and woodcutter's daughters! And the powerful, fearsome baddies are often women too. The problem, I think, is that the Victorians didn't approve of all these bold, adventuring women, and they cut their parts down and sometimes out entirely, in order to make fairytales 'fit' for their children. Not many years later, Disney carried on this process by producing a great many films in which being sweet, obedient and passive (and supernaturally attractive to forest animals) were the heroine's only traits. Later films, like Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid, did allow the heroines to have SOME personality — but their number one desire was nearly always to escape from their fathers so they could find true love, and their princes were the ones with the claws/swords.
It's really only very lately that we're seeing books and films that give women back their original, strong roles (Tangled, for example!) and I'm very happy to be a part of that process.
Silly/Random Questions:
~Rapunzel is named after lettuce; what odd thing would you be named after if you were in a fairy tale?

Pencils, probably. I always have one on me somewhere! Princess Pen... now, why does that sound familiar?:)
~ Using that name, give us a line from your life as a fairy tale: "Princess Pen cracked open her stepmother's ribcage and cut out the woman's horribly blackened, twisted, yet still-beating heart; she then replaced it with an artificial one which she had grown within a local farmer's pig, and closed up the incision."
[Misty likes Princess Pen already... ]
~Best fairy tale villain and why? The wicked fairy from Sleeping Beauty's christening. She's really the only interesting character in the thing!
~Favorite tale from childhood? Favorite tale as an adult? Least favorites? Childhood favourite was definitely The Wild Swans, and I have to be boring and say it STILL is. Least favourite used to be Cinderella — now Sleeping Beauty.
~If you could be any fairy tale character, or live through any fairy tale "happening," who/what would it be? I wouldn't. Are you crazy? Those stories are full of utter loonies, and even Princess Pen isn't mightier than the sword.
~Would you rather: - — eat magic beans or golden eggs? Golden eggs. With a little smoked salmon, on toast points. Maybe they would finally allow me to get a tan. - — style 50ft long hair or polish 100 pairs of glass slippers? My hair is actually waist-length right now, and I'm about to have it cut off from sheer annoyance, so I'd have to go with the slippers! - — have a fairy godmother or a Prince Charming? Fairy godmother — and once you've read Shadows on the Moon, you will know why! [Ashley says — SO mean to tease us this way when you already know how badly I want to read it! :) ] Fill-in-the-Gaps, story 1: Three Wishes
The strange little man had offered Princess Pen three wishes. But what to wish for? The obvious answer was world peace , but that would never do, for obvious reasons. Princess Pen wasn't naive enough to think that people would ever stop fighting for long. And unlimited money for stem cell research was out of the question, since Princess Pen's wicked stepmother had outlawed it.

The Princess squandered the first two wishes on aiding earthquakes sufferers and cooling down some nuclear reactors, and really needed to make the 3rd one count. There was only one thing to do: he/she would ask her genetically enhanced pig, Francis.

So early in the morning, the Princess set off for her lab where the porcine Francine lived. It was no easy task getting there; Princess Pen went through three security searches and a full body CT scan, and nearly lost hope of ever reaching Francis and making her final wish before she had to go off and do her rounds at Mount Eraser Hospital. Her stepmother's security measures were really getting out of hand.

But in all good time, Princess Pen reached the door of the one person who could help. With great trepidation, (for Francis could be somewhat cranky in the mornings if he hadn't had his coffee) Pen knocked and waited. Finallly, Francis opened the door with one handsomely trimmed trotter and peered out. “Yes?” he said.

Pen launched into the story of the little old man and his three wishes, but Francis merely held up a hand and said “It’s simple, really. I’m surprised you wasted your time coming all the way out here — you must wish for your wicked stepmother to agree to heart surgery so you can change her blackened, wizened heart for one which is generous and free of bigotry and unreasoning fear.”

Pen was baffled. Wish for something so simple? Not magic League-Boots to travel the world, or a wheel to spin flax into gold so that she could set up an inoculation project in the slums? However, it wasn't long before Pen realized that if her government was run by someone who actually had a working heart all the other things might one day be possible. So the Princess did the only thing she could, and wished for her stepmother to finally heed her pleas to accept a new heart.

Whether it was the right choice, the world will never know, but for Princess Pen it meant freedom from a great deal of unnecessary red tape in the long run, and the increased well being of everyone within the kingdom. And with all of the wishes gone, Pen lived busily ever after.
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Thanks for stopping by Zoë!! We're so glad to have you!
Hope you guys liked the guest post. If you want to fill in one of the stories for yourself, see this post.
And make sure to head over to our awesome guest post from Zoë, and enter to win our prize pack of Zoë's books!

Today we're reinforcing our love of Jessica Day George with an AWE.SOME. prize pack sponsored by Sierra @ Yearning to Read!
Check it out:

• a new paperback copy of Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow
• a new paperback copy of Princess of the Midnight Ball
• a preorder of the paperback version of Princess of Glass

Sometime around the end of last year, I stumbled across a page for A True Princess by Diane Zahler which is a retelling of The Princess and the Pea. Retellings of this story are rare, at least to my knowledge, so I instantly interested. And then the author caught my eye. I had read The Thirteenth Princess by Diane early in 2010 and I was completely charmed by Zita and her story. Because I so enjoyed The Thirteenth Princess, when Misty and I began planning for Fairy Tale Fortnight, I contacted Diane, asking her if she would be interested in participating and she said yes. There is an interview and giveaway coming up soon that Diane was generous enough to contribute, and she also sent me a copy of A True Princess to review during the event.

A True Princess is the story of Lilia, a 12 year old foundling servant. Found as a child around two floating down river in a basket, Lilia has lived in the home or Jorgen and his bitter second wife Ylva. Jorgen also has two children from his first marriage, Kai, who is near Lilia's age, and Karina who is five years older. As I read, I found myself searching for the word of phrase that would best describe how I felt reading it, and I decided that I simply adored this book, and that word — adored — is able to sum up how I felt and wrap it all together far nicer than words.

While I did genuinely enjoy this story, there were two main things that I didn't love. The first is that Lilia is only 12 years old. It tells us Lilia's age in the first few pages of the story, but I promptly forgot about it, and was completely shocked when I glanced at the summary on Goodreads, and it declares her 12. I had to glance through my copy to check, because to me, nothing about Lilia is 12 years old. Not her choices, not her thoughts, not her romance, and not her actions. I spent the entire book imagining her as 15, which is worlds away from 12. Karina also did not seem five years older than either Kai or Lilia either. She seemed much closer in age, which gave more weight to the idea that Lilia couldn't possibly be only 12.

The only other thing I wish had been different is a desire for more. There were so many fabulously wonderful ideas threaded throughout this book, any number of which could have been fleshed out and given more detail. There was a lot I wish we could have learned more about. While reading it, I enjoyed the world that Zahler had created, but I wished there had been more of it. I also wished for more development in the relationships. Things moved very quickly in this story, and what suffered the most was what we were able to see develop of the relationships. Lilia leaves in the middle of the night after overhearing Ylva demand she be sent to serve in the home of the abusive miller, and Kai and Karina set out after her to travel North with her, hopefully to find out where it is she came from and how she came to be floating down the river. We know, from this, that their relationship is close, but there isn't much time for us to see it develop. We don't get to see a lot of it, which makes certain later events (such as romantic developments) a little too... sudden and easy.

Although I did wish for more a little more detail to the story and fleshing out to the relationships, this is one that I am glad to have read, and will very likely read again. I've already picked it up to reread my favorite scenes again because I enjoyed it so much the first time around. I'm not very familiar with stories involving the Fey, especially in fairy tales, but as I find myself read more and more about them in my retellings, the more I wish to know about them. The Elf-King and his lovely, enchanting daughter were fascinating in this story and I found myself gripped and captivated every time they appeared on the page.

The resolution of the story was stunning and in my opinion, the best writing of the book. All of the book is good, but the resolution is where Zahler shines especially bright in this one. I found myself holding my breath a time or two, waiting for everything to be made right or resolved. Lilia really comes into her strength as she marches back into the woods to rescue Kai, knowing that to do so in dangerous, that the Elf-King is likely not to be trusted, but needing to save Kai no matter what.

Although this story is a retelling of The Princess and the Pea, and that infamous pea does make an appearance in the story, it is a tale less about a pea under a mattress and more about what it is that will make a true princess. Given the name of the book and the nature of fairy tales, you sense the truth of Lilia's origins almost as soon as you start the story, but discovering the truth alongside Lilia still feels like an adventure and a revelation. I loved the chapter headings, each a different 'rule' for what makes a true princess, and each rule usually foreshadows a way in which Lilia will break them throughout that chapter.

A True Princess is a charming, truly delightful fairy tale, one that fits well alongside The Thirteenth Princess and other fairy tale retellings. It is a simple yet wonderful addition to any fairy tale collection, and one I will enjoy reading again.

We have with us today fairy tale writer extraordinaire, Donna Jo Napoli! Misty and Ashley would both like to give her a tremendous thanks! for helping us kick off Fairy Tale Fortnight in style with a giveaway of 15 books! (I know — incredible, right?!)
Her tales show painstaking research and originality, as well as a desire to push herself and her reader into new territory, and we're very proud to host her here during FTF!
So let's get down to business, shall we?

~ What made you decide to write retellings? Have you or would you consider writing a non-retelling?

My first retelling was The Prince of the Pond — the frog prince story, and I told it because when my children were little, we used to tell fairy stories from different points of view. It was simply fun. Then I got more and more into it — and found it a major challenge to try to get from one (bizarre — as they usually are) point in a classic fairy tale to the next (usually equally bizarre) point in a coherent way.
But I write lots of things that are not fairy tale retellings. Lots and lots.

~ It seems you always try to push readers beyond the “standard” fairy tale setting (somewhere vaguely western European, within the last few centuries): is this just more appealing to you as a writer, or is this a conscious decision on your part?
This is a conscious decision. The world is huge, yet, of course, global considerations are imperative today. Given the geographic isolation of North America, it's easy for children whose families don't travel outside to feel like the rest of the world is somewhat abstract. And even those children who have traveled often have seen other places only through the eyes of the tourist — which are, of course, heavily lidded. I try to bring my settings alive — I even think of them as characters, if you will — so that readers can feel invited into someplace they've perhaps never even heard of. They can walk the hills or fish the streams or help repair the mud huts, and they can feel more grounded in this other place so that it becomes much less "other."
~ A lot of the stories you've chosen to retell are the lesser known, or less popular fairy tales to retell. Many of your retellings are the only retellings for different fairy tales that I'm familiar with. Was this deliberate? How do you chose which fairy tales or stories you will retell?

I never read other people's retellings, so I don't know which tales have been done and which haven't. I write those that fascinate me — that make my guts twist because there's something in there that really hurts somehow.

~ Some of your fairy tales are distinctly darker than the traditional retellings on the market. What draws you in your writing to the darker side of things?

I work from the earliest versions of the stories I can find — and I generally match my tone to that version. So I guess what you're saying is that the oldest versions are dark — and, yup, I'd agree. Why do I like those dark stories? I love misery. Don't you?

~How do you go about choosing tales to retell? Do you have a list of sorts of tales that you want to tackle, or locations, etc? Or do you research various tales/places until something calls out to you?

I've done both plus other things. With The Magic Circle and The Prince of the Pond, my two earliest fairy tales, I loved the stories, so I set out to understand them and I came to believe they were, at heart, deeply rooted in the first country we find them in (Germany and England, respectively — or these were the first countries I found them in). With Ugly and Mogo the Third Warthog, two of my more recent fairy tales, I wanted to tell the tales but I also wanted to give the reader new kinds of experiences. Since I had spent two summers in Australia and seen the magnificent Australian swan, setting Ugly in Tasmania was a natural. With Mogo, I had worked briefly in South Africa and seen warthogs in the wild — but I chose Kenya (where I've never been) because I had been doing a lot of reading about trees in Kenya for a picture book (which came out in 2010 — Mama Miti) and I felt very attached to the country, even though I've never had the opportunity to visit. With Bound, I spent the summer of 1997 in Beijing and went crazy for China. For the next six years I always had a book about China open beside me. Then I decided I wanted to set a story there — and, miracle of miracles, i found out that our oldest version of Cinderella is Chinese. Utter luck.

I have a fairy tale I want to work on next — and what draws me to this one is the psychology of the characters. Where it will be set, I have no idea yet. I haven't begun to research it, so I don't know which were the oldest versions of it. I don't even know what time period to set it in. A ton of my decisions get made through the research.

~ You have retold so many stories. Are there any that you are especially proud of, or partial to?

I felt like I had descended into hell when I was writing The Magic Circle and I still think it's my most disturbing fairy tale.
*Misty perks up at this... *

~ Are there any of your retellings that were especially hard for you to write? Any that came easier than others?

Breath was very hard to write because it's a medical mystery of sorts and I had to keep myself from letting modern ways of investigating interfere with how someone would have seen things in the 1280s. It really drove me nuts not to be able to allow my main character to actually figure out what was wrong.
And I find writing fairytales with animal characters the easiest — although they aren't easy — just easier than the others. So Mogo, the Third Warthog, for example, was just plain fun to write. I love learning about animal habits.

Silly/fun/general questions:

~Rapunzel is named after lettuce; what odd thing would you be named after if you were in a fairy tale?
~ Using that name, give us a line from your life as a fairy tale:
Oh my. I think I'd probably be some kind of bitter herb that makes people see in weird colors. Maybe something psychedelic. Let's call it "Batso"
Okay — a line
"I don't know why he keeps stringing up squirrel tails in the garage; maybe he's trying to send me a message."

~Best fairy tale villain and why?
For sure the witch in Hansel and Gretel — because she eats babies (what could be more villainous?)

~Favorite tale from childhood? Favorite tale as an adult? Least favorites?
From childhood, maybe Peter Pan.
As an adult, maybe Hansel and Gretel.
Least favorite — as a kid, The Three Pigs (but writing Mogo the Third Warthog helped me come to terms with that tale)

~If you could be any fairy tale character, or live through any fairy tale "happening," who/what would it be?
I'm not sure. Maybe I'd like to meet those seven dwarfs.

~Would you rather:
- — eat magic beans or golden eggs?
Probably even magic beans give you gas, no?
I'll take the eggs.
- — style 50ft long hair or polish 100 pairs of glass slippers?
I'd go for polishing the slippers. I am into meditation and this sounds like a pretty good one.
- — have a fairy godmother or a Prince Charming?
Fairy godmother, for sure.

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Thanks so much for stopping by, Donna Jo!
Everybody, make sure to leave Donna Jo some comment love below! And check out all of our DJN features during Fairy Tale Fortnight:
Bound | Hush | Sirena (coming soon) | Zel (coming soon)

Our current guest is Mel U from The Reading Life. Mel has an awesome post for us today about two of Oscar Wilde's fairy tales. I hope you enjoy the reading. I know it did.

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"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." — Albert Einstein
Fairy tales and their cousins the fable and parable are the sources of much wisdom. They evolved in time into the novel and the short story. They have been around probably longer than the written word. They came before Homer and the great Indian Epics. I was very happy to see the announcement for Fairy Tale Fortnight and decided I would do a post on two of my favorite Oscar Wilde fairy tales.

"The Selfish Giant" by Oscar Wilde (5 pages, 1888)

Oscar Wilde (1854 to 1900-Dublin, Ireland) is the author of Portrait of Dorian Gray (1890) read and loved to this day by readers all over the world. I loved it many years ago when I read it for the first time for the many epigrams that seem to defy the conventional too adult world. Like many people, I wished I could come up with remarks like those spoken in The Portrait of Dorian Gray or even to know someone who could. It is also a great study of the corruption and hypocrisy of late Victorian English high society.

Wilde also wrote and published a number of short stories done in the style of a classic fairy tales. Among the more famous is "The Selfish Giant". As the story begins the giant is returning from a long trip and is not happy when he sees the beautiful gardens surrounding his castle have become the play ground for local children.

One day the Giant came back. He had been to visit his friend the Cornish ogre, and had stayed with him for seven years. After the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited, and he determined to return to his own castle. When he arrived he saw the children playing in the garden.
"What are you doing here?" he cried in a very gruff voice, and the children ran away.
"My own garden is my own garden," said the Giant; "any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself." So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.

TRESPASSERS
WILL BE

PROSECUTED

When the spring returns next year there are flowers, and birds and happy scenes in all of the gardens but that of the selfish giant. It is still winter in his garden. Wilde's prose is simple and echoes masterfully the rhythm of simple fairy tales.

'I cannot understand why the Spring is so late in coming,' said the Selfish Giant, as he sat at the window and looked out at his cold white garden; 'I hope there will be a change in the weather.'
But the Spring never came, nor the Summer. The Autumn gave golden fruit to every garden, but to the Giant's garden she gave none. 'He is too selfish,' she said. So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees.

Here is a simply perfect description of winter:

He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.

If you like, The Portrait of Dorian Gray I think you will like this simple story. It is also an easy way to sample Wilde's style. I read it on line here and I enjoyed seeing the original illustrations by Charles Robinson that were published with the story. It appears all of Wilde can be read on line. This story can be read in just a very few minutes and it is well worth your time, I think.

"The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde (1888, 7 pages)

As "The Happy Prince" opens we are given a description of a statue that has sort of become the symbol of the town.

High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.

"When I was alive and had a human heart," answered the statue, "I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the Palace of Sans — Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot chose but weep.

I read it on line here and I really liked the inclusion of the original pastel illustrations.

Beastly by Alex Flinn is not your usual Beauty and the Beast. For one thing, it's set in modern day Manhattan. For another, our narrator is the beast. Who starts out as a genuine POS. No sympathetic misunderstood hero here! Just your run of the mill, 'I am so much better than you', a***ole.

The story of Beauty and the Beast is traditionally told from the beauty's pov. It's all about looking below the surface, and recognizing that outward beauty isn't important. But, in almost every version of this story that I've heard, our 'Belle' is already like that. She doesn't have any trouble falling in love with the beast, because looks have never been important to her, because she is an intrinsically good character.

And think about it. The beast is the one who was cursed, for being vapid, vain, and shallow, right?! So why is it that the girl is the one 'learning' the lesson to free the beast? Who says spending a few years looking nasty is really going to convince this guy that looks aren't important?! Somehow, I think that's more likely to teach him the opposite lesson-teach him that looks really do matter. After all, how many people are willing to spend time with him when he's horrific to look upon?! So really, this lesson's not so great for getting your point across, but boy! Is it ever cathartic!

That is why I thought Beastly was such a great story. We get to hear what the beast has to say. We get to see how it changes him. And at first, he is incredibly bitter about everything and everyone. His dad shuts him up in a fancy townhouse and hires a blind tutor, because he can't stand to be around him, and Kyle becomes a complete recluse. He knows he needs to find a girl that he can love who will love him back in order to break the spell, but he's not exactly about to go out looking. So, if I remember correctly, (it's been a while since I read the book) he kidnaps the girl breaking into his rose garden and forces her to stick around, with the necessary trips home to quell any suspicions that might arise. (I'll admit my details here are a little fuzzy, but I think I'm close)

The girl, Lindy, actually goes to Kyle's school and he never even noticed her. But she's a sweet, genuinely good person, who loves roses and reading (pretty typical 'Belle' character) and she isn't overly concerned with Kyle's appearance. And Kyle, who now calls himself Adrian, which means 'Dark One', really begins to change. He recognizes traits in Lindy that he can admire, and he realizes that she is happy. She doesn't need exorbitant amounts of money, wealth, or popularity to be happy. She just is. And we watch as Kyle changes from self-absorbed, egotistical jack-ass into a person I could be friends with. He begins to understand that life isn't all about money and looks, and there really is value in having depth.

Kyle's magical transformation is necessary for the story, but it is his internal transformation that really makes this story magic. Too often the beast's lesson is overlooked in favor of what Beauty sees and I love that in this book, the focus is on the Beast. Beauty really is only skin deep, and it's even more important for our beast to realize this than it is for our beauty. So thank you Alex Flinn, for giving us a beast who gets it, a beast who actually learns his lesson.

Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George is a retelling of the old Nordic fairy tale, East of the Sun, West of the Moon. It is an adventurous fairy tale, full of epic quests, enchanted animals, trolls, and true love.

I cannot even begin to tell you how much I absolutely and utterly loved this book. Jessica Day George has written a fairy tale that stays true to the heart of the original but is completely her own. The rich and vivid details that she has added to her story — why the Lass does not have a name, why the polar bear chose her, why her family was willing to let her go — are captivating, stunning, and feel oh so very, very right. The details given and the story told in this book fit so completely and so well, I can't imagine the story any other way.

I have read or come across other retellings and versions of this story, and I do like them. But none of them fill me and awe me quite as this one did. This wasn't the first or the last retelling I came into contact with, but it is, by far, the one that I remember best and the one that made the most impact on me.

The Lass is strong character. She is confident in her abilities, and she is driven and motivated by her heart, and a strong desire to protect those that she loves. She was also a very real character to me. She is not always perfect. There are times when she is scared or angry or overly curious, and there are consequences for her mistakes that she must live with an accept. But rather than allowing these things to pull her down or stop her, she learns to work around them, through them, or with them and she refuses to give up.

The people that the Lass meets on her travels are also incredibly well fleshed out. It is clearly obvious that Jessica knew and understood her characters because all of them are individuals. I understand and can identify specific characteristics and traits in characters that are only seen for two or three pages. I find it impossible to talk about characters without also mentioned the Lass's brother, Hans Peter. He left home when the Lass was very small to seek his fortune and when he returned, he was a very different man. He refused to speak about his travels, but it is clear that they have damaged him. You can feel the depression and when the bear comes to take the Lass away, you can feel the despair and anguish Hans Peter feels at the idea of his youngest sister being carried off. The bear himself is another amazing character, one who is there often enough for you to get a sense of who he is, but still remains a mystery.

I believe that this book is writing at it's finest. When you read about the Lass walking across the frozen wasteland, or riding the arctic North wind, you shiver and cuddle up under a blanket because you can feel the intense chill and cold seeping from the pages. Your feet ache with hers as she trudges along, searching for her lost love, and you can sense the loss, longing and determination of the Lass as she marches on her way.

To hear more from Jessica herself about why she retold this fairy tale, and what it means to her, check out this guest post over at The Book Rat and this interview that went up yesterday as part of Fairy Tale Fortnight! Do yourself a favor. Pick this book up NOW! I'm even making it easy for you. The link to that interview also contains a giveaway, where you can win a copy of this book. So really... What are you waiting for?!

It's one lovely fairy tale day down and thirteen glorious days to go! To kick off our second day of Fairy Tale Fortnight, we've got a fantastic guest post from the ever-lovely Zoë Marriott!
Take it away, Zoë! ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Why are some writers drawn back to fairytales again and again, even when they also write original fantasies and books in other genres, like Shannon Hale (The Goose Girl, The Book of a Thousand Days, Rapunzel's Revenge) ? Why do some writers love a particular fairytale so much that they retell it more than once from different perspectives, like Robin McKinley (Beauty, The Rose Daughter, Sunshine) ? Why are writers able to pull a fairytale to pieces, take the bits they like, discard the rest, put everything back in an entirely different order, and still call it a retelling, like Jackson Pearce (Sisters Red, Sweetly) ?

It's because fairytales are more than just the stereotypical trappings that first spring to mind when we think about them. More than the carriages and ball-gowns, the beautiful princesses, handsome woodcutters and wicked stepmothers. More than just spells, enchanted castles, fairy godmothers and happily ever after.

Fairytales have a magical quality that is entirely separate from the magic that goes on within them. They have been passed down from mother to daughter, father to son, for hundreds of years. Like a stone staircase burnished and worn by the passage of a thousand feet, fairytales offer us a familiar path which we instinctively follow — and yet, unlike a stone steps, they may take us to a different destination every time we travel them. Each successive generation has retold these stories in their own way, often pulling and warping them out of all recognition. A modern-day girl who reads the original story of Sleeping Beauty (which you can find in Italo Calvino and George Martin's Italian Folktales) would be shocked, disgusted and disbelieving to realise exactly what Prince Charming did to the sleeping princess (I know I was!).

But instead of wiping that sickening story from our oral traditions and our imagination as our societal mores and our moral standards have changed, we have brought it with us, retelling it again and again until it has become a story symbolising the strength of true love and patience and the triumph of good over evil. We can't leave fairytales behind us. Something within them is stronger than the outer trappings. Something — some universal truth — always goes on.

When I was a little girl my big sister and I fought like cats in a sack, and barely a day went by without our house being shaken by screams and complaints. One day when I was seven or eight, our mother sent us both out of the house with instructions to go to the library — TOGETHER! — and for heaven’s sake, STOP ARGUING. In tense silence, we walked the short distance to the shabby little building and went in. My sister abandoned me to browse the adult shelves. I poked around in the children’s section, and then, without much hope, looked in the Cancelled Box (where the librarians put books for sale). There I discovered a very special book. It was a large, hardback picture book, a bit peeling and worn on the outside, titled The Wild Swans. Within, children played in a fairytale castle. A wicked enchantress cast a spell. Horses tossed their manes, leopards and hawks hunted across the pages. A little girl became a beautiful woman, and wandered through a deep dark forest.

It was magic.

I would have done anything to have that book for my own – but I didn’t have any money with me or any pocket money saved up and I knew that by the time I came back, the book would be gone. It was too magical for the Cancelled Box. On the point of tears, I was about to put The Wild Swans back, when it was plucked away by a familiar hand. “I’ll buy you that,” my sister said coolly. I still don't know if she realises how, in that moment of casual kindness, she completely changed my life.

Seventeen years later, my version of the fairytale The Wild Swans was published under the title The Swan Kingdom . In my own mind, I acknowledge that very little from that beloved picture book actually made it into The Swan Kingdom unaltered. But I've read reviews which claim the story follows the original fairytale too closely and therefore lacks originality and suspense. I've also read reviews that say The Swan Kingdom is nothing like the original fairytale and that the changes I made destroy the story! The lesson I learned from these contradictory review is this: the universal truth within a fairytale is different for each person who reads it.

When I wrote The Swan Kingdom I kept all the elements which I felt were truly important to the
original story. I kept the quiet, valiant strength of the little sister, the idea of the brothers turned into swans, the painful task required to free them. I kept the idea that the heroine would be persecuted for actions which some people felt were 'witchcraft'. I kept the wicked stepmother, and I kept the handsome prince from a different kingdom with whom the heroine falls in love. Those formed the skeleton of the fairytale within my mind. But for others, my important points are not important at all. They’ve found different points of reference within the story, different ways of navigating through the landscape of fairytales. The fairytale is different for them. In their heads, it was already retold before I ever came along.

In July my second fairytale retelling will be published, and this time I've made life even more difficult for myself by picking a very well known story — that of Cinderella. The book is set in my magical version of Japan, and it's this which has most people excited about it. But the real heart of the story is the universal truth which I saw behind the trappings of the Disney Cinderella we've all grown up with. The truth that no girl, no real, human girl with a beating heart, could possibly be as spineless, as obedient, as perfect, as Cinderella pretends to be. Her perfection must be hiding something. Passion. Hatred. Intelligence. Fear. And a desperate desire for revenge.

I know that many people will be recoil from reading about a Cinderella who isn't beautiful, who isn't the slightest bit sweet or perfect, and who couldn't care less about putting on a pretty dress and dancing with the prince. Maybe people will be shocked to read about a Cinderella who lies, steals, cheats and fights her way to revenge for the wrongs done to her. A Cinderella who is broken and scarred — by her own hand. But I hope that others will see their own reality and their own universal truth reflected in my Cinderella's choices, and that in telling the story as I see it, I will allow her story to become part of the greater, timeless fairytale which mothers have been telling their daughters since before my grandmother’s grandmother was born.

That’s why writers can’t leave fairytales alone. Because fairytales ARE magic. Their magic is that of timelessness, of immortality. And by retelling them, we mere humans get a taste of immortality too.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Thanks for stopping by, Zoë!

Zoë is the author of The Swan Kingdom, Daughter of the Flames and the upcoming Shadows on the Moon, which is a retelling of Cinderella, set in Feudal Japan. You can find her online here:
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Make sure you stop by later today when Ashley and I spread the love with a special Prize Pack from Zoë Marriott!