Althea M. (althea) reviewed on 9/16/2008 + 774 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

Excellent short-story anthology of retold fairytales.
This is the companion volume to 'A Wolf At the Door', but I think, overall, it was better.

1 · Greenkid · Jane Yolen ·
Well done, very short piece with a modern setting, but an atmosphere completely based in classic fairy tales. A new boy in town is trying to impress a pretty neighbor before school starts - when he discovers a seemingly lost infant... and insists on 'rescuing' it, against his neighbor's warning...

13 · Golden Fur · Midori Snyder ·
Inspired by the Arabian Nights, a prince must take the advice of a golden-furred creature to rescue a princess from an enchanted castle of ogres...

30 · Chambers of the Heart · Nina Kiriki Hoffman ·
Bluebeard has killed many wives... but when he coerces the poor but beautiful neighbor into marrying him, he may have met his match in her family..

49 · Little Red and the Big Bad · Will Shetterly ·
I love Will Shetterly, but I didn't think this effort to transpose Little Red Riding Hood into 'the Hood' worked very well.

55 · The Fishs Story · Pat York ·
A retelling of the story of the magic fish who agrees to grant wishes in order to save its life. In this one, the familiar woman who insists on mansions is across the lake - and a poor orphaned fishergirl deals with her aunt's selfish demands and her grief over her mother's loss..

69 · The Children of the Tilford Fortune · Christopher Rowe ·
Two children, left a not-very-valuable inheritance, set out to analyze supply an demand and trade their things where they are most wanted - and decide what it is they really want.

82 · The Girl in the Attic · Lois Metzger ·
A girl, after her father's death, refuses to speak to her stepmother. But a magic bird helps both the girl and the woman to understand each other.

93 · The Harp That Sang · Gregory Frost ·
A well-done retelling of the story of the gypsy harp whose strings sing out the truth - that the woman from whose hair and bones the harp was made was murdered, and she accuses her murderer - her own sister - from beyond the grave.

106 · A Life in Miniature · Bruce Coville ·
Tom Thumb, in this absurdist story, is the product of a genetics lab's illicit experiment.

121 · Lupe · Kathe Koja ·
After the death of a baby, a grief-stricken mother sends her daughter out to the forest to ask help of a feared witch... but all ends up even better than one might have hoped in this Spanish-flavored story. Good, but I really wish Koja would go back to adult horror!

134 · Awake · Tanith Lee ·
What if, for that hundred years, Sleeping Beauty wasn't really asleep? What if time was stopped, and she was spending all that time adventuring and learning from the fairies..?

148 · Inventing Aladdin · Neil Gaiman ·
a poem, as usual, from Gaiman.

153 · My Swan Sister · Katherine Vaz
Not really a fairy tale, but an incredibly touching, true story of the author's sister, who died as an infant.

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