A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

Last week I confessed my weakness for fairy tales and shared a review for the book Cinderella and the Incredible Techno-slippers .  You can scroll down to read that review and also to see what I reviewed earlier in the month.  This week I'm reviewing Interstellar Cinderella by Deborah Underwood and illustrated by Meg Hunt.  I mentioned it in the last week's blog. This sci-fi twist on the Cinderella fairy tale is set in outer space where Cinderella is a brainy gal who fixes space ships while her stepmother and stepsisters jet off to the prince's space ship parade taking Cinderella's tool box with them and leaving her stranded at home.  Fortunately Cinderella's fairy godrobot shows up to save the day and get Cinderella to the space parade where she arrives just in time to save the prince's bacon when his space ship breaks down (you know, because the royal space ship mechanic quit and all).  Unfortunately, before the prince can get Cinderella's name she ha...

This is a collection of poems by various contemporary poets (some well known, some not so much) based on the fairy tales collected by the brothers Grimm in the early 1800's in Germany. The fairy tales the poems are based upon range from well known tales, such as those of Snow White and Cinderella to lesser known tales, such as "The White Snake" or "The Girl Without Hands." Some poems offer a meditation on the tale itself or a look at the tale from an entirely new and unexpected perspective. This is probably one of my favorite poetry collections and holds a special place in my heart because not only do I love poetry, but I also love fairy tales. In fact, in college I did two independent studies that focused on the fairy tale genre and a thesis case study of the tale of Snow White. I collected 30-50 versions of the tale, including Greek and Armenian versions. There is even supposed to be an Appalachian version of Snow White, though I've been unable to find a...