I’ve loved fairy tales my whole life, and the publishing world isn’t tired of them yet either. (Give us another thousand years or so and check back.) I did a big roundup as part of a genre guide in 2014, then highlighted a whole slew of them in 2017. I review retold fairy tales periodically as I read them, but I’ve never put together a post where I discuss my favorites, including those I read before we started this blog in 2009. I thought it would be fun to showcase a few of the books that made an impression on me: those I remember fondly from my childhood, those I frequently recommend to others, and those I occasionally re-read. They span all ages and formats. What are a few of your faves – the ones you find yourself coming back to again and again?

For Kids

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

For a kid born in the mid to late 80s, this book is It when it comes to retold fairy tales. It is The Book, The Only Book, The Best of All the Fairy Tale Books. It’s a retelling of Cinderella about a girl named Ella who is cursed to always be obedient by “that fool of a fairy Lucinda” (I did not have to look up that quote, I remember it as the opening words from memory) who thought she was being benevolent. When Ella’s mother dies and an evil stepmother and two awful stepsisters enter the picture, you can imagine how bad forced obedience can be. But Ella is resilient, rebellious, and determined to break the curse. Levine’s story is set in a magical land with fairies and ogres and princes and a pitch-perfect romance for an eleven year old reader. The concept is clever and the writing is fresh and funny. Is there anyone who hasn’t yet read this book? If that’s you, get on it.

Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O’Neill

This is a graphic novel retelling of Rapunzel, but this time it’s a headstrong black princess, Amira, who rescues a white princess, Sadie, in the tower. They then go on a series of fun, small adventures, culminating in a bigger adventure where they confront the person who put Sadie in the tower in the first place. And yes, they fall in love, and there’s a sweet lesbian wedding in the epilogue, where the two girls are now adults and have accomplished much in their lives – and have come back to each other to live happily ever after. Not only is it important that this book presents a queer fairy tale for younger middle grade readers (an age group that’s tough to find comics for in the first place), it’s also just a really fun story with great art. I listed it as one of my top reads of 2017.

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, illustrated by Lane Smith

Fractured fairy tales were hilarious when I was a kid, and this is the best of the lot. It’s Scieszka’s and Smith’s first collaboration, after which they would go on to do The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales and Math Curse, also excellent and funny books – but nothing beats this first one. After reading it, you too may come away believing that the Big Bad Wolf has been unfairly maligned. He can’t help it if he has a cold and sneezes, nor can he help the fact that the pigs’ houses were so poorly constructed that they collapsed under the force of said sneezes, killing the pigs. And there’s no reason to waste a perfectly good ham sandwich…right? Scieszka and Smith are the perfect partners; the art is just as funny as the text.

Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe

I have a confession: I was never that into Reading Rainbow when I was a kid. Sure, I appreciated the fact that we were watching television in school, but the books? I felt I was pretty much over them. They were all picture books and I considered myself too old and advanced for such things. Still, there were some books that stuck with me, and this is one of them, due to a combination of its story (similar to the Cinderella story I couldn’t get enough of) and Steptoe’s striking art. I didn’t realize until I was a librarian how important this book and its creator were to the history of kidlit.

For Teens

Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty by Christine Heppermann

Heppermann’s collection of poetry retells several classic fairy tales, putting a feminist spin on them and drawing parallels between the girls from the fairy tales and real, modern teenage girls. They’re poems about beauty and obsession and misogyny and sex and food and everything that goes into a teenage girl’s life: what’s expected of her, what’s forced upon her, what she wants for herself. I’m not generally much of a poetry reader, but these are short, accessible, and full of mystery and truth. This is a collection worth revisiting.

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

I loved this retelling of Beauty and the Beast, a story that’s always tricky to tell in a way that doesn’t make excuses for the Beast and create an inherently unequal or even abusive relationship between him and Beauty. But Hodge pulls it off remarkably well, and what’s more, she does so while also creating a fully-fleshed world of her own with a thorny protagonist and a plot that surprises at multiple turns. And the writing is gorgeous. This is one of my favorite retellings.

 

Castle Waiting by Linda Medley

I first read this book in library school as part of a class, and I credit it with being the book that got me into graphic novels. The castle of the title – Castle Waiting – provides sanctuary for fairy tale characters who have fled bad situations, like abusive husbands (as with our main character Jain who is on the run in the beginning of the book) or discrimination and persecution (as with a group of bearded nuns who find a home there). It’s one of those stories that puts a bunch of fairy tale characters together and has them interact with each other, much like Bill Willingham’s Fables (see below), but Castle Waiting is much less action-heavy and focuses primarily on the characters, who are funny and caring and weird. You’ll wish you could hang out with them. Medley’s story is wonderfully feminist and a joy to get lost in.

Zel by Donna Jo Napoli

I read every single thing Donna Jo Napoli had written at the time when I was a young teenager, but Zel was (and is) my favorite. It’s a re-telling of Rapunzel without much change from the original story, but it’s fleshed out to the length of a YA novel. In so doing, Napoli expands upon the characters and their relationships and motivations, creates a memorable setting (including a market that Zel occasionally goes to, not always locked up in the tower), and gives her readers all the details the standard story omits. What I remember most is how dreamy her writing is here, almost like poetry. I felt swept away while reading this as a teenager.

For Adults

Fables by Bill Willingham

In Willingham’s imagination, all the people and creatures of fairy tales and fables live in the same magical shared universe. When the Adversary conquers the lands they live in, they escape to New York City and set up Fabletown in an apartment building. There, they make a new life, hiding their origins and abilities from the “mundys,” ordinary non-magic people like you and me. In the world of Fabletown, the Big Bad Wolf is the sheriff, King Cole is the mayor, Snow White is the deputy mayor, Cinderella runs a shoe store as a front for espionage, Beauty works in a bookshop, Prince Charming is a womanizer with several broken relationships under his belt, and Briar Rose gets rich off the stock market. There are a few main story arcs over the course of the series, but the first and best one involves the characters of Fabletown taking on the Adversary, whose identity must first be discovered. Willingham takes these characters in new and creative directions each volume, building their relationships with each other, playing upon and twisting their traditional backstories, and cleverly portraying just how they would survive in the human world. Decidedly mature, this comic book series shows that fairy tales were indeed originally meant for adults as much as children.

Snow White, Blood Red edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling

Datlow and Windling edited six different fairy tale anthologies in the nineties, and this is the first. As in most anthologies, the quality is hit and miss, but since it’s Datlow and Windling, there are many more hits than misses. I first found these as a teenager at my public library and go back to them when I want something short that I know will be good. Having so many different kinds of retold fairy tales in one book is a great way to sample the breadth and depth of the subgenre, to see all the fresh and exciting ways people continue to adapt these very old stories and make them new again.