Fairy tale and classic retellings are still going strong in YA, which you’ll never catch me complaining about. Amidst all of the Snow White and Cinderella retellings, though, are a small cadre of retellings of lesser-known (or at least lesser-retold) stories, some of which I’d never heard of (think Shannon Hale’s retelling of Maid Maleen in Book of a Thousand Days). I thought it would be interesting to showcase them in a booklist. I’ve limited this particular list to books coming out in 2016 only. What others have I missed?
The Wooden Prince by John Claude Bemis
Desperate to save her father, Princess Lazuli, the daughter of the ruler of a magical kingdom called Abaton, enlists the help of the automa Pinocchio and his master, wanted criminal and alchemist Geppetto, who are trying to discover why Pinocchio seems to be changing from a wooden servant into a living, human boy.
The Great Hunt by Wendy Higgins
When a savage beast attacks in Eurona, the king proclaims that whoever kills the creature will win the hand of his daughter, Princess Aerity, but things get complicated when Aerity grows fond of a specific, royals-eschewing hunter, Paxton Seabolt. [This is a retelling of The Singing Bone by the Brothers Grimm.]
Exit, Pursued By a Bear by E. K. Johnston
At cheerleading camp, Hermione is drugged and raped, but she is not sure whether it was one of her teammates or a boy on another team–and in the aftermath she has to deal with the rumors in her small Ontario town, the often awkward reaction of her classmates, the rejection of her boyfriend, the discovery that her best friend, Polly, is gay, and above all the need to remember what happened so that the guilty boy can be brought to justice. [This is a retelling of The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare.]
A Fierce and Subtle Poison by Samantha Mabry
Spending the summer with his hotel-developer father in Puerto Rico, seventeen-year-old Lucas turns to a legendary cursed girl filled with poison when his girlfriend mysteriously disappears. [This is a retelling of Rappaccini’s Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.]
Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter (out 9/20)
In Vassa’s Brooklyn neighborhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling out again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters—and sometimes innocent shoppers as well. So when Vassa’s stepsister sends her out for light bulbs in the middle of night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission. But Vassa has a bit of luck hidden in her pocket, a gift from her dead mother. Erg is a tough-talking wooden doll with sticky fingers, a bottomless stomach, and a ferocious cunning. With Erg’s help, Vassa just might be able to break the witch’s curse and free her Brooklyn neighborhood. But Babs won’t be playing fair. [This is a retelling of the Russian folktale Vassilissa the Beautiful.]
As I Descended by Robin Talley (out 9/6)
Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school’s ultimate power couple—even if no one knows it but them. Only one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey. Golden child Delilah is a legend at the exclusive Acheron Academy, and the presumptive winner of the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. She runs the school, and if she chose, she could blow up Maria and Lily’s whole world with a pointed look, or a carefully placed word. But what Delilah doesn’t know is that Lily and Maria are willing to do anything—absolutely anything—to make their dreams come true. And the first step is unseating Delilah for the Kingsley Prize. The full scholarship, awarded to Maria, will lock in her attendance at Stanford―and four more years in a shared dorm room with Lily. Maria and Lily will stop at nothing to ensure their victory—including harnessing the dark power long rumored to be present on the former plantation that houses their school. But when feuds turn to fatalities, and madness begins to blur the distinction between what’s real and what is imagined, the girls must decide where they draw the line. [This is a retelling of Macbeth by Shakespeare.]
The Steep and Thorny Way by Cat Winters
A sixteen-year-old biracial girl in rural Oregon in the 1920s searches for the truth about her father’s death while avoiding trouble from the Ku Klux Klan in this YA historical novel inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet.