false 499485 2 Fairy tales touch something deep within us, and Donna Jo Napoli is a master at bringing those primal feelings to light. Her retellings of ancient tales such as <I>The Magic Circle</I> (based on "Hansel and Gretel"), <I>Zel</I> (based on "Rapunzel"), and <I>Crazy Jack</I> (based on "Jack and the Beanstalk") flesh out the age-old stories in unexpected ways, imbuing them with psychological resonance for contemporary teens. One of the marks of Napoli's skill is that her stories draw us into the characters' predicaments long before we figure out their original source in folklore. In <I>Spinners</I>, she and coauthor Richard Tchen weave a tale of a young tailor who cripples himself while spinning gold thread on a magic wheel to win his beloved's hand. Spurned for his ugliness, he watches her marry the miller and die giving birth to the child he knows is his own. The girl grows up to become a master spinner, but only when the cruel young king commands her to spin straw into gold do we begin to sense a creeping familiarity. When a deformed man demands her firstborn child as a return for spinning the gold, we are almost sure. But not until the very last, when to save her baby the young mother must guess her unknown father's secret name, do we, like her, know that this is Rumpelstiltskin, of whom we've heard tell long ago. In Napoli's story-spinning hands, however, Rumpelstiltskin is not a spiteful dwarf but a lonely outcast yearning for the love of his grandchild; rather than a hand- wringing victim, the young queen shows herself to be a strong and resourceful survivor given to imaginative solutions. (Ages 12 to 16) <I>--Patty Campbell</I> 784720 1999 Spinners total:323|5:53|4:100|3:125|2:33|1:12| 323 1118 512 34 3 0 false false Thu Apr 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 07 18:11:41 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 20 14:35:14 -0700 2009 Spinners, if only because it's rare to see Rumpelstiltskin retold. (Then again, I might have said the same thing about Wizard of Oz at one point and look what happened with that...more...]]> 3 1 false false Sat Feb 02 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat May 03 02:12:22 -0700 2008 Sat May 03 02:13:05 -0700 2008 ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sat Feb 09 20:22:30 -0800 2008 Sun Feb 10 07:47:11 -0800 2008 Amazon.com kept recommending it to me, and 2) I found it in the bargain bin at my local Books-a-Millio...more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Apr 30 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 30 22:27:02 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 30 22:32:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jul 17 00:18:57 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 01 02:03:11 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Oct 26 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Oct 26 20:29:50 -0700 2008 Sun Oct 26 20:33:15 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 0 false false Sat Nov 07 20:49:33 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 07 20:55:54 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Fri Apr 17 14:33:24 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 17 14:36:45 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Wed Jun 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 11 19:20:35 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 13:05:07 -0700 2009 1 3 0 false false Thu Jan 08 20:00:18 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 10 09:54:37 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 17:14:20 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 09 10:32:35 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Sun May 10 19:52:44 -0700 2009 Sun May 10 19:54:22 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Sat Mar 15 08:42:06 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 15 08:42:21 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Aug 22 18:35:22 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 29 14:53:09 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Thu Jan 22 13:17:28 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 22 14:11:23 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Fri Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sun Oct 14 18:33:40 -0700 2007 Wed Jan 23 11:47:52 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Apr 03 20:41:53 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 08 09:27:13 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Fri Apr 18 10:40:34 -0700 2008 Fri Apr 18 10:42:22 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Mon Oct 20 18:28:24 -0700 2008 Mon Oct 20 18:30:43 -0700 2008 1 0 false false Fri Jul 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 06 18:25:16 -0800 2009 Sun Aug 02 17:47:33 -0700 2009