Heidi Anne Heiner's Blog, page 17

New Book: Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer

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Echo North by Joanna Ruth Meyer was released earlier this year. It is a definite catnip book for many of us with inspiration drawing from East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Beauty and the Beast, Tam Lin, and Cupid and Psyche.

Book description:

Echo Alkaev’s safe and carefully structured world falls apart when her father leaves for the city and mysteriously disappears. Believing he is lost forever, Echo is shocked to find him half-frozen in the winter forest six months later, guarded by a strange talking wolf―the same creature who attacked her as a child. The wolf presents Echo with an ultimatum: if she lives with him for one year, he will ensure her father makes it home safely. But there is more to the wolf than Echo realizes.

In his enchanted house beneath a mountain, each room must be sewn together to keep the home from unraveling, and something new and dark and strange lies behind every door. When centuries-old secrets unfold, Echo discovers a magical library full of books- turned-mirrors, and a young man named Hal who is trapped inside of them. As the year ticks by, the rooms begin to disappear and Echo must solve the mystery of the wolf’s enchantment before her time is up otherwise Echo, the wolf, and Hal will be lost forever.

New Book: A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer

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A Curse So Dark and Lonely by Brigid Kemmerer was released earlier this year. A sequel will be released in January 2020. It is a Beauty and the Beast retelling which is catnip for many of you, I know, because it is for me, too.

Book description:

In a lush, contemporary fantasy retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Brigid Kemmerer gives readers another compulsively readable romance perfect for fans of Marissa Meyer.

Fall in love, break the curse.

It once seemed so easy to Prince Rhen, the heir to Emberfall. Cursed by a powerful enchantress to repeat the autumn of his eighteenth year over and over, he knew he could be saved if a girl fell for him. But that was before he learned that at the end of each autumn, he would turn into a vicious beast hell-bent on destruction. That was before he destroyed his castle, his family, and every last shred of hope.

Nothing has ever been easy for Harper. With her father long gone, her mother dying, and her brother barely holding their family together while constantly underestimating her because of her cerebral palsy, she learned to be tough enough to survive. But when she tries to save someone else on the streets of Washington, DC, she’s instead somehow sucked into Rhen’s cursed world.

Break the curse, save the kingdom.

A prince? A monster? A curse? Harper doesn’t know where she is or what to believe. But as she spends time with Rhen in this enchanted land, she begins to understand what’s at stake. And as Rhen realizes Harper is not just another girl to charm, his hope comes flooding back. But powerful forces are standing against Emberfall . . . and it will take more than a broken curse to save Harper, Rhen, and his people from utter ruin.

New Book: The Surface Breaks: A Reimagining of The Little Mermaid by Louise O'Neill

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The Surface Breaks: A Reimagining of The Little Mermaid by Louise O'Neill was released this past January.

Book description:

Deep beneath the sea, off the cold Irish coast, Gaia is a young mermaid who dreams of freedom from her controlling father. On her first swim to the surface, she is drawn towards a human boy. She longs to join his carefree world, but how much will she have to sacrifice? What will it take for the little mermaid to find her voice? Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens, with the stunning, scalpel-sharp writing and world building that has won Louise her legions of devoted fans in the UK. A book with the darkest of undercurrents, full of rage and rallying cries: storytelling at its most spellbinding.

New Book: A Crystal of Time by Soman Chainani

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The School for Good and Evil #5: A Crystal of Time by Soman Chainani was released last month.

Book description:

In this fifth installment in Soman Chainani’s New York Times bestselling School for Good and Evil fantasy series, the past will come back to haunt the present.

A false king has seized Camelot’s throne, sentencing Tedros, the true king, to death. While Agatha, narrowly escapes the same fate, Sophie is caught in King Rhian’s trap. With her wedding to Rhian approaching, she’s forced to play a dangerous game as her friends’ lives hang in the balance.

All the while, King Rhian’s dark plans for Camelot are taking shape. Now the students of the School for Good and Evil must find a way to restore Tedros to the throne before their stories—and the future of the Endless Woods—are rewritten . . . forever.

Bargain Ebook: Spindle Fire by Lexa Hillyer for $1.99

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Spindle Fire by Lexa Hillyer is on sale in ebook format for $1.99. This one is a Sleeping Beauty inspired novel. It features two sisters, an unusual construct in Sleeping Beauty tales, but a fascinating way to deal with the sleep curse.

Book description:

Half sisters Isabelle and Aurora are polar opposites: Isabelle is the king's headstrong illegitimate daughter, whose sight was tithed by faeries; Aurora, beautiful and sheltered, was tithed her sense of touch and her voice on the same day. Despite their differences, the sisters have always been extremely close.

And then everything changes with a single drop of Aurora's blood--and a sleep so deep it cannot be broken. As the faerie queen and her army of Vultures prepare to march, Isabelle must race to find a prince who can awaken her sister with the kiss of true love and seal their two kingdoms in an alliance against the queen.

Isabelle crosses land and sea; unearthly, thorny vines rise up the palace walls: and whispers of revolt travel in the ashes on the wind. The kingdom falls to ruin under layers of snow. Meanwhile, Aurora wakes up in a strange and enchanted world, where a mysterious hunter may be the secret to her escape . . . or the reason for her to stay.

Spindle Fire is a lush fantasy set in the dwindling, deliciously corrupt world of the fae and featuring two truly unforgettable heroines.

New Book: Teaching Fairy Tales (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) by Nancy L Canepa

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Teaching Fairy Tales (Series in Fairy-Tale Studies) by Nancy L Canepa (Editor, Contributor) was released this month. I received a review copy and it is an interesting read. And yes, SurLaLune does get mentioned in one article as a good source to use for one recommended exercise.

I couldn't find an easy to copy text version of the Table of Contents but you can view it at Google Books preview. I recommend looking at that to see the wide range of articles and syllabai examples included. A great resource for inspiring different ways to use fairy tales across many disciplines.

Book description:

Teaching Fairy Tales edited by Nancy L. Canepa brings together scholars who have contributed to the field of fairy-tale studies since its origins. This collection offers information on materials, critical approaches and ideas, and pedagogical resources for the teaching of fairy tales in one comprehensive source that will further help bring fairy-tale studies into the academic mainstream.

The volume begins by posing some of the big questions that stand at the forefront of fairy-tale studies: How should we define the fairy tale? What is the "classic" fairy tale? Does it make sense to talk about a fairy-tale canon? The first chapter includes close readings of tales and their variants, in order to show how fairy tales aren't simple, moralizing, and/or static narratives. The second chapter focuses on essential moments and documents in fairy-tale history, investigating how we gain unique perspectives on cultural history through reading fairy tales. Contributors to chapter 3 argue that encouraging students to approach fairy tales critically, either through well-established lenses or newer ways of thinking, enables them to engage actively with material that can otherwise seem over-familiar. Chapter 4 makes a case for using fairy tales to help students learn a foreign language. Teaching Fairy Tales also includes authors' experiences of successful hands-on classroom activities with fairy tales, syllabi samples from a range of courses, and testimonies from storytellers that inspire students to reflect on the construction and transmission of narrative by becoming tale-tellers themselves.

Teaching Fairy Tales crosses disciplinary, historical, and national boundaries to consider the fairy-tale corpus integrally and from a variety of perspectives. Scholars from many different academic areas will use this volume to explore and implement new aspects of the field of fairy-tale studies in their teaching and research.

Nancy Canepa is associate professor of Italian at Dartmouth College. Her publications include From Court to Forest: Giambattista Basile and the Birth of the Literary Fairy Tale (Wayne State University Press, 1999), Out of the Woods: The Origins of the Literary Fairy Tale in Italy and France (Wayne State University Press, 1997), and the translation of Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales (Wayne State University Press, 2007).

Contributors Include:
Graham Anderson, Cristina Bacchilega, Benjamin Balak, Faith E. Beasley, Elio Brancaforte, Nancy L. Canepa, Anne E. Duggan, Donald Haase, Christine A. Jones, Maria Kaliambou, Julie L. J. Koehler, Charlotte Trinquet du Lys, Suzanne Magnanini, Cristina Mazzoni, Gina Miele, William Moebius, Maria Nikolajeva, Jennifer Schacker, Ann Schmiesing, Lewis C. Seifert, Victoria Somoff, Allison Stedman, Kay Stone, Maria Tatar, Gioia Timpanelli, Linda Kraus Worley, Jack Zipes

Newish Book: How to Fracture a Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

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How to Fracture a Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen was released in November 2018. This collects many of Yolen's previously published fairy tale retellings and includes her notes on the tales, too. Some are short stories, others are poems. A very handy collection of Yolen's short fairy tale works.

Book description:

“This collection is Jane Yolen at her best. This is magic.”―Patricia C. Wrede, author of the Enchanted Forest Chronicles

Fantasy icon Jane Yolen (The Devil’s Arithmetic, Briar Rose, Sister Emily’s Lightship) is adored by generations of readers of all ages. Now she triumphantly returns with this inspired gathering of fractured fairy tales and legends. Yolen breaks open the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets: a philosophical bridge that misses its troll, a spinner of straw as a falsely accused moneylender, the villainous wolf adjusting poorly to retirement. Each of these offerings features a new author note and original poem, illuminating tales that are old, new, and brilliantly refined.

Newish Book: Finding Baba Yaga by Jane Yolen

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Finding Baba Yaga by Jane Yolen was released in late 2018. The ebook version is available for $3.99, a technical bargain ebook to SurLaLune blog standards.

Book description:

Finding Baba Yaga is a mythic yet timely novel-in-verse by the beloved and prolific New York Times bestselling author and poet Jane Yolen, “the Hans Christian Andersen of America” (Newsweek).

A young woman discovers the power to speak up and take control of her fate―a theme that has never been more timely than it is now…

You think you know this story.
You do not.

A harsh, controlling father. A quiescent mother. A house that feels like anything but a home. Natasha gathers the strength to leave, and comes upon a little house in the wood: A house that walks about on chicken feet and is inhabited by a fairy tale witch. In finding Baba Yaga, Natasha finds her voice, her power, herself....

"Jane Yolen is a phenomenon: a poet and a mythmaker, who understands how old stories can tell us new things. We are lucky to have her."―Neil Gaiman

Bargain Ebook: Not One Damsel in Distress: Heroic Girls from World Folklore

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Not One Damsel in Distress: Heroic Girls from World Folklore by Jane Yolen (Author), Susan Guevara (Illustrator) is on sale this month for $2.99 for ebook format. This is an expanded second edition if you own the first edition in paper like I do.

Book description:

From celebrated author Jane Yolen comes this inspiring collection of folktales from around the world, all featuring strong female heroes.

These fifteen folktales have one thing in common: brainy, bold, brave women—and not one damsel in distress! There is Bradamante, the fierce medieval knight; Li Chi, the Chinese girl who slays a dreaded serpent and saves her town; Makhta, a female warrior who leads her Sioux tribe into battle; and many more women who use their cunning, wisdom, and strength to succeed.

Drawing from diverse cultures around the world, renowned author Jane Yolen celebrates the female heroes of legend and lore in a collection that will empower every reader. This new edition features two brand-new stories from Azerbaijan and Indonesia, and enhanced illustrations.

Newish Book: White as Milk, Red as Blood: The Forgotten Fairy Tales of Franz Xaver von Schönwerth

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White as Milk, Red as Blood: The Forgotten Fairy Tales of Franz Xaver von Schönwerth by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth (Author), Willow Dawson (Illustrator), Shelley Tanaka (Translator), Philip Pullman (Foreword) was released last year. Not to be confused with the previously published The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales, this is an alternate translation of tales by Schönwerth. I have posted previously about other books and articles about Schönwerth--you can find those posts here including one about the discovery of the "lost" tales--a romantic marketing notion when "semi-forgotten" and "previously neglected" would be more accurate. But I am all for whatever it takes to get fairy tale collections supported and readily available for new audiences, especially new translations. This newest collection contains fewer tales and is less academic in nature but offers lush illustrations instead.

Book description:

This striking, richly illustrated edition of long-lost German fairy tales is not a book for children. It is a book for adults. Or for adults to frighten children into behaving...whichever you prefer.

In 2009, a trove of lost fairy tales collected by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth--a 19th-century collector of Bavarian folk tales and contemporary of the Brothers Grimm--was unearthed in a municipal archive in Germany. Unlike the Grimms, who polished the stories they collected, adapting to contemporary tastes, von Schönwerth recorded the stories as they were told, plucking them directly from the living, breathing tree of oral storytelling, retaining their darker themes and sometimes shocking violence. Von Schönwerth published a single volume of these tales in his lifetime, but the vast majority languished and were forgotten over the years, effectively frozen in time until their recent rediscovery.

Now, award-winning illustrator Willow Dawson, in collaboration with translator Shelley Tanaka, has brought these long-lost tales unforgettably to life, illuminating with striking woodcut-style illustrations a spectacular collection that will change the way you look at fairy tales forever. Paired with Dawson's arresting artwork, the stories in White as Milk, Red as Blood race with palpable energy through fantasy landscapes darker, bawdier and racier than anything we find in Disney or the Grimms.

Following the tradition of illustrated fairy-tale collections, White as Milk, Red as Blood is the very first fully illustrated, full-colour edition of Franz Xaver von Schönwerth's work. It is a timeless tome of enchantment and foreboding: tales--as haunting as they are profound--of powerful princesses, helpless men, lecherous villains, virtuous girls, witches, giants, at least one female serial killer, mer-people, shape-shifters and talking beasts--a kaleidoscope of wonders both familiar and entirely new; rich and strange.

Dawson and Tanaka's dark and lively take on von Schönwerth's collected tales will appeal to fans of Mike Mignola's classic fantasy comic-book series Hellboy.