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Ever After High: 5-Minute Fairytale Stories
The first 5-minute stories collections based on the fairytale world of Ever After High!
©2017 Mattel. All Rights Reserved.
©2017 Mattel. All Rights Reserved.
192 pages, Hardcover
Published October 3, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 27, 2024
The Ever After High “Book-to-School” orientation was the week before classes started, and the Charmitorium was packed with everyone telling tales about their summers.
But there was also another story being told…
(Robert Rudman & Ellie Rose, 5-Minute Fairytale Stories, p.--)
The book has ‘stories’ from 12 of the characters from the show, from cast staples like Raven Queen and Ashlynn Ella, to Melody Piper and Farrah Goodfairy who don’t get much screen time. I was expecting actual stories but apparently I was hoping for too much. What we get instead are snapshots of their daily lives, and while we do get a smidgen of lore in some cases they’re mostly no where near as fun as the day-in-the-life stories in Shannon Hale’s collection. For every reveal of the Headmaster manipulating Apple, and Farrah making Ashlynn and Hunter’s forbidden romance fit the parameters of the Cinderella story (that one definitely would have been a game changer of an episode), we get more of the overused ‘Ashlynn and Hunter on a date’ and ‘Raven decides not to sign the Storybook of Legends’ and ‘Lizzie Hearts misses Wonderland’.
Duchess Swan’s story… Not only does it fall apart in execution but the book reveals that I’ve apparently gotten the character’s future wrong this whole time, and yet simultaneously agrees with me and says that it was actually Duchess who had her story wrong, which opens an interesting avenue to explore given the series history of twisting fairy tales to make the characters fit them anyway (ex. this book’s twist on Cinderella, and the show’s surprise script-flip of Snow White during the Dragon Games specials).
Duchess is a judgmental asshole so I’d always assumed she was the Black Swan, but apparently she’s supposed to be the future Swan Princess. Now, Duchess’s character design is important and a big reason as to why I was confused. She’s not all white or all black, she’s half and half (or, 1/3 each and a third purple). So a story twist could be that her version of the Swan Princess more closely resembles the ballet than she realizes, because while the Black Swan and the Swan Princess are two different characters, they’re played by the same dancer. Duchess may somehow end up being both the heroine and the villain in her reliving of the story.
But instead, when another character points out the personality difference, she decides that the solution is to change her entire personality to fit the traditional Swan Princess characterization. She’s never shown that this is the wrong thing to do; in fact, things go in her favor when she does with no backlash. So I guess the lesson is ‘if things aren’t working for you, change everything about yourself’. Also the story itself doesn’t work. Her homework is to inspire others with her story, but her story is a tragedy, so she puts on a ballet performance about it and everyone’s in tears and somehow that means she passed? But no one was inspired by it, they were all sobbing? Not only is the message a train wreck but the story doesn’t even make sense. (yes, I realize changing her personality technically fits my heroine/villain theory, but it’s such a lazy, unsustainable cheat that it couldn’t possibly be on purpose)
The characters were decently in-character, but I was a little miffed about the Wonderland characters being so logical and not speaking Riddlish between themselves. A Wonderlandiful World really spoiled me for characterization.
The stories each have the official character artwork for the POV characters, but the rest of the story art is just clips from the show. I was hoping for something more creative, but checking the publishing date the show had already been canceled for a year so I suppose I can hardly expect more from a creative team that no longer exists. It’s still disappointing though.
Speaking of artwork I have to talk about one of my favorite side characters for a quick sec:
This is Darling Charming, daughter of King Charming and little sister of Daring and Dexter. She’s strong, brave, badass, and has hideous hair. Look at that poof; it’s very Marie Antoinette, isn’t it? It’s not a very good gif but it’s the best I could find that didn’t also cut off some of the pompadour. It got flatter in the official art as time went on (as you can see on this book cover), and it deflated in the cartoon during some of the specials. But the reason I’m bringing it up is that there’s yet another new official art variation in this book, and it’s amazing. Her hair is pulled back cleanly instead of pulled back and poofed up, and she’s waving a sword around with a big, ‘charming’ smile. I would have included the artwork here for a comparison but I can’t find it anywhere online. It exists in this one book, and no one bothered to release it since Disney bullied the show into the ground (it was getting too popular so they threw together their own version of the same idea [ Descendants ], and Mattel knew they wouldn’t be able to compete with f-ing Disney so they abruptly canceled the series a year later – something I’m definitely not bitter about).
CHARACTERS:
Well, the Wonderland characters continue to disappoint, but Shannon Hale can’t be expected to write them everytime. Everyone else worked fine and I appreciate that a couple of lesser-screen-time characters were used.
SETTING/WORLD BUILDING:
There were two or three crumbs of new stuff, but I’m giving it a hard fail in this category for the simple reason that you would have no idea what was going on or what it was referencing if you weren’t already familiar with the series. Didn’t have to be a drawback, it’s clearly marketed as an Ever After High book, but it’s also marketed as a book of fairy tales which it very much isn’t. I can easily see someone borrowing this to read to their kid at bedtime and getting annoyed with it.
EDITING:
I get that it’s part of the language of the show, but the cutsie language gets old fast and it’s much easier to ignore it in the show when it’s only in the dialogue. Ex: every word that with an ex- in it is changed to hex-: hexstatic, hexcellent, hexcited, hexam, ect. I’m not deducting the star because it’s bad editing for the book – it’s a consistent choice in the series – but the ex- words and ‘muse-ic’ come up so often in this book that it was as though the author was given a quota to make or something.
OTHER ASPECTS:
The choice to use screen caps instead of commissioning new artwork was just plain lazy, and though I appreciate the new Darling Charming character art I do not appreciate that it was never released. I’d scan it myself, but my library copy of this book is in such terrible shape that I’m too scared to lie it flat to do so. I legit don’t know how it’s avoided being pulled from circulation; I’m even waiting until the library is open to return it by hand because I’m scared dropping it in the return bin will destroy it. Also, the cover is proof of how little the publishers care about artwork. The girls are fine (though you can really tell that some of the art used is older than the others, i.e. the older art leans harder on the pencil-style linework, and Maddie and Apple’s cover art has much thicker lines than the other girls, looking rather comically as though someone used a dull pencil to draw them and a sharp one for everyone else), and the castle in the background is a blurry, monochrome shot of the school, but the mirror frame is just clip art. It’s not even a cartoon frame, it’s a blurry picture of a real life frame with the cartoon school cut-and-pasted into it. They couldn’t even be bothered to pay someone to draw a damn mirror frame.
THE VERDICT?
Not a great addition to the series and doesn’t live up to its own title, but we get a couple of scraps or lore and it staves off the Ever After High withdrawal for a few minutes.
But there was also another story being told…
(Robert Rudman & Ellie Rose, 5-Minute Fairytale Stories, p.--)
The book has ‘stories’ from 12 of the characters from the show, from cast staples like Raven Queen and Ashlynn Ella, to Melody Piper and Farrah Goodfairy who don’t get much screen time. I was expecting actual stories but apparently I was hoping for too much. What we get instead are snapshots of their daily lives, and while we do get a smidgen of lore in some cases they’re mostly no where near as fun as the day-in-the-life stories in Shannon Hale’s collection. For every reveal of the Headmaster manipulating Apple, and Farrah making Ashlynn and Hunter’s forbidden romance fit the parameters of the Cinderella story (that one definitely would have been a game changer of an episode), we get more of the overused ‘Ashlynn and Hunter on a date’ and ‘Raven decides not to sign the Storybook of Legends’ and ‘Lizzie Hearts misses Wonderland’.
Duchess Swan’s story… Not only does it fall apart in execution but the book reveals that I’ve apparently gotten the character’s future wrong this whole time, and yet simultaneously agrees with me and says that it was actually Duchess who had her story wrong, which opens an interesting avenue to explore given the series history of twisting fairy tales to make the characters fit them anyway (ex. this book’s twist on Cinderella, and the show’s surprise script-flip of Snow White during the Dragon Games specials).
Duchess is a judgmental asshole so I’d always assumed she was the Black Swan, but apparently she’s supposed to be the future Swan Princess. Now, Duchess’s character design is important and a big reason as to why I was confused. She’s not all white or all black, she’s half and half (or, 1/3 each and a third purple). So a story twist could be that her version of the Swan Princess more closely resembles the ballet than she realizes, because while the Black Swan and the Swan Princess are two different characters, they’re played by the same dancer. Duchess may somehow end up being both the heroine and the villain in her reliving of the story.
But instead, when another character points out the personality difference, she decides that the solution is to change her entire personality to fit the traditional Swan Princess characterization. She’s never shown that this is the wrong thing to do; in fact, things go in her favor when she does with no backlash. So I guess the lesson is ‘if things aren’t working for you, change everything about yourself’. Also the story itself doesn’t work. Her homework is to inspire others with her story, but her story is a tragedy, so she puts on a ballet performance about it and everyone’s in tears and somehow that means she passed? But no one was inspired by it, they were all sobbing? Not only is the message a train wreck but the story doesn’t even make sense. (yes, I realize changing her personality technically fits my heroine/villain theory, but it’s such a lazy, unsustainable cheat that it couldn’t possibly be on purpose)
The characters were decently in-character, but I was a little miffed about the Wonderland characters being so logical and not speaking Riddlish between themselves. A Wonderlandiful World really spoiled me for characterization.
The stories each have the official character artwork for the POV characters, but the rest of the story art is just clips from the show. I was hoping for something more creative, but checking the publishing date the show had already been canceled for a year so I suppose I can hardly expect more from a creative team that no longer exists. It’s still disappointing though.
Speaking of artwork I have to talk about one of my favorite side characters for a quick sec:
This is Darling Charming, daughter of King Charming and little sister of Daring and Dexter. She’s strong, brave, badass, and has hideous hair. Look at that poof; it’s very Marie Antoinette, isn’t it? It’s not a very good gif but it’s the best I could find that didn’t also cut off some of the pompadour. It got flatter in the official art as time went on (as you can see on this book cover), and it deflated in the cartoon during some of the specials. But the reason I’m bringing it up is that there’s yet another new official art variation in this book, and it’s amazing. Her hair is pulled back cleanly instead of pulled back and poofed up, and she’s waving a sword around with a big, ‘charming’ smile. I would have included the artwork here for a comparison but I can’t find it anywhere online. It exists in this one book, and no one bothered to release it since Disney bullied the show into the ground (it was getting too popular so they threw together their own version of the same idea [ Descendants ], and Mattel knew they wouldn’t be able to compete with f-ing Disney so they abruptly canceled the series a year later – something I’m definitely not bitter about).
CHARACTERS:
Well, the Wonderland characters continue to disappoint, but Shannon Hale can’t be expected to write them everytime. Everyone else worked fine and I appreciate that a couple of lesser-screen-time characters were used.
SETTING/WORLD BUILDING:
There were two or three crumbs of new stuff, but I’m giving it a hard fail in this category for the simple reason that you would have no idea what was going on or what it was referencing if you weren’t already familiar with the series. Didn’t have to be a drawback, it’s clearly marketed as an Ever After High book, but it’s also marketed as a book of fairy tales which it very much isn’t. I can easily see someone borrowing this to read to their kid at bedtime and getting annoyed with it.
EDITING:
I get that it’s part of the language of the show, but the cutsie language gets old fast and it’s much easier to ignore it in the show when it’s only in the dialogue. Ex: every word that with an ex- in it is changed to hex-: hexstatic, hexcellent, hexcited, hexam, ect. I’m not deducting the star because it’s bad editing for the book – it’s a consistent choice in the series – but the ex- words and ‘muse-ic’ come up so often in this book that it was as though the author was given a quota to make or something.
OTHER ASPECTS:
The choice to use screen caps instead of commissioning new artwork was just plain lazy, and though I appreciate the new Darling Charming character art I do not appreciate that it was never released. I’d scan it myself, but my library copy of this book is in such terrible shape that I’m too scared to lie it flat to do so. I legit don’t know how it’s avoided being pulled from circulation; I’m even waiting until the library is open to return it by hand because I’m scared dropping it in the return bin will destroy it. Also, the cover is proof of how little the publishers care about artwork. The girls are fine (though you can really tell that some of the art used is older than the others, i.e. the older art leans harder on the pencil-style linework, and Maddie and Apple’s cover art has much thicker lines than the other girls, looking rather comically as though someone used a dull pencil to draw them and a sharp one for everyone else), and the castle in the background is a blurry, monochrome shot of the school, but the mirror frame is just clip art. It’s not even a cartoon frame, it’s a blurry picture of a real life frame with the cartoon school cut-and-pasted into it. They couldn’t even be bothered to pay someone to draw a damn mirror frame.
THE VERDICT?
Not a great addition to the series and doesn’t live up to its own title, but we get a couple of scraps or lore and it staves off the Ever After High withdrawal for a few minutes.
January 13, 2018
This book was pretty good but not as good as I was hoping for. Some of the stories are just stories from the Netflix show told in picture book form but others were new stories that helped explain some things from the Netflix show. Overall the stories were pretty good but I wasn't impressed with the pictures. Many of the pictures were weird and they rarely helped to tell the stories. I liked reading this book but I wish there had been more details in the stories and that better pictures had been used for the stories.
March 23, 2024
“The roses had been painted red with a little patience” (66).
“knowing she had to be at that exact spot in that exact moment to see a simple rose brighten the world” (67).
“knowing she had to be at that exact spot in that exact moment to see a simple rose brighten the world” (67).
August 22, 2024
It’s cute. Great read for a young girl (around 4-8 years old) who’s reading or starting to read, especially a girl who loves Disney princesses or anything related to Disney princesses.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews