Jenika
You might think from the image on the cover, or from the dedication to their daughter, that this book swaps genders in a way to help women be protagonists instead of victims. I love old fairy tales, but I was excited to have a more lady-positive perspective.
There are 12 stories in this book. With the gender swapping, 7 feature male protagonists, 4 feature female, and one (Gretel and Hansel) is pretty egalitarian. There are fewer female mains than in the original stories from the 1890s! In addition, the authors specify that all they did was swap the genders, no additional editing. While it makes for an interesting study, it makes for disjointed reading; the language between the different stories is inconsistent, and especially difficult if you're reading aloud. A bit of editing would have helped make it a more pleasant reading experience.
The illustrations are gorgeous. I wish they'd been in a better book.
Rogers gives a phenomenally funny look at grad school, strained work relationships, and the overall creative process. I was incredibly excited to read this as a current PhD student, but I feel like the characters in the book will seem like familiar faces no matter your history with academia, writing, or the midwest. I loved the detail of introducing each character with an author blurb, including fictional publishing credentials (my favorite of which was “cornHOLE”).
I don't normally count the things I read for academic purposes on Goodreads, but I opened this book two days ago intending to briefly skim for a definition of “Eurostars” and then ended up devouring the whole thing. Incredibly interesting collection of tales of people who moved around Europe and their feelings on migration, integration, and laying down roots.
