How to Fracture a Fairy Tale

~Check out my blog, The Bent Bookworm!~First of all, I'm a complete sucker for fairy tale retellings. All the more when they aren't your typical, prince-rescues-princess-and-they-live-happily-ever-after type stories. I love a good twist and a dark underside to fairy tales (which, if you read a lot of the ORIGINALS...was often the case!). When I saw this book was a collection of short retellings I immediately requested it and was absolutely delighted to receive it just a few days before it came out! It's now available and totally worth checking out. :) Also, apparently Jane Yolen is something of a MG/YA fantasy scion...and I had never heard of her. Ever. Never read any of her books, didn't have any of them on my TBR.The StoriesHow to Fracture a Fairy Tale contains tales from many different countries. Some of them I recognized, some of them I did not. They were all interesting and most of them entertaining! Some of them were funny, like one of the two Cinderella shorts. A couple raised the hairs on the back of my neck (most specifically the very last one in the book, “Wrestling With Angels.” My favorite of all the tales though, was “Great-Grandfather Dragon's Tale,” which is a cute and funny remake of Saint George and the Dragon.A few of the tales are most definitely only suited to a YA or older audience, as they contain heavy implications of sexual assault or rape if they don't state it outright. I was a bit startled by these, to be honest, as they don't really seem to fit in with the overall tone of the book...but then, the collection is very random. The author has included, in the last section of the book, an explanation for why she told each tale the way she did, as well as given a poem for each. It is extremely fascinating, but I think due to the randomness as well as the content of this particular section, a lot of younger readers will lose interest and probably only read the stories - which are the important part, anyway!Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing the free review copy in exchange for an honest review!Blog Twitter Bloglovin Instagram Google+

I voluntarily read and reviewed an ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Fairy tales!
I absolutely love fairy tales and reading how people retell them or “fracture” them into different versions. I actually picked this book up because I recognized the author's name from picture books (that's just my life as a Children's Librarian), and wanted to see which tales she would pick and how they would be fractured.

I will say I was surprised at how many tales are featured! The last fairy tale type book I read was Language of Thorns which has longer tales, but just a few. This book has a different take with them being more fairy tale-like than full stories. Some make sense, some almost prompt an immediate re-read to more fully understand, and others were just a bit too out there for me.

These are not your children's fairy tales. Some of them are pretty intense. Others you might be able to read to your children but they might not understand the morals or what actually happened in the stories.

Ones I really liked:
Snow in Summer
The Bridge's Complaint
The Moon Ribbon
Happy Dens
One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King
Brother Hart
One Old Man, with Seals
Sleeping Ugly
Great-Grandfather Dragon's Tale
Cinder Elephant
–These tended to be longer ones because that is the style I like.

Most of the stories featured are bittersweet, you've got to realize that going in. There are also fairy tales fractures from outside the Western world, as well as some Jewish ones or takes of tales, which gives it a nice diversity. Honestly, I found myself thinking “wow, why so religious??” then realized how religious some stories are and I just never thought about it before because of my own privilege! Learn something new every day...

After the tales, there is a section with explanations about the tales–either how they came about and/or why they were included. This section includes poems that go along with the tale's theme or as a companion piece. I'm not big on poetry, but some were pretty nice. Just... by the time I hit the poems I was already feeling melancholy. Life is cruel...

Do I recommend this? If you like fairy tales and seeing different versions of them, you should really check this out. I'd also recommend this one to people looking for fairy tale inspired poems.