Of Slippers and Spindles - Fairy Tale Retellings and Adaptations in Books, Film, and Theatre

In our second week discussing The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen, Drew and Cassie are taking a look at The Princess Test by Gail Carson Levine , the third in her middle grade series called The Princess Tales. This quick little book centers on Lorelei, a blacksmith's daughter who is born with extreme sensitivity, who falls in love with Prince Nicholas, whose parents want to ab...

"Never underestimate the power of a vegetable." Drew and Cassie open The Princess and the Pea Month with the 2002 American-Hungarian animated film The Princess and the Pea from Feature Films For Families. We had a bit of a hard time when it came to enjoying this particular film, so we work our way through the story in an attempt to understand a very convoluted plot.  We discuss Sebastian...

Are you ready to leave the ball and climb some mattresses? Because it's time for a new tale! Drew and Cassie wrap up their final thoughts on Cinderella, including some themes that we've noticed that have been arising now that we have covered 10 different retellings of Cinderella. Then we begin our new story, The Princess and the Pea by Hans Christian Andersen. This tale is short and swee...

"Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game."  It's the final week of our second Cinderella Month! We are joined by Bethanie Finger from Prince Kai Fan Pod, the Marissa Meyer Bookclub Podcast, to discuss the 2004 film A Cinderella Story starring Hilary Duff, Chad Michael Murray, Jennifer Coolidge, Regina King, and more. This teen romcom take on the Cinderella...

"'My feet are not bound.' 'I noticed,' said the prince."  For our fourth retelling in our second Cinderella Month, Drew and Cassie are taking a look at  Bound by Donna Jo Napoli . This 2004 book specifically retells the ancient Chinese legend of Ye Xian, reimagining the main character as Xing Xing, a young woman whose circumstances have left her orphaned and living wi...

"I'm not happy pretending everything is fine when I know it's not."  Drew and Cassie return after a hiatus to continue our Cinderella Month with our next book, Cinderella is Dead by Kalynn Bayron . This 2020 YA novel imagines a harshly patriarchal world set 200 years after Cinderella's death, in which her story is used to enforce the rules of the world. Our heroine is 16-y...

"His father wanted him to choose Lavaliere for Prince’s Preference, but he had to talk to Ella." Drew and Cassie are so excited to talk about Megan Morrison's Tyme series but also sad that this is the final Morrison book that has been published! For our second week in Cinderella Month, we are discussing Morrison's  Disenchanted: The Trials of Cinderella . This novel is told fro...

"I don't want a life stuck waving from a royal box any more than a life confined to a basement." Drew and Cassie begin our return to the fairy tale of Cinderella by discussing the Amazon Prime movie from 2021 starring Camila Cabello, Idina Menzel, Billy Porter, and more. This jukebox movie musical incorporates songs like "Rhythm Nation," "Somebody to Love," and &...

It's time to wish our way out of one fairy tale and into another! Drew and Cassie wrap up their final thoughts on Aladdin, including, and then rather than discussing how we would retell the tale ourselves like we usually do, we suggest ideas of how we would like to see someone else retell Aladdin. Then we take a journey to the past by explaining why we wanted to revisit Cinderella. We discuss...

"This is all your fault, Jafar." In our final week of Aladdin Month, Drew and Cassie are joined by Cassie's younger brother, Jeffrey, to discuss the 2013 musical Twisted: The Untold Story of a Royal Vizier from StarKid Productions. This parody of Disney's Aladdin is inspired by Wicked and retells the tale from Jafar's point of view, reimagining him as a well-intentioned ad...

"You ain't never had a friend like me!" Disney week came early this month! For our third week of Aladdin Month, Drew and Cassie discuss Disney's 1992 animated film, the 2019 live action movie, the 2011 Broadway musical, and much more! We talk about our personal memories and connections to Disney's version of Aladdin before delving into the plot specifics of the animated mo...

"Oh, my naive thief. Love is rarely a choice.”  For our second week of Aladdin Month, Drew and Cassie are discussing The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury . This 2016 YA novel casts Zahra as the protagonist, a jinn who has been trapped for five hundred years until her lamp is found by a young man named Aladdin. As Aladdin makes his three wishes and Zahra receives an opportunity to earn her fre...

Drew and Cassie begin Aladdin Month with the Aladdin episode from HBO's Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child featuring the voices of B.D. Wong, George Takei, Joan Chen, and more. This series from the 90s reset classic fairy tales into alternate cultural settings, although for Aladdin they kept the Chinese setting from the original story. We discuss Aladdin as a dreamer instead of j...

It's time to dance our way out of June's story and make a wish to start July's story: Aladdin! Drew and Cassie wrap up our final thoughts on The 12 Dancing Princesses, and Drew shares some thoughts on the reasons he doesn't care for the original story while Cassie helps sort through these ideas. As we discuss our own ideas for how we would retell the tale, Drew connects The 12...

"I could dance forever and ever and ever." In our final week of The 12 Dancing Princesses Month, Drew and Cassie are joined by Drew's sister, Daurie, to discuss perhaps the world's most popular retelling of the story, the 2006 film Barbie in The 12 Dancing Princesses . Barbie plays the role of Genevieve, the 7th of 12 sisters whose father decides they must learn to be "pro...

“Nights like this were meant to be shared, remembered, and talked about for years." The 12 Dancing Princesses Month continues as Drew and Cassie take a look at the popular 2019 YA novel House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig . This book follows Annaleigh Thaumas, the sixth of twelve sisters, who lives a sheltered life at her family's stronghold in Highmoor. The four eldest Thaumas da...

“Dancing was a dangerous game, but it meant that at night, at least, they knew what to do with themselves.” We continue our month of exploring The 12 Dancing Princesses with The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine. This YA retelling removes all magic from the story and recontextualizes it by dropping the twelve young women into the Roaring '20s! Jo Hamilton and her eleven sist...

“She was, surprisingly, an exquisite dancer." We journey into Week 2 of The 12 Dancing Princesses Month with one of Cassie's favorite fairy tale retellings of all time, Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George . Cassie loves this book and was pretty anxious to hear what Drew's opinion would be after reading it for the first time! Set in the fictional kingdom of Westfalin,...

"I have no patience for hearts and flowers and young men who brag about this victory and that. There's more to life than romance." We begin our month discussing The 12 Dancing Princesses by returning once again to Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre ! This time we are looking at the series' final episode, season 6, episode 3,  The Dancing Princesses , starring Lesley Ann...

It's time to let one story croak and dance into a new tale: The 12 Dancing Princesses! But first, Drew and Cassie wrap up their final thoughts on The Frog Prince. We acknowledge some of the similarities between this month's books and movies, we read a listener email about Iron Henry, and we discuss our thoughts on how we would adapt the story. Then we move on to our next fairy tale! We t...

"There is no way I am kissing a frog and eating a bug on the same day!"  It's the final week of The Frog Prince Month, which means it's Disney week! We are taking a look at Disney's version of this story, 2009's The Princess and the Frog , starring Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David, Jennifer Cody, John Goodman, Oprah Winfrey, and more! This animated movie, lo...

In our third week discussing The Frog Prince, Drew and Cassie are looking at Water Song by Suzanne Weyn , the 10th book in the Once Upon A Time YA series from the early 2000s. This book sets the story during World War I and follows Emma, a British socialite who has found herself isolated in her family's mansion along the warfront in Belgium. A soldier named Jack seeks refuge from a gas attack...

"Lose yourself to be found. Transform to be transformed."  Drew and Cassie are revisiting their favorite fairy tale series, the Tyme novels by Megan Morrison! The third book, Transformed: The Perils of the Frog Prince , follows Prince Syrah of the Olive Isles, an arrogant young man who makes a wish that backfires and turns him into a frog! A sudden, deadly plague descends upon the people...

"Pardon me, could you not make so much noise? You're scaring away all the flies."  For our first week of The Frog Prince Month, we watched the premiere episode of Shelley Duvall's Faerie Tale Theatre from 1982, The Tale of the Frog Prince , starring Robin Williams, Teri Garr, and Eric Idle. This relatively faithful adaptation of the Grimms' fairy tale gets pretty wacky, wi...

It's time to tap our heels together three times to leave Oz behind and splash our way into a new fairy tale: The Frog Prince! Drew and Cassie wrap up their final thoughts on The Wizard of Oz, including discussing why adapting Oz seems to elude authors and reading an email from a listener explaining a gap in our knowledge about The Wiz. Before we leave the Yellow Brick Road behind, as we do ev...