Fantasy Freak Week: Fairy Tales and Legends

There's just something about reading a story that stars with "Once upon a time..." and ends with "...happily ever after" that makes me want to curl up with a cup of hot cocoa and sigh in contentment. Passed down from generation to generation, fairy tales inspire a kind of timeless storytelling that transcends all other literature.

They might not be the ones who first told the stores, but Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm were the first to popularize retellings. Newcomer Jessica Day George re-examined their stories in Princess of the Midnight Ball and Princess of Glass. Gail Carson Levine made a name for herself with Ella Enchanted and now has an entire collection of fairy tales retold. Shannon Hale takes retellings to a new level by pushing past the "...happily ever after" and seeing what happens after the after like with her Books of Bayern and Book of a Thousand Days. Though she wrote The Outlaws of Sherwood and several Greek myth-based novels, Robin McKinley is best known for her fairy tale retellings, including Beauty, The Door in the Hedge and Spindle's End. Alex Flinn gives Grimms' tales both a modern twist and a new perspective with male protagonists in Beastly, A Kiss in Time and Cloaked.

Donna Jo Napoli finds inspiration in many fairy tales such as Zel (Grimms' Rapunzel), Bound (a Chinese Cinderella-esque fairy tale) and Sirena (the Greek myth of the Sines). But she is the only author I know who has examined the Viking legend of the captive Irish princess in Hush. She has duel citizenship in the United States and Italy, which might account for her love of exploring Italian legends, including her newest novel The Wager. One of the best parts of her books? The "...happily ever after" is rarely what you would expect.

Although she's been creating beautiful picture books for years, it wasn't until Where the Mountain Meets the Moon received a Newbery Honor last year that Grace Lin burst onto the scene as the authority on Chinese fairy tales. Her traditional illustrations and knowledge of Chinese culture makes her a stand-out among all the other authors writing Asian-inspired fantasy.

With dozens of movies, TV series and songs, Robin Hood is a mainstay in Anglo-Saxon folklore. Best known for her contemporary work, Cynthia Voigt wrote the Robin Hood-inspired Kingdom Series, Beginning with Jackaroo. The Kingdom series tells the tale of a link of brave women who do more than just steal from the rick and give to the poor--they gain the trust of kings and change a nation.

The Arthurian legend is a common theme in fantasy. From Mark Twain with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court to Meg Cabot's Avalon High manga series,  a lot of authors have gotten in on the mid evil action. (Of course you can't forget Monty Python's musical parody and the much more tragic real-life story of JFK's Camelot.) Winner of both a Newbery Medal and the Newbery Honor, Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising Sequence provides one of the most captivating interpretations of the Camelot tale.

With her own twist on the Arthur story set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, Pamela F. Service has written sci-fi versions of many fairy tales and legends. Weirdos of the Universe, Unite! has to be one of my favorites as in brings together the mythical legends of Norway, Russia and America. I also just heard about another Scandinavian fairy tale retelling--Plain Kate by Erin Bow.

And Jane Yolen has written it all. She'd done Arthur (The Young Merlin Trilogy), Robin Hood (Sherwood), Grimms (Briar Rose). I mean, this woman even wrote an anthology called Favorite Folktales from Around the World and wrote the forward to Fearless Girls, Wise Women & Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World (one of my personal favorites). And that doesn't even begin to touch on the original fantasy books and numerous picture books she had written. She's like the Grimm brothers, Hans Christian Anderson and J.R.R. Tolkien all rolled into one.

Fantasy Freak Week: Friday Five

Do I plan on proving that fantasy written for children is better than fantasy written for adults? Of course not. Just because my opinion is the correct opinion doesn't mean it can be proven. Here are five reasons MG/YA fantasy is far superior to adult fantasy.

Better editing: Adults read to escape while kids read to learn. Even if it is unintentional on their part, every time a child picks up a book, they're expanding their vocabulary, improving critical thinking and discovering new concepts at a much higher rate than adults do when they read, which means editors have to work twice as hard to make sure kids don't find typos, plot holes and faulty logic.

Faster pacing: Shorter attention span, lower comprehension levels and early bed times mean kids don't spend as much time reading in one sitting like adults do. Children's lit is usually much shorter, which forces writing to be more concise and conflict resolution to happen faster.

Stronger female leads: Females not used as sex symbols are an anomaly in adult fantasy, yet they are the driving force in teen fantasy. Only as the demographic shifts to more male readers as the audience gets older do you find fewer female leads and more females as mysterious soothsayers, damsels in distress and evil queens.

Character first, setting second: Maybe it's because of the word-count restriction thing, but children's authors spend less time establish worlds and rules and more time building characters. In order for a young reader to connect with and keep reading a book, they have to relate to the main character. Adults, however, tend to read a book even with a despicable main character if they find the concept interesting.

Truer to motive: While there are always exceptions, children's fantasy isn't trying to make a political point or driven by societal morals like so much adult fantasy is. Of course they are exceptions to this (His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman comes to mind), but political commentary tends to go over kids' heads or even turn off parents and librarians who are the primary book buyers.

A for a special Friday Five bonus...

Crossover authors: Don't be fooled. While many best-selling adult authors are amazing writers, they can't always pull of younger characters and vice-versa. Here are five authors who cross the age divide, some more successfully than others. But I'll leave it up to you to decide who does it best.

Neil Gaiman

Brandon Sanderson

Carrie Vaughn

Maria V. Snyder

Orson Scott Card

Fantasy Freak Week: Illustrations of world mythology

It used to be the myths were the means to explain the world around us. How the sun streaks across the sky in Helios's chariot of fire. That the Nile River floods every year because of the tears Isis wept for Osiris. Why the wolf sang the moon into the night sky. Somehow, over time, science has become the means for debunking myths rather than the reason for creating them. Yet the magic of some stories manage to endure and captivate children all over the world.

The Boy of the Three-Year Nap by Diane Snyder
Japan

The Legend of Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching by Demi
China

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling
India

The Tale of The Firebird by Gennady Spirin
Russia

Golem by David Wisniewski
Eastern Europe

Noah's Ark by Peter Spier
Middle East

Anansi the Spider by Gerald McDermott
West Africa

Saint George and the Dragon by Margaret Hodges and Trina Schart Hyman
Britain

John Henry by Julius Lester
North America

Moon Was Tired of Walking on Air by Natalia M Belting
South America

And all it takes is a little faith to believe these myths are real. After all, if John Henry was more than just a folk song but an actual railroad worker at the turn of the 20th century, who's to say the rest of these myths aren't based in a little truth.

Fantasy Freak Week: The Power of Harry Potter

I can't talk about fantasy without eventually addressing Harry Potter. I won't pretend I'm some kind of Harry Potter authority, but I will admit to attending more than a few midnight premieres

(Here we are opening night of HP4. Those are Harry Potter stickers we have all over our faces, by the way, not remnants of a food fight.)

owning a boxful of memorabilia

(Only select items are pictured; the rest are stored away. As a disclaimer, I received most of these items as gifts. It's kind of a default for most people during the holiday season, so I started asking for kitchen items instead.)

making my own Rita Skeeter costume

(I made this costume for the HP7 book release party Midnight Muggle Madness at the Salt Lake City Public Library. I was a library volunteer at the time and working as a freelance reporter, so Rita seemed like the obvious choice.)

and rereading the books so often I've had to replace a couple

(HP3 still needs to be replaced, but there are so many other books to buy. I can deal with chapters 5-7 coming loose as long as they don't fall out.)

but I haven't visited the chat boards at mugglenet.com or rummaged around J.K. Rowling's desk since college. I still got teary eyed when watching the trailer for the new movie, knowing the dynasty is coming to an end, but the troubled teen wizard is no longer such a big part of my life.

Yet strangely, he's become an even bigger part of my life. J.K. Rowling has become a little like Shakespeare in that her writing is often quoted without people even realizing it. Exes are referred to as "He Who Shall Not Be Named," people now know how to pronounce "Hermione" when reading A Winter's Tale in English class, and whenever someone wears a gold and red scarf, they inevitably hear someone say "Go, Go Gryffindor!"

I've been reading those books since high school, which means the kids reading them today weren't even born when the first one was published. Are they the best books ever written? Probably not. Will the story of Harry and the gang lead you into a life of greater enlightenment? Possible, but not likely. Has the world forever been changed by The Boy Who Lived? Err...

But have kids been encouraged to read more challenging books, and have parents changed the way they interact with their children on a literary level? Most assuredly. And to me, if even one child becomes a better reader, a more conscious friend, a stronger person for reading those books, J.K. Rowling deserves her millions.