Re-spinning traditional tales is its own genre, with lovely twists like those in Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s Godmother trilogy, or Mercedes Lackey’s The Fairy Godmother from her Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms. Tanith Lee has her Red as Blood, and Sherri S. Tepper tells Beauty‘s tale. Movies like Ella Enchanted, Shrek, and The 10th Kingdom braid old stories together into new tapestries.
Are there any tales other than Cinderella that have not been sufficiently mined, smelted, recast, spun and hammered?
I heard today that the Beast of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is the most watched movie hero-lover of all time, including Erroll Flynn, Clarke Gable, Paul Newman, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp. What that says for the future of little girls everywhere is a bit frightening, but that story could take some more twists, as could Rapunzel, Goldilocks and Red Riding Hood, and in some of the older versions, the less cute ones.. I’d like to see some of the less popular tales retold–Vasalisa the Brave, Tattersails, The Master Maid, The She-Bear, the Armless Maiden, stories of girls who lived their own lives and saved the day for their homes and husbands to be.
What tales would you have retold?
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