Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue

Awesome, amazing, captivating book.

I just wanted to start with that.

I have trouble sitting through books of short stories. Usually I read one story, enjoy it, and go away to think about it and savor it. There's no impetus to find out what happens, as with a full length novel, so I'll set it aside for a few days... or weeks... Basically what I'm saying is that it normally takes me a long time to finish a book of short stories.

Not so with Kissing the Witch. I read the entire thing in one sitting. While it is technically a book of short stories, all the stories are connected, and so lead from one to the other, backwards through time, tying together the women of 13 fairy tales--witches and princesses, fairy godmothers and servant girls. Each woman tells a story, each story a unique reinterpretation, drawing the reader deeper into Donoghue's fascinating world.

In case I haven't made myself clear: Read this.

Saving Juliet by Suzanne Selfors

Mimi has a life a lot of girls would envy: a famous theatre family and the starring role in a Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet. What she wants to do, though, is go to college and study medicine--a point on which she and her mother could not more strongly disagree. Then, in a quill and magical ink incident, Mimi finds herself transported back to Shakespeare's Verona, watching the actions of the tragedy play out before her. She has to learn how to take things into her own hands, and not accept fate, before it's too late for the famous tragic pair.

I found that this started slow--oh, poor Mimi, stuck on Broadway--but when she gets to Verona the story and the humor pick right up. Selfors doesn't hesitate to play with conventions from our time or Shakespeare's, and altogether, this book is a compelling, satisfying read.

(While Shakespeare isn't strictly Fairy Tale, Folklore, or Mythology, I think that it's taken on the same status and retell-ability. Don't you?)

The Three Pigs by David Wiesner

This is newly one of my favorite picture books. Not only a retelling of a classic tale, this is also a meta-fiction piece about stories and creativity. Honestly, I have never seen anything like this--although there are a few books that go for similar concepts, this one is so perfectly illustrated.

The pigs decide to escape their fate by escaping their story, and that is when the real adventure begins.

Weisner uses different illustration styles and even fonts to indicate the multi-storybook journey the pigs take in their attempt to alter their fates. Do they succeed? I can't give away the ending...

Whether you've got kids or just want to collect some picture books among your fairy tale collections, I highly recommend this one. It's unusual and fascinating.

The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor

This is hardly one of those obscure pieces that I'm blurbing about, for your surprise edification, but I thought I'd say a few words about The Looking Glass Wars.

This draws on the history of Alice in Wonderland, and it's creation, rather than just reinterpreting the story. The premise being that Alice Liddell, the inspiration behind Wonderland's Alice, really was Princess Alyss, from Wonderland, and had been chased out when her Aunt took the crown. Trapped in our world, she is mocked for her believe in another world, until she finds the way back and returns to reclaim her throne.

I did enjoy this book, although I found the pacing to be a little slow. Things that I would have liked to know more about (her time in our world, possible ways that things crossed over) were sometimes skimmed over. Some of Alyss's "Woe is me" moments seemed to drag on a bit. I wouldn't call it perfect, but it was an interesting invention, drawing both from our world and Wonderland.

There are two sequels now, which are somewhere in the midst of my t0-be-read list. (It's a really, really, REALLY big list.)

Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

Now, I grew up reading C. S. Lewis's Narnia books, and I think there was a part of me that just associated him with children's books (as wonderful as they are, and even though I know he also wrote for adults). Lucky for me, this book came up in my book club, so I had the opportunity to have it forced upon me.

This is now one of my favorite retellings. Lewis offers a stunningly complex characterization; the story of Psyche and Eros, told from the point of view of one of the "ugly sisters." And, honestly, I was blown away by this. I have a tendency to get caught up with the newest releases and think of everything published before 1960 (sorry!) as "old fashioned, heavy prose." This book is one of the best books I've ever read--being both in my favorite category of story and amazingly, beautifully written.

I cannot recommend this enough. Whether or not you like the Narnia books, if you love mythology and retellings, you need to read this book.