Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde

Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde

Target Audience: YA/Teen

Summary: So you think know the story of Little Red Riding Hood, the girl with the unfortunate name and the inability to tell the difference between her grandmother and a member of a different species? Well, then, try your hand at answering these questions:

-Which character (not including Little Red herself) is the most fashion challenged?

-Who (not including the wolf) is the scariest?

-Who (not including Granny) is the most easily scared?

-Who is the strangest? (Notice we're not "not including" anyone, because they're all a little off.)

-Who (no fair saying "the author") has stuffing for brains?

Vivian Vande Velde has taken eight new looks at one of the world's most beloved (and mixed-up) stories. You may never look at fairy tales in quite the same way again

Type of Adaptation: Retellings

So, as I stated before, I believe, Vivian Vande Velde is a writer after my own heart. I would love to sit in a room with her and talk about fairy tales and how silly some of them are, and if she continues to write short story anthologies on what I like to term the “Then I Found Five Dollars” fairy tales, I will be a very happy lady.

And in this anthology, like in The Rumpelstiltskin Problem, she has tackled the issues she (and I) has with Little Red Riding Hood in eight short stories, so let’s just jump right in, yes? Yes.

Red Cloak

In this tale, Little Red’s real name is Meg, and Meg doesn’t like to stand out, which makes it a problem that her mother has suddenly decided to dye her cloak bright red. Meg is horrified, and immediately starts to figure out how she can get away with not wearing it really at all when Mum insists that she trot over to Granny’s to show it off (under the guise, of course, of returning a soup bowl).

Granny lives on the other side of the village, but there’s no way Meg is walking through the town square looking like a strawberry. So she decides to skirt through the woods on the far edge of the town instead, but she keeps almost meeting people, and so strong is her desire to avoid notice that she keeps venturing deeper and deeper into the woods until she is quite lost.

Quite lost, and carrying a soup bowl that still smells of chicken, which soon attracts the attention of a wolf. Like, a wild animal one. Not a talking one. Meg starts running, hoping to find someone who can help her, and she encounters a woodcutter. She tells him she’s lost and needs help finding the village.

But the woodcutter is less than savory, and he smells a chance to make some money, believing that if she has a find red cloak, she must be from a rich family. Thinking fast, Meg throws the soup bowl at the woodcarver and lets out her best wolf howl. The woodcutter thinks she’s crazy — until the wolf comes, following the sound of a challenging howl and the scent of the chicken. The wolf heads straight for the soup bowl – and the woodcutter, who has climbed up a tree.

Meg taunts him by talking about how long the wolf’s claws are, and how big its teeth are, and then she makes in the direction of the town, coming to the conclusion that maybe being noticed isn’t so bad, compared to the alternative.

Red Riding Hood Doll

In this tale, Georgette is a seamstress who works under her mother for rich, snobby folk who don’t appreciate the work she does and constantly complain to get out of paying. Georgette is tired of the life she leads, and what she wants more than anything is a child, though she has no interest in marrying.

And so, when a rich woman complains about the work Georgette has done on a fancy red cloak, despite the fact that it was made to the woman’s exact specifications, Georgette snaps a bit. She takes the offending article and cuts it down, using the material and other supplies from the shop to create a full-sized lifelike little girl doll in a red riding hood. She calls it her daughter, and refers to her mother as “Granny” and refuses to let the doll be sold. Period.

But the girl isn’t real, and Georgette knows it, but she desperately wants it to be, and so, on Midsummer Night, she takes it to a fairy’s hollow in the hopes that magic will help make her a daughter at last. Which it does — kind of. It turns the girl real, but holding all the humanity that the doll itself had. No heart, and a head full of muslin.

Though Georgette tries to school her, the girl goes off with the first swarm of young men who descend, praising the “big strong arms” they have and the “firm lips” they have, leaving Georgette behind to scoff at the trouble children can be, and wondering if she should just go get a cat.

Little Red Riding Hood’s Family

From a silly daughter in our last story to silly parents in this one, here we have Roselle, who is so exasperated by her parents and how they act because it’s so embarrassing. Case in point, the evening we enter the story, when Roselle’s parents are having a water fight in the kitchen and her mother ends up spraining an ankle.

This is a problem because Mother was supposed to visit Granny that night and take supper. Dad could do it, but he’s terrified of his mother-in-law, so Roselle, being the responsible one in the family, volunteers to go, even though the sun is setting and she’s never made the trip after dark.

But, she reasons, she’s a competent and responsible young woman, so she can make the trip without incident. Which she does, though when she gets to Granny’s, she’s concerned at the outset because Granny doesn’t come out to meet her or respond to Roselle’s calls. And Roselle can hear some disturbance coming from the bedroom. So she musters her courage to go and investigate, and what should she find, but a wolf in her grandmother’s clothing, rummaging through the wardrobe!

The wolf is, in fact, her grandmother, because it’s after dark and the moon is out and Granny happens to be a werewolf. She was on her way to go check on Roselle and family because no one had come, but she couldn’t find four matching shoes, and she wasn’t about to leave the house in a state of undress.

Roselle helps Granny find the fourth shoe, and as she’s doing so, a vampire shows up, looking for a meal, but he’s not into werewolves. The fur, you know. But Roselle will be a nice treat – except that she turns him into a frog before he gets a chance to do anything. Because you don’t mess with a witch.

Granny and the Wolf

This story focuses on Granny, whose name is Nelda, and who has spent some time fighting off the advances of an unwanted suitor. On her way home one day, she finds a wolf caught in a hunting trap. She releases the animal, who is relatively tame and well behaved, and leads her back to her home to bandage the wound.

So there she is with a wolf in the house when her twelve-year-old granddaughter stops by, because Nelda is making her a red dress for the festival and she wants to know if it’s ready. Knowing that if Scarlet sees a wolf in the house, she’ll tell her father who will fuss and worry, Nelda hides the wolf in her bedroom.

And then, in a convoluted series of hilarious events, Nelda ends up hiding the wolf from Scarlet, and Scarlet and the wolf from the unwanted suitor, and Scarlet and the wolf and the unwanted suitor from her son, and eventually, Scarlet finds out about the wolf, and the wolf chases the unwanted suitor away for good, and Granny decides to keep the wolf as a pet and guard.

I’m trying to keep the summary on control on this one, but it flows really nicely, and is very funny, hitting all the points of the story as the wolf gets hidden in the wardrobe and in the bed, and Scarlet gets hidden under the table and in the wardrobe, and the way the original story gets woven into the insanity is very smartly done.

Deems the Wood Gatherer is a delightful story about a near-sighted wood collector who inadvertently ends up helping all the villains of the woodland fairy tales (LRRH, Hansel and Gretel, The 3 Pigs, etc) due to his poor eyesight, but as it isn’t exclusively LRRH, I’m going to leave it out of this discussion.

Why Willy and His Brother Won’t Amount to Anything

This is possibly my favorite tale in the entire collection for reasons we’ll get to at the end. In this story, Isobel lives next door to a pretty annoying boy named Willy. Willy has an overactive imagination that often gets him into trouble, and Isobel’s parents constantly say that he will never amount to anything.

Case in point, one day Isobel finds a fox cub, and she’s trying to coax it nearer to her when Willy comes rushing up, chasing away the “wolf” who was about to “attack” her. Isobel tries to argue, but it’s Willy, the color-blind boy who continually insists her green cloak is red, no matter how many times she corrects him, so she gives it up pretty quick as a lost cause, telling him that he’s welcome to stop in for a drink if the work gets too hot just to be polite.

Isobel heads to her house to help her grandmother, who is in the process of sewing draft protectors for the doors in the house. She had the idea to wrap stones in batting and then sew them with fabric to make them look like animals. She’s made a snake and a fish and a caterpillar, but she’s having trouble with the wolf she’s working on now, and asks for Isobel’s opinion.

The trouble, Isobel identifies, is that the arms are too long, and the eyes and ears and teeth are too big. Playfully, Grandma makes the wolf snap at Isobel, saying, “The better to eat you with!,” and that’s when Willy bursts into the room and cuts the “wolf” in two with his knife, crying out that he will protect the two women from the dangerous wild animal!

Despite their protestations, Willy and his little brother march away, confident in the knowledge that they’ve saved lives, and Isobel and Grandma watch them go, shaking heads. “Those Grimm brothers,” Granny says with a sigh, “they’ll never amount to anything.”

Hehehehe, I love it.

The Little Red Headache

Here we take the tale from the perspective of the wolf, and it’s made very clear early on that the wolf doesn’t speak human, and humans don’t speak wolf, and that will make up much of the confusion.

See, the wolf gets woken from slumber by a child stepping on his tail. And as if that wasn’t enough, her screaming when she see him pop up gives him a headache. He tries to reassure her that’s he fine, no harm done, but it comes out as a growl, and she runs away.

But she forgets her basket. And while the food smells delicious, and the wolf is tempted to just eat it, he was brought up better than that, so he takes the basket in his mouth and tries to follow the little girl. However, every time he gets close, she screams some more and runs away.

Determined to do the right thing, he keeps on through the woods until he finds a cottage. He scratches at the door until it opens, then asks if the basket he has belongs to the woman who lives there, and if she wants it because it smells delicious, and someone really should eat it. But this woman, who also doesn’t speak wolf, just starts screaming just like the little girl, and the wolf’s head is really starting to kill him.

The woman runs into another room and jumps in a big box (wardrobe) to hide. The wolf takes that to mean, no, it isn’t her basket, so he goes ahead and eats what’s in it. And that’s when the little girl shows up and starts screaming again, which sets the old lady to screaming, and that’s when the wolf decides he’s had enough and leaves the humans behind, knocking into a woodcutter on his way out.

Little Red Riding Hood’s Little Red Riding Hood

In this story, a fairy godmother is late to a christening because she can’t decide what to wear, and in the end, she ends up throwing a long red cloak over her out of date gown and just getting on to the christening. She arrives late, in a bad mood and distracted, not to mention frustrated by the cloak that has just been a total nuisance.

Long story short, her intention was to gift the child with intelligence. Instead, she ends up gifting the cloak with intelligence, and then giving the cloak to the girl, whose name is Ruby.

So here we have this intelligent and self-aware cloak. It becomes whatever length or shade of red will best suit little Ruby. It can become warmer or lighter, tighter or looser, and it soon becomes apparent that the cloak is a good deal smarter than its owner. But being fabric, it lacks the ability to speak, so no one knows just how intelligent the cloak is.

And Ruby certainly doesn’t appreciate what she has. Ruby is a silly girl and a bit spoiled. She’s also kind of dumb. Because when she has to go off into the woods to visit her grandmother and a talking wolf pops up, she starts talking right back, complaining about her mother and this unfair task, in no way aware of the danger she’s in.

The cloak is aware, though, and she tries to get Ruby to hurry along, but Ruby is having none of it. This continues through the story we know, the cloak taking the place of the audience in many respects, and finally, Ruby gets fed up enough with the cloak that she disowns it, which allows the cloak to finally leave the idiotic, belligerent girl behind to die however she chooses.

The cloak then searches for a new owner, and is passed from person to person for many years until she finally ends up on the back of a young superhero, helping him leap tall buildings in a single bound, but that’s another story entirely.

Thoughts on this anthology?

I adore it. I mean, yeah, some of the stories are not as good as some others, but you get that with any anthology, and the whole idea behind these collections of Vande Velde’s is one that I am completely behind. There were stories in here that were absolutely wonderful, and there weren’t any stories that I hated or felt missed the mark.

Checklist.

Make Little Red less of an idiot? Yes and no. It depended on the story in question, but what I appreciated was that even in the stories where Little Red was still an idiot, there was another character in there somewhere who wasn’t. And if Little Red was an idiot, there was a reason for it, a comment being made by it, and it was acknowledged within the story itself. So, point.

Develop the world? Yes. What I love about this collection is that every story felt very self-defined. The story had a context and the world was deliberately created. If there actually was a talking wolf, we got an explanation as to why. If there was magic, it was consistently present and used in the story. All eight worlds presented here were well drawn and well defined.

Give me a point? Well, yes, obviously. The whole point of this book, like with The Rumpelstiltskin Problem, is to address the issues of the original fairy tale. So the book gets a point overall for that. But also, individually, each of the stories had a point and purpose as well. There were message being put forth, and yeah, some of them were silly, but that’s fine.

All in all, she’s done it again folks, and if you like meta and snark, pick up this book and read it, by all means.

Little Red Riding Hood (According to Cassie)

Little Red Riding Hood (According to Cassie)

So basically, there's this girl, and she's named after a piece of clothing because that makes perfect sense. She lives with her mother on the edge of the woods; if there's a father, we never hear about him.

There's a grandmother, though, and she lives in the middle of the woods, and she's also been feeling a bit under the weather, so Mother asks young Little Red to take a basket of bread and wine into the forest for Granny, to make her feel better. Why we're sending wine and not soup or something isn't made clear, but hey. Alcohol's medicinal, right? Though it should be noted that not everyone includes the wine. Perrault just had them send a cake and some butter because that'll heal a body right up!

Anyway, the mother packs the basket and sends Little Red out into the woods. In some versions, she gives instructions: don't talk to strangers and don't stray from the path; but in Perrault's, the little girl just goes skipping off into the woods with alcohol and sugar for the invalid.

And as she skips along the path into the woods, who should she encounter but a wolf! And not just any sort of wolf -- a talking wolf! Why a little girl has been sent alone into a forest containing a talking wolf is not addressed. Nor is it addressed why an invalided old lady is living alone in a forest containing a talking wolf.

Anyway, Little Red meets this wolf and does not immediately turn and run in the opposite direction. Nor does she express any sort of surprise at the fact that this wolf strikes up a conversation with her, so maybe in this world, talking animals are fairly commonplace.

Or maybe Little Red is just an idiot. I mean, that's certainly not out of the realm of possibility, given what happens next.

Because the wolf starts chatting up Little Red, asking where she's going and what's in her basket and why she's in the woods. And Little Red doesn't say "none of your business" or "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," or "why do you care?" No, instead she flat out tells him that her grandmother lives alone and is sick, and then, she practically draws him a map with GPS coordinates for how to find said sick old woman who can't possibly defend herself.

Seriously, it's not, "I'm visiting my grandma who lives in the forest." That would be not too smart, but the forest is a big place, and hey, maybe grandma's a lumberjack or something. But, no. No, Little Red tells this wolf exactly where to find her sick grandma, which house in which part of the woods and all. And then, the wolf proposes that they race to grandma's and see who can get there first.

No, none of this strikes Little Red as suspect at all. Which means she's either young enough that she shouldn't be wandering around a forest on her own or dumb enough that she shouldn't be wandering around a forest on her own. Either way, this girl really ought to be supervised, is what I'm saying.

So, Little Red finds nothing creepy or suspicious at all about the wolf’s suggestion, and in fact, seems to entirely forget about it once the wolf follows her incredibly specific directions and heads away. In some versions, he specifically distracts her by suggesting she go further into the woods to gather flowers for her grandmother, but in Perrault's, he doesn't have to! The child wanders away of her own accord,  and honestly, I'm surprised it took this long.

So, yeah, the wolf gets to Granny's way ahead of Little Red, and in a move that provides decent evidence that Little Red's idiocy might just be hereditary, this obviously male wolf tells Granny that he is her granddaughter, and she gives him instructions on how to unlock the door from the outside and invites him right in. Having very easily gained entrance to the house, the wolf eats Granny.

Then he dresses himself in her nightgown and climbs into bed to wait for Little Red. And soon enough, Little Red shows up. She knocks on the door, and when the wolf answers, claiming to be her grandmother, Little Red is slightly alarmed by the sound of his voice, but decides that her grandma must just be hoarse because of her cold, and so she goes right in. This, to me, is slightly excusable.

But what happens next is not. Little Red heads for Granny's room, and sees the wolf in Granny's nightdress. And despite the fact that a) she met this same wolf earlier, b) he told her he was going to be heading to Granny's, c) she's already suspicious because of the unfamiliar voice, and d) it's a freakin' wolf in a nightdress!!!, Little Red does not immediately recognize that it is not her grandmother in the room with her.            

Now, I’m no expert, nor did I grow up in this fantasy land, but it seems to me that if you have difficulty distinguishing between your grandmother and a wolf in a nightdress, then you either need to have your eyes checked, your head examined, or offer some sort of explanation as to why your grandmother is regularly covered in fur.

And what gets me about this is how Little Red knows that something’s wrong . . . she just can’t quite put her finger on what. Is it the fur-covered arms and legs that end in paws and claws? No . . . Is it the pointed, furry ears on top of the head? No. . . Is it the glowing yellow eyes? No . . . Is it the fangs in the snout-like mouth? Oh. Yup. That was it. The teeth. Being eaten now. Shucks. Wish I could have seen that coming.

That’s the end of the story, by the way. Little Red gets eaten, along with Granny, the wolf enjoys a nice full meal and heads off, presumably in search of other idiotic little girls to eat. No huntsman, no rescue, no survival. This is the end of the tale, as far as Perrault is concerned.

Honestly, if it weren’t for Perrault’s heavy-handed moral, I’d really be okay with that. Seriously. Act like an idiot, get eaten by a wolf. Works for me. Unfortunately, though, Perrault’s moral is not ‘Learn to tell the difference between your family members and hungry wild animals, you idiot child.’ No, his moral is this:

“Children, especially attractive, well bred young ladies, should never talk to strangers, for if they should do so, they may well provide dinner for a wolf. I say "wolf," but there are various kinds of wolves. There are also those who are charming, quiet, polite, unassuming, complacent, and sweet, who pursue young women at home and in the streets. And unfortunately, it is these gentle wolves who are the most dangerous ones of all.”

Thanks, Charlie. Your concern for the well being of children, particularly “attractive, well-bred young ladies,” is really quite sexist and condescending. But what else is new? And point of interest: morals become slightly less effective when they’re longer than the story you were telling in the first place. Also, if you have to explain the metaphor.

And, yeah, I know the story has been continued in many other versions. The wolf curls up to sleep after eating Little Red, and a huntsman, the smartest human in the forest, apparently, passes by and realizes that wolves don’t normally curl up in nightdresses, so he figures out that something strange is afoot. He cuts open the wolf’s stomach (which somehow doesn’t kill said wolf) and out climb Little Red and Granny, somehow not dead despite having been eaten.

Then Granny fills the wolf’s stomach with rocks to kill him in a slow, torturous, agonizing death that I really don’t feel he deserved, skins him once he’s dead, and makes Little Red a cloak from the skin.

Guess she’ll have to have her name legally changed now.

Thoughts on this story?

It should be noted that I am entirely ignoring the incredibly rape-y original oral versions of this story, and focusing on when it got written down for kids.

As you might be able to glean from the heightened levels of snark in this synopsis, this fairy tale kinda rubs me the wrong way, at least with the common ending. I can get behind it as Perrault’s morality tale, even if I think the moral he identified is stupid and sexist. If the purpose of this story is to say, “hey, this is what happens when you’re an unobservant idiot, try thinking before you act next time,” then I’m totally down with it.

The problem is, that’s not what this story is, usually. When you add the huntsman and the rescue and the wolf’s death . . . what are you left with? No one learns anything, no one grows as a character, and there’s no point to this story. It’s Rumpelstiltskin all over again. I disobeyed my mother, I got eaten by a wolf, I was rescued by a huntsman, and then I found five dollars. 

So. What am I looking for in an adaptation?

Make Little Red less of an idiot. Make her innocent and naive and overly trusting, by all means. But make her less of an idiot, and let’s see some growth by the end of the story, hmm?

Develop the world. I want background and exposition and explanation. There are questions we don’t ask in a morality tale, but when it’s novel length, I need answers. Why do the wolves talk? Why is that not cause for concern? Why does the wolf want to eat the humans? Why is the wolf so easily mistaken for Granny? I need this world to be more developed and more defined, offering answers to some of those questions.

Give me a point. For the love of God, give me a point. Just like with Rumpelstiltskin, why are you telling this story? What’s your message? What’s your ending? Why should I care about your story?

The line-up:

Week 1: Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde
Week 2: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
Week 3: Scarlet Moon by Debbie Vigue
Week 4: Princess of the Silver Wood by Jessica Day George

Feel free to read along!

Cinderella Wrap Up

Cinderella Wrap-Up

As ubiquitous as the fairy tale of Cinderella is in cultures around the world, it is easily as ubiquitous in fairy tale novelizations. There have been months in the past where the struggle was finding enough novels to fill a full month. Here, the struggle lay in narrowing down the choice (in other words, the “Other Notable Novels” section is going to be quite full this month).

And yet, for all that that is true, almost every novelization I could have read and reviewed pulls from Perrault’s Cinderella. There are exceptions, of course. Donna Jo Napoli has a wonderful one that uses the Chinese Cinderella as its basis, and Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters Cinderella retelling uses more of Grimm’s, but for the most part, authors tend to latch onto Perrault’s.

And that got me thinking — why? Why fixate on arguably the weakest version of Cinderella out there, a story with a heroine so helpless she can’t even voice her own wishes? And then it occurred to me (and hang onto your hats, folks. I’m about to go Super Meta):

Maybe authors latch onto Perrault’s Cinderella because she’s the one most in need of rescue. Not from an evil curse, not from enforced servitude, but from the very confines of her own story told by an incredibly sexist narrator (appreciate as much as you want the work that Perrault did in terms of collecting and reproducing oral tradition tales in France; I certainly do. But that appreciation aside, you can’t deny that he was sexist and chauvinistic, and the stories he chose to collect and the way he chose to tell them reflect this).

I think authors tend to hone in on Perrault’s Cinderella because they want so badly to rescue Perrault’s Cinderella, above and beyond the other Cinderellas out there. Because Grimm’s made her own way to the ball. Chinese, Russian, Native American Cinderellas took charge of their own destinies. And so many other Cinderella figures out there – even if they couldn’t go after what they wanted, they could at least articulate it. But Perrault’s is so terribly helpless, you can’t help but want to give her a stronger personality and some small measure of control.

Because that’s what I noticed this month. Without exception, every Cinderella from every novelization was far less passive, far more proactive, far less willing to sit around and wait for her life to improve. Across the board, we got Cinderellas with gumption and fire and stubbornness, far more than Perrault’s ever showed.

I also noticed that all five of these novels offered Cinderella friends, another thing missing from Perrault’s tale. Ella from Just Ella had Jed and Mary; Poppy had Christian and Marianne and Dickon; Cinder had Peony and her android and Kai; Cindy had Malcolm and India; and Ella from Ella Enchanted had Char and Areida and Mandy. None of our Cinderellas were left alone, and in four out of five cases, they all met and became friends with the prince long before the ball, and in the one instance they didn’t, he turned out to be an idiot.

So, we give her passion, and we give her friends, and I think that’s significant. Every novel we read this month stressed the importance of those two things above and beyond the importance of romance, and it’s hard not to be a fan of that.

So. Rankings.

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine and Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George both come Highly Recommended and remain some of my favorite novel adaptations.

Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix and Cinder by Marissa Meyer are both Recommended for sure.

Cindy Ella by Robin Palmer was pretty disappointing, and I wouldn’t want anyone to go out of their way to read it.

Other Notable Novels: Tons. Seriously, guys, there are so many.

Bound by Donna Jo Napoli, which tells the tale of the Chinese Cinderella.
Phoenix and Ashes by Mercedes Lackey, which is one of my favorite of her Elemental Masters series.
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire, which I haven’t read for a while but remember being blown away by.
Before Midnight by Cameron Dokey, which has a fantastic take on Cinderella’s father.
I Was a Rat by Philip Pullman, which examines the story from the perspective of one of the rats turned into a footman, and is tons of fun.

And I’m gonna go ahead and throw out The Stepsister Scheme by Jim C Hines and The Fairy Godmother by Mercedes Lackey, both of which have Cinderella as a character combined with other fairy tale characters in truly wonderful ways.

Also, someone please read Cinderella: Ninja Warrior for me? My copy had to go back to the library before I could read it, and I just want to know!

There are so many others, guys. Cinderella is everywhere! But the month is up, and we have to move on.

April’s fairy tale is Little Red Riding Hood!

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

Target Audience: Middle Grade

Summary: At birth, Ella is inadvertently cursed by an imprudent young fairy named Lucinda, who bestows on her the "gift" of obedience. Anything anyone tells her to do, Ella must obey. Another girl might have been cowed by this affliction, but not feisty Ella: "Instead of making me docile, Lucinda's curse made a rebel of me. Or perhaps I was that way naturally." When her beloved mother dies, leaving her in the care of a mostly absent and avaricious father, and later, a loathsome stepmother and two treacherous stepsisters, Ella's life and well-being seem to be in grave peril. But her intelligence and saucy nature keep her in good stead as she sets out on a quest for freedom and self-discovery as she tries to track down Lucinda to undo the curse, fending off ogres, befriending elves, and falling in love with a prince along the way.

Type of Adaptation: Retelling

So, disclaimer right at the start, I am fully aware that I view this novel through something of a nostalgia filter because this was the first fairy tale adaptation that I ever remember reading, and I adored it when I was younger, and it remains one of my favorite novels of all time ever, and it’s what got me into fairy tale novelizations in the first place. Rereading it for this review, I did my best to as objective as possible, but basically, this book is amazing and nothing and no one will ever convince me otherwise.

So, Ella is a girl cursed with obedience. It wasn’t intended as a curse initially; it was intended to be a gift, a blessing, from a well-meaning but significantly misguided fairy named Lucinda. But it became a curse very quickly because anything Ella is told to do, she must do, whether it’s to finish her dinner, to stop crying, or to cook herself in a stewpot. She has no control and no choice. If she tries to delay or disobey, the curse causes her incredible pain, dizziness, shortness of breath, etc. Ella must be obedient.

She hates it, and I love how feisty this girl is, how strong in mind and spirit, and I love that a gift designed to make her pliable and easy to manage has, in fact, done just the opposite – it’s made her stubborn and rebellious and clever.

Because Ella has found little ways around the curse, learning how to obey the orders she’s given to the letter but not the spirit, wasting the time of the person giving the order and forcing them to be more and more specific.

Not that many people are aware of the curse; in fact, hardly anyone is. Ella’s mother knows, and Ella’s cook/fairy godmother Mandy. But the curse has been kept secret from everyone else, both because Ella sure doesn’t want anyone else knowing, and because Ella’s mother gave her a rare command not to tell anyone.

But while this one aspect of her life sucks, in general, Ella’s life and childhood don’t. Her father, a difficult and cold-hearted man, travels as a trader and is hardly ever home. Ella’s mother adores her and raises her with love and laughter, and Mandy is stern but obviously cares for Ella as well, and so things aren’t too bad.

Until Ella’s mother dies. And her father returns home to find that his daughter is clumsy and awkward and too tall and doesn’t know how to do anything that he deems valuable. She can’t dance or sing or embroider, she isn’t at home in fancy clothing or in a fine setting. She breaks things and is too stubborn for her own good. So when he hears at his wife’s funeral of a finishing school that a woman called Dame Olga is sending her two daughters to, he packs Ella up and sends her along as well. Ella is ordered to go, and so, there is nothing she can do.

The only people upset about this development (apart from Ella) are Mandy and the prince, Char. Ella met Char at her mother’s funeral, and he was kind and gracious toward her as no one else was that day.  And he knew the real version of her mother, the fun-loving woman who was always full of laughter, not the dutiful wife and lady that everyone else spoke of. Ella and Char struck up a friendship that day, and Char is indignant on Ella’s behalf because, as he says, she doesn’t need to be finished – she’s fine the way she is!

But despite having the prince in her camp, Ella is off to finishing school, where she is inundated and overwhelmed with orders – to correct her posture, to learn to sew, to dance gracefully, to eat properly, the curse forces her bit by bit to become “finished,” and Ella hates every minute of it, except for the time she spends with Arieda, the one girl she becomes friends with.

Hattie, daughter of Dame Olga and Ella’s future stepsister (spoilers) discovers Ella’s curse, sort of. She works out that Ella has to do whatever she’s told, though she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t need to, though, not to thoroughly order Ella about. And when Hattie orders Ella to stop being friends with Arieda, Ella has had enough. Rather than have to obey the order, she runs away in the middle of the night, making up her mind to track down Lucinda, the fairy who cursed her, and try and convince her to take the curse away.

She learns that Lucinda will be at a giant’s wedding, so she sets out in that direction. Along the way, she’s captured by ogres, the kingdom’s most dangerous enemy because they have the power of persuasion, not that they need it with Ella. But one of Ella’s gifts is a way with languages, and she manages to turn their technique against them long enough for help to arrive in the form of Char and his knights. Char and Ella rekindle their friendship, and he sees her safely delivered to the giant’s wedding.

At the wedding, Ella manages to track down Lucinda and beg for the gift of obedience to be taken away, but no dice. Lucinda tells Ella to be happy with her gift, and because it’s an order, Ella has to obey, an order that turns her into a puppet and really shows just how insidious a gift this can be – with the right command, your thoughts and emotions aren’t even your own, which is one of the most horrifying aspects to me.

Mandy is able to reverse this command once Ella makes it home, but there are bigger problems up ahead. Ella’s father has lost his fortune, and his solution is for Ella to marry a rich man. When that falls through, because he can’t find one rich enough, Sir Peter is left with no other choice than to find a rich lady for him to marry.

Reenter Dame Olga and her horrible daughters. Sir Peter lies to Dame Olga about his own fortune, leading her to believe that he’s still as rich as he ever was – at least until after they’re married. Ella can’t stand the proceedings or Hattie and Olive, so she slips away from the wedding, and ends up spending an afternoon with Char, exploring the old castle. They find a pair of fairy-made glass slippers on their explorations that fit Ella perfectly (Ella has a drop of fairy blood in her, which means she will always have the abnormally small feet of fairies), and Char gives them to her as a gift.

I love the friendship Levine builds between these two because, as you all should know by now, I love it when romance in these stories is built on more than just “love at first sight.” I love when it has a firm base, and this one does. Char tells Ella that he’s leaving in a few days to spend a year in a neighboring kingdom, and that he wants to write to her while he’s gone. Then he convinces her to slide down the stair bannister, which is, of course, when her new stepfamily finds them.

Hattie is furious that Ella should be so close with the prince, and so, when he calls on Ella the next two days, Hattie orders Ella to stay in her room, so Ella doesn’t get the chance to say goodbye to Char before he leaves, and they part on uncertain footing. Luckily, Hattie doesn’t know that they’re writing letters, and as they write back and forth, their friendship deepens, and Ella falls more and more in love.

It’s about the only thing life has going for her. Dame Olga discovered that her new husband is basically broke, and while he is able to travel and escape her, Ella has no such respite. She’s forced to be a servant in her own home because Dame Olga refuses to treat her as a lady, given that she has no wealth. So Mandy takes her in as a scullery maid, and while Ella’s life isn’t what she would wish, it could be worse.

And then Char confesses his love to her in a letter. And for one shining night, she’s over the moon, thinking that this is her way out. She marries the prince, and he takes her away from Hattie and Olive and Dame Olga, and she spends the rest of her life with the man that she loves.

But in the light of day, she knows she can’t accept Char. Her curse makes it impossible; it would endanger him in the worst way. She could be ordered to spy, to betray, to kill him. And she can’t tell him about the curse – her mother forbade it. So the only thing to do is to break his heart.

This moment is beautiful and heart-breaking. Because yes, you can argue that there were other options – tell him she doesn’t love him but wants to still be friends, for instance – but Ella knows that even as friends, she’s a danger to Char. Hell, she’s a danger to him just by existing, but even more so if she’s close to him in any degree. And there’s nothing she could tell him that would convince him to break off their friendship.

So she does the only thing she can. She breaks his heart so thoroughly that he’ll hate her, playing on his hatred of being made to look like a fool, because that’s the only way he’ll eventually move on. She writes as her stepsister Hattie, telling him that Ella eloped with an old rich man, that Ella used to read Char’s letters aloud to the family and was only ever taking advantage of Char’s attentions. Then she writes a short letter in her own voice, to drive it all home.

It’s the hardest thing she’s ever had to do, and Mandy resolves to do something about it. So summons Lucinda and tricks her into agreeing to try out her so-called “wonderful” gifts, to see if they’re really so grand. It gives Ella hope that, if she realizes how awful it is to have to be obedient all the time, Lucinda will take the gift away, since she remains the only one who can.

And while Mandy’s plan works, it works a little too well for Ella, because Lucinda has sworn off all big magic, and while she now knows everything Ella has gone through, she won’t take the risk of removing the curse.

So now we have Ella, still cursed, all hope gone, a servant in her own home, the man she loves with all her heart hating her. She’s at her lowest point. And that’s when Char’s return is announced, along with a three-day festival being thrown by the king.

Ella is determined to go, both to spite her step-family and to see Char one last time. She resolves not to approach him in any way, just to see him from afar, but she needs that closure. She and Mandy make three gowns and a mask in secret, but on the night of the first ball, it’s raining, which means Ella can’t walk to the palace as was her plan. In a moment of desperation, she calls on Lucinda, who agrees to help as long as it’s with small magic – transforming objects rather than creating new ones, and the transformations will be temporary, disappearing by midnight. So Ella ties on her mask, climbs into the pumpkin-turned-coach, and heads to the ball.

She sees Char, and watches him, but it isn’t enough, and so, breaking her resolve, she jumps into the receiving line. She changes the pitch of her voice and calls herself Lela (. . . really? Sweetie, I don’t think you’re trying very hard, here), and is determined to be just like the other girls, sweet and polite, but she can’t stand the idea of Char being bored with her, finding another girl to dance with, falling in love with someone else right in front of her eyes, and so she makes one comment like her true self, and it makes him laugh, and he asks her to dance.

She comes the next night, and he spends as much of it with her as he can. Hattie is not pleased, and she takes “Lela” aside to tell her that she and Char are secretly engaged, and that she must ask to see “Lela’s” face behind the mask, to protect her. Because she didn’t order it, Ella can refuse, so Hattie tries to plant doubt in Char’s mind, but no dice.

Char asks “Lela” to stay longer the third night, to hear him sing, and Ella resolves to be able to. She foregoes Lucinda’s magic that night so she can stay past midnight, and the moment she enters the ballroom, Char is at her side, and it’s clear he doesn’t intend to leave it.

But my favorite moment of this portion of the novel is when Char takes Ella aside and confesses that he might have been misleading her, spending so much time with her. He admits that the purpose of the balls is to find him a wife, but that he has no intention of marrying, and he hopes she isn’t disappointed to learn that. I love this, because it’s another example of a character taking charge of his own destiny. The balls were the king’s idea; Char doesn’t appreciate being forced into a marriage without being consulted about it, so he’ll go along with the balls, but he’s not going to choose a bride. It’s not a vow I think he can realistically keep – the need for heirs and all – but I appreciate that in this moment, that’s his move.

He tells Lela that even though love is supposed to be forever, friendship can be, too, and then he starts to ask a question, but before he can get it out, Hattie dances by and snatches off Ella’s mask. Char recognizes her immediately, of course, as does Hattie, and that’s why Ella runs. Not because it’s midnight, not because of any magic, but because she realizes how foolish she’s been, so desperate for his voice and his touch that she forgot why she broke his heart in the first place.

She runs home, losing a shoe along the way, but she can’t stop. She has to take Mandy and escape someplace where Char can’t find her, can’t come after her, can’t be put in danger by her.

But Char comes faster than Ella thought he would, and he knows where she lives. Before Ella and Mandy can slip away, the entire household is forced to assemble. Ella tries so hard to disguise herself, but she’s pulled out anyway, and it’s clear that Char recognizes her immediately. But Ella (and Hattie) denies who she is, and so Char pulls out the slipper, the magic fairy slipper they found in the palace that day, the one he gave to Ella. He knows it’s hers. He tells her that it will fit Ella and Ella alone.

Hattie tries to claim the slipper as hers, but it’s fairy-made, for fairy-feet, so it doesn’t fit her or Olive. Char draws Ella to a chair and slips it on, but he does so privately, not making a show of it, and he sees how utterly terrified she is when it fits, this proof of who she is. And so, even though he doesn’t understand it, he tells her, in a whisper, “You needn’t be Ella if you don’t want to be,” and . . . guys, it’s such a wonderful, beautiful moment. Char was my first literary crush, and this scene is why.

Because he’ll let her go if she tells him to. He doesn’t understand why, doesn’t know why she lied or why his presence here inspires so much fear, but if she tells him to go, he will. He figures out that her letter was a trick, and she confirms it. He asks if she loves him, he needs that from her, and she confesses that she does. And he says, “Then marry me!”

It’s a command, though Char never intended it as one. But it is a command, and Ella must be obedient. Hattie commands her not to marry the prince, but Dame Olga steps in and says with a princess for a stepsister, she’ll have everything she wants, and Ella knows it’s begun, what she was so afraid of, the reason why she broke Char’s heart in the first place.

She’s been ordered to say yes, to accept his proposal, to marry him. But she can’t. She can’t put him in that danger, she can’t let herself be used against him. She has to say no.

This two-page scene is one of my favorite things that’s ever been written, guys, because it is so powerfully and effectively done, Ella’s inner turmoil, her struggle to fight against the curse, to save Char by breaking it, by finding the strength to refuse him. And that need, that love, is strong enough when nothing else has been. It isn’t easy. It’s the hardest thing Ella has ever done, but she is finally able to yell, “No!” and refuse to marry Char.

Ella is jubilant, refusing him over and over again, and Char is confused, and it’s just . . . lovely. It’s lovely, and I love it. He asks why she won’t marry him if she loves him, making it clear that she doesn’t have to, that she can say no, he’s just confused, and she tells him that she’s cursed, and he wouldn’t be safe if he married her.

And then she realizes that she shouldn’t be able to tell him that. And she thinks back on all the commands she has not followed in the last minute or so, and Mandy confirms what she doesn’t dare believe – the curse is broken. And Ella kneels before Char and asks him to marry her. And happily ever after.

God, I love this book. I could rhapsodize all day, but this review is already over a week late, so I’m just gonna take us to the checklist.

Give Cinderella control of her own destiny? You wouldn’t think so, would you, with a main character cursed into obedience? And yet, Ella takes charge of her own story undeniably. I love that forcing her to be obedient to every command has actually made her incredibly strong-willed and stubborn, determined to fight against a world constantly telling her what to do. I love that the secret to breaking the curse lies is loving Char enough to refuse him. I love that, in the end, Ella’s curse isn’t taken away by Lucinda or removed by Mandy or broken with a kiss from Char – she breaks it herself. She rescues herself. I love it, and I love her.

Enhance the role of the prince? Every time I read this book, I fall in love with Char all over again. He’s not perfect, but he is good, through and through, right down to his core. He is pure-hearted and a good friend, and he loves Ella enough to trust her, to let her go if that’s what she needs. I love the relationship built up between these two throughout the novel, that while Char did fall in love with Ella, what he was really looking for most was a friend, someone he could talk to, and he fell in love with Ella because she was able to be that for him, first and foremost.

Address the plot transgressions? Let’s see.

Why does Cindy’s dad allow her to be treated so horribly?  Because he’s kind of a horrible human being, and I love it. I love that Levine had the guts to characterize the father in this way. He is cold-hearted and closed-off and he doesn’t really care about his daughter. His business has always been more important to him.

Why doesn’t Cindy fight her servitude or leave if she’s being treated so badly?  Because she can’t. She’s cursed to obey, and she’s been ordered to be a servant. She fights against it in all the ways that she can, but she can’t actually leave.

Why hasn’t the fairy godmother made an appearance before this point, if she’s charged with Cinderella’s happiness and well being? The FG’s role is split between Mandy and Lucinda, and Mandy has always been there, protecting Ella, watching over her, keeping her safe, acting as you would expect a FG to act.

Anybody going to question glass slippers? They’re fairy-made to bend and give without breaking.

Why don’t the slippers disappear along with the rest of the FG’s gifts? They weren’t given to her by Lucinda; she got them earlier from the prince.

Why does the prince need the shoe to identify Cinderella, and is it really reasonable to assume that it will? Because Ella has super tiny feet, thanks to her fairy blood. But it’s less about the show fitting and more about Char knowing that these slippers specifically are Ella’s, because he gave them to her.

This book is everything a Cinderella adaptation should be. Nostalgia goggles or not, this remains one of my favorite books of all time, and nothing will convince me otherwise.

Expect the Cinderella Wrap-Up later today. Thanks for your patience!

Guest Post: Disney's Cinderella (from Matthew)

Disney’s Cinderella

or “Why This Movie Really Isn’t As Bad As You Think It Is” - by Matt Guion

Seriously, people. It’s not.

Okay, to be fair, Disney’s Cinderella is one of the earliest movies I remember watching. My family didn’t get a VCR until I was about three, and we only had a handful of VHS home movies, of which Cinderella was one, and one that I watched a lot. So yeah, there’s a fair amount of nostalgia attached with this film. But the same can also be said for Shirley Temple’s The Little Princess, and I have no qualms whatsoever about ripping that movie to shreds. So, that being said . . .

Cinderella came after something of a dry spell for Disney animation, partly due to the war and a reliance on “package films,” or movies that told more than one story. Cinderella was the first full length animated feature since Bambi to tell one story, and only the second full length animated feature to be based on a faerie tale. And like Snow White, it was a big hit, and effective started Disney’s classic era, which would sustain them for much of the next couple decades.

This time, Disney tackled a story that was well-known and universal, the classic rags to riches story, and while they definitely put the Disney spin on it, they also stayed pretty true to the source material. But what I have found, after watching it again, is that the things about this movie that I’m not crazy about are the things from the original story that they stayed true to. Pretty much everything Disney DID add their touch to, I liked better.

So, starting from the beginning: the movie opens, just as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, with the storybook exposition, where a narrator gives us the beginning of the story. Cinderella -- who, incidentally, has that name with no sort of explanation behind it -- is the daughter of a wealthy widower, who marries Lady Tremaine believing that Cinderella needs a mother. Lady Tremaine has two daughters of her own, Anastasia and Druzella, both of whom are generally spiteful and mean-tempered. Then, Cinderella’s father dies (thus, taking care of that little problem from the story) leaving Cinderella at the mercy of her stepfamily, who now reveal their true colors and treat Cinderella as little more than a servant.

Which brings us to our first “issue” that people cite with this story. Why doesn’t Cinderella just leave, if her family is treating her so badly? Well, let me answer your question with a question: where would she go? It’s indicated that she’s still a child when her father dies, and thus, her stepmother is her legal guardian. When she is old enough to take her life into her own hands, as it were, she’s no longer the daughter of an aristocrat. She’s a commoner, a servant. Her stepmother has basically stripped away whatever legal claim she might have had to her father’s estate. And awful as Lady Tremaine is, she’s still giving Cinderella a place to stay. Yeah, Cinderella has to work, but she has a home, she has food on her plate, and a roof over her head. She’s not going to give that up lightly. Also, when you’ve been raised from childhood to be a servant to your stepmother, you kind of grow up with that inferior mindset into adulthood. Also, legality aside, I do think that Cinderella still sees the place as her father’s house. We’re told that it’s falling into disrepair, because Lady Tremaine cares little for it, and Cinderella has a vested interested in staying.

So for better or worse, Cinderella stays and allows herself to be treated as a servant. But it’s worth noting that this Cinderella is considerably more interesting than her Perrault counterpart, as well as more interesting than the other Disney princesses from this time before being a Disney princess was even a thing. She actually has a very enjoyable personality. Yes, she’s optimistic and kind against all odds, but she can also be vaguely sarcastic, as though she’s on the very edge of talking back at times. Unlike Snow White, who just seemed oblivious, and Aurora, who actually was oblivious, Cinderella seems fully aware that her situation pretty well sucks, but she’s trying to make the best of it that she possibly can. I wouldn’t call her content with her situation. More like resigned. Her attitude seems to be, “I may not like the lot life has dealt me, but there’s not a whole lot I can do about it, so I may as well try to make the best of it.” And unlike Perrault’s Cinderella, who isn’t even able to make her wish and has to have the Fairy Godmother do even that for her, this one does actually try to make her life suck less. It just doesn’t seem to work. She befriends a group of mice, and one of them accidentally gets into trouble. She sings while she works, and Lucifer the Worst Little Demon Cat Ever messes up the floor she was cleaning. She finds a dress to wear to the ball, and . . . but I’m getting ahead of myself.

As I said, Cinderella--being a Disney princess--has animal friends. Birds, who don’t talk, and mice, who sadly do. (And if befriending mice in your house doesn’t force you take a step back and reexamine your life situation, then I don’t know what will.) And this is the one thing Disney did that I’m NOT wild about: the mice. And really, it’s not even the mice themselves. It’s their voices. The mice themselves actually have very enjoyable personalities, with Jaq and Gus taking on an Abbott and Costello style friendship. In a way, this movie is kind of their perspective of the story. Cinderella from the point of view of the mice. I mean, yeah, it’s mostly a bunch of filler material of Tom and Jerry-style antics with Lucifer, but they’re still enjoyable to watch.

So, the plot properly gets going when Cinderella answers the door to a royal official with an invitation to the ball, which she promptly takes up to her stepfamily. And again, to her credit, unlike Perrault’s Cinderella, this Cinderella does actually assert herself here. While her stepsisters are laughing at the idea of her going to the ball, Cinderella points out that EVERY eligible maiden is to attend, and that includes her. Lady Tremaine reluctantly agrees on the condition that she finish her work AND find something to wear . . . which she will, of course, make impossible by keeping her constantly busy.

So, singing mice to the rescue! Cinderella has a dress and an idea of how to fix it up, but she doesn’t have time to do it herself, so . . . the mice do it. This leads to one of the more creative, though also sillier, sequences of the movie where the mice and the birds fix up the dress . . . while singing. (Ugh.) It also leads to another fun sequence with Lucifer, as well as the whole “Leave the sewing to the women,” line that kind of irritates me. But regardless, Cinderella tells her stepfamily that she’s not going, tries to make herself feel better and fails, and then the mice surprise her with her newly updated dress. Delighted, she puts it on, and rushes downstairs to join her stepfamily in going to the ball.

Unfortunately, the mice, in their innocence, used things that the stepsisters had discarded in order to work on Cinderella’s dress, specifically a sash and a necklace of beads, and they use that as an excuse to rip Cinderella’s dress to pieces. The stepfamily leaves Cinderella standing in the ruins of her dress as they go off to the ball without her.

So, yeah . . . SHE FREAKING CRIES. Guess what? So would I! She’s been trying to make the best of a crappy situation for so long, she thought she’d finally have a chance to escape, at least for a little while, and then she’s attacked by her stepsisters -- and I mean physically attacked, that scene is creepy! -- while her stepmother did nothing. This was the breaking point. This was the point when she just couldn’t take it anymore. We’ve all been there, and Cinderella has been through more than most. Cut her some slack, folks.

Anyway, she’s had enough. She’s hit her lowest point. She doesn’t even see the point of dreaming anymore. And that’s when the Godmother shows up. Not when she’s doing her best to dream and hope and do what she can, but when she’s lost all hope and needs someone to give her some. And the Godmother doesn’t just grant her this wish on a whim. This is exactly what Cinderella needs, and not just because the Prince is going to be there. So, the Fairy Godmother is not someone who rescues a helpless damsel in distress, but someone who gives hope to someone who has lost it.

So, the Fairy Godmother sings her song and casts her spell and gives Cinderella her warning, and Cinderella is off to the ball. Now, we’ve been ignoring the prince all this time, so let’s turn to him for a bit.

 . . . Yeah, not much to say about the Prince. He doesn’t show up until the ball, and has little to no personality. But we can talk about the king and the duke for a bit.

So, the King is the one who is so gung-ho to marry his son off, very simply because he wants grandchildren. This seems to be partly practical -- carry on the family line -- and partly personal -- his son has long since grown, and the King misses the child he once was. So really, the King is the real love interest in this story. He’s the one with the schemes and the desire for his son to be married. He’s looking after his own happiness rather than his son’s, but the character is so funny and likable that we don’t really mind how selfish and unreasonable he’s being. The King has a very belabored Grand Duke, who basically does all of his bidding and helps to carry out the King’s schemes.

The Prince, therefore, is bored out of his skull during the ball . . . until Cinderella turns up. He sees her, wandering through the palace lost, and approaches her for a dance. And somehow, Cinderella is unaware that this is the Prince. I mean, okay, he’s dressed like any other nobleman at the ball, but given that everyone’s, you know, looking at him and deferring to him, you’d think it would’ve been obvious. But never mind. They dance, obviously infatuated with each other, while we hear “So, This is Love.” Whether they’re actually in love . . . well, I personally think the question is irrelevant, for reasons I’ll explain later.

The dance the night away, and the clock strikes twelve, and Cinderella is off and running. The Prince makes a few token protests (seriously, three lines and a song, that’s all this guy gets) before he is engulfed by adoring young women and obscured from the remainder of the plot. The Duke, who has been charged with keeping an eye on them and informing the King when the Prince proposes, runs after her instead and sends the palace guards after her, knowing that his neck is on the line. (Again: the duke does all this. Not the Prince.) And of course, Cinderella loses the slipper.

Cinderella’s ensemble changes back to pumpkin, mice, horse, dog, and rags, and since the palace guards aren’t looking for those things, they run right past. Cinderella, far from being disappointed, is actually quite happy, and why shouldn’t she be? She got out of the house, away from her stepfamily, got to go to a royal ball, danced with a handsome guy, basically had a one-night stand without the sex, and even though she has to go back to her old life, this night just might be enough to restore her hope in the future again. And of course, she still has the other glass slipper. And no, it’s never explained why the other things disappear and not this. I guess we have to assume that the Fairy Godmother had enough magic to at least let her keep the shoes.

The scene that follows, where the Duke tells the King that the girl got away, is one of the most hilarious scenes in the movie, as the King goes from being giddy at the thought of his son getting married to flying into a murderous rage when hearing that the Duke let the girl get away, and then back to delighted once he learns that the Prince has said he’ll marry the girl who fits the slipper. So here, the King sees an opportunity. The King isn’t really terribly picky whether the Prince marries the girl he loves or not, he just wants him to marry someone. So since the Prince has, probably in a fit of passionate grief, sworn he’ll marry the girl who fits the glass slipper (most likely meaning the girl who owns the slipper), the King intends to hold him to that exact promise, probably thinking that someone is bound to fit the slipper, it doesn’t matter who. Just so long as she can bear grandchildren.

Next morning, as the stepfamily is suffering a post-ball hangover, the King’s proclamation arrives. The stepmother sees the same opportunity that King did, though from the other end of it. The shoe could easily fit either Anastasia’s or Druzella’s foot as well as anyone’s. Once she explains this to her rather dense daughters, they immediately fly into a frenzy, ordering Cinderella around as usual so they can get ready for the arrival of the Duke.

Cinderella, however, isn’t listening. Because she has caught on as well, and this is one thing I love about this moment of the movie. Cinderella not only realizes that the guy she danced with last night is looking for her, but that he’s the Prince. Cinderella had already given up ever seeing him again, dismissing her feelings as infatuation that she would get over eventually. But this isn’t just any suitor: this is the Prince. This is someone who can finally get Cinderella out of her crummy situation. This is her way out.

And once she realizes that, she STOPS listening to her stepfamily. She doesn’t do what they’re ordering her to do; she hands off the clothes and goes to get ready for the Duke. She essentially extends her middle finger to her stepfamily, and goes off to do her own thing, never thinking for a moment that there’s a damn thing they can do about it, because the Prince is looking for HER, and she knows it. Unfortunately, she completely underestimates her stepmother’s bitchiness, and gets locked in her own tower.

So, it’s not like she does NOTHING here. She knows she’s finally getting her break, and prepares for it. The reason why she is thwarted here and has to be rescued is because she’s locked in a remote tower. She can’t jump out the window, she can’t yell for help, and she can’t break out of the door. There’s literally nothing she can do.

So once again, mice to the rescue! As the stepsisters are comically trying on the tiny slipper on their overly large feet, Jaq and Gus retrieve the key from Lady Tremaine’s pocket and start laboriously moving it up the stairs. And can we just stop and look at how freaking badass these mice are? I mean, did you SEE all those stairs? Damn.

Okay, so they bring the key to the top of the tower, but just as they are about to slide it under the door, Lucifer the Cat That Just Needs to Freaking Die Already, traps Gus and the key under a cup and won’t let him go. And now, we have to look at what Cinderella does next. When the birds are having no luck deterring Lucifer, Cinderella remembers the dog, Bruno. Now, earlier in the movie, Cinderella scolded Bruno for terrorizing Lucifer, even though Lucifer totally deserved it, because they had to learn to live together and get along. But now that Lucifer is directly keeping Cinderella from happiness, she says, “Fuck that shit, get the dog up here so he can get rid of this little spawn of Satan.” The birds do, Lucifer falls out the window, and Cinderella is able to free herself and rush downstairs before the Duke storms out in a huff. Lady Tremaine trips the Duke so that the slipper falls and shatters, but even as the Duke is freaking out, Cinderella just calmly pulls out the other slipper. She already knows that she’s won.

And she has. We don’t know what becomes of the stepfamily, but Cinderella and the Prince get married and go off to make grandchildren for the now ecstatic King, and they all live Happily Ever After.

It’s easy to write this movie off as “Just another Disney movie,” but I think they did a much better job with this movie than people give them credit for. Again, if anything, the problems in this movie have more to do with the source material than how Disney adapted it.

But to the checklist:

Give Cinderella control over her destiny: I would say check. Though this Cinderella isn’t the most active of the Disney princesses, she’s still a hell of a lot more active the Perrault’s Cinderella. This Cinderella is very much an optimist, someone who tries to make the best of things, who does actually make an attempt to go to the ball on her own, who makes a conscious choice to leave her stepfamily for the Prince, and who does what she is able to do to get herself rescued. She receives help only when her own efforts have been thwarted by circumstance and general bitchiness. She’s a lot more interesting and active of a character than I think most people give her credit for

Enhance the role of the Prince: Heh, no. But to be fair, they do enhance the role of the people who ACTUALLY want to see the Prince get married--namely the King and, to a lesser extent, the Duke--and I think that actually does a lot. I think that reinforces the fact that despite the way it’s often romanticized, this is still, at its heart, an arrange political marriage. Yes, the Cinderella and the Prince make googly eyes at each other for a bit, but that’s not where the focus is. The focus is on the King scheming to marry off his son by any means necessary, and Cinderella using the fact that the Prince happens to like her to escape from her family. Not that the two of them don’t like each other, I’m sure they do. But it’s more of an added perk to the marriage than something that the story actually revolves around.

Address the plot transgressions: SOME of them are addressed. Cinderella’s dad dies, so isn’t around to see his daughter being treated horribly. Cinderella doesn’t run away because her life with her stepfamily is really all she has. The Fairy Godmother shows up when Cinderella is no longer capable of being optimistic and hopeful and has pretty much reached the end of a very long rope. And it’s not really the Prince using the shoe to identify Cinderella as it is his father taking advantage of the Prince’s grief and using whatever means he can to marry him off. I might be reading quite a lot into a simple story, but I think the characters are well-defined enough in this movie to fill in a lot of these plot holes, and I think that’s really key in this adaptation. They don’t really address the question of the impracticability of a glass slipper or the fact that the slippers don’t disappear with the rest of the outfit, but given that those are iconic parts of the story, and this is an adaptation rather than a retelling, they couldn’t very well get rid of them. So, I’ll give this three-fourths of a check.

Cinderella might not be the best of the Disney faerie tale movies, and maybe my childhood nostalgia colors a lot of this, but I still think the movie holds up pretty well. For all that it’s romanticized, both by Disney lovers and by Disney detractors, the movie actually manages to keep a fair amount of the romance OUT of the movie, and just focuses on telling a compelling story about a girl who gets handed a bad lot and finally gets her break . . . not unlike the previous Disney princess, as it turns out. Walt Disney loved stories about the underdog, the downtrodden protagonist who finds him or herself and rises above adversity. Really, romance was a secondary concern. Viewed in that way, this story works, and much better than I think a lot of people think that it does.

Cindy Ella by Robin Palmer

Cindy Ella by Robin Palmer

Target Audience: YA/Teen

Summary: Prom fever has infected LA—especially Cindy’s two annoying stepsisters, and her overly Botoxed stepmother. Cindy seems to be the only one immune to it all. But her anti-prom letter in the school newspaper does more to turn Cindy into Queen of the Freaks than close the gap between the popular kids and the rest of the students. Everyone thinks she’s committed social suicide, except for her two best friends, the yoga goddess India and John Hughes–worshipping Malcolm, and shockingly, the most popular senior at Castle Heights High and Cindy’s crush, Adam Silver. Suddenly Cindy starts to think that maybe her social life could have a happily ever after. But there’s still the rest of the school to deal with. With a little bit of help from an unexpected source and a fabulous pair of heels, Cindy realizes that she still has a chance at a happily ever after.

Type of Adaptation: Modernization inspired by Cinderella

Yeah, so, originally, I wanted to review Cinderella: Ninja Warrior by Maureen McGowan for reasons that should be self-explanatory. Cinderella. Ninja Warrior. Why wouldn’t I pick that novel?

But, sadly, it ended up being a Choose Your Own Adventure type of novel, which was going to be super hard to review. So I went with choice number two, because I wanted to do an modernization if there was one. And there was . . . but that “inspired by” . . . well, we’ll get to that.

So, this novel is set in LA, and our protagonist, Cindy Ella, has just committed social suicide. How, you ask? Well, by writing a letter to the editor of her school paper denouncing prom. She tells her classmates that they are brainwashed by society to see prom as a major rite of passage, but that one dance shouldn’t be that all important, and they should stand with her and boycott.

She was expecting to stir up the waters. That’s not what happens. What happens is that everyone hates her and she becomes a social outcast.

Now, I don’t personally remember my proms being taken this seriously, but then, I did go to school in hickville, Ohio rather than Hollywood-obsessed LA, so I’ll take this reaction with a grain of salt.

The only two people who stand by Cindy are her two best friends, Malcolm and India, and their inclusion made my eyebrows quirk because I wasn’t aware that Cinderella had friends, I thought that was kind of the point of her story, but hey, A Cinderella Story made it work, so I’ll let it be for now.

Two of the people who are appalled by Cindy’s actions are Ashley and Brittany, her twin stepsisters, nicknamed “the Clones,” and once they tell their mother what Cindy has done, her stepmother is appalled, too. She’s concerned that Cindy is acting out, and that this article is a sign of her deep-rooted depression following the loss of her mother, and that if left unchecked, Cindy might start self-mutilating or something equally drastic.

Which, correct me if I’m wrong, doesn’t quite seem in keeping with the usual attitude of Cinderella’s stepmother. But at least she’s still practically a servant in her own home. I mean, constantly being asked to babysit her baby brother if she has nothing else going on? That’s totally the equivalent of hard manual labor with no pay and humiliating work conditions.

Yeah, the longer I read this novel, the less it read like Cinderella.

And the plot is one of the most high-school-drama-centric things I’ve read in a long time. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand that these are issues that, in the moment, do seem all important to these kids. But coming from the perspective of a 24-year-old with student loans to pay back, a slightly laughable degree in terms of finding a job, and the prospective of a cross-country move in about five months? I find it really hard to connect to a girl whose biggest troubles stem from the fact that she can’t decide who of the three hot guys she has a crush on to focus her attentions on.

Because when you boil this book down to its essentials, that’s what it becomes. Cindy has eyes for Adam Silver, the most popular guy in school, to whom she has never spoken. And then there’s her 23-year-old SAT tutor upon whom she develops an instant crush. And in the third corner, we have BrklnBoy, an online friend she chats with who, if you’ve seen A Cinderella Story or really read a book ever, you will know is actually Adam Silver.

And Cindy’s level of obsession not only about these three guys but also about how she appears and is presented to these guys is really disappointing to encounter when she is supposedly so very anti-Hollywood values.

And that’s the biggest thing for me here – for a girl who wrote such an impassioned letter against prom and its superficiality, she is awfully fixated on Operation Turn Cindy Into a Girl, which, no seriously, is what it’s called. This new crush, her tutor, walks into the scene, and suddenly Cindy is trying makeup and straightening her hair and wearing new clothes and the whole nine yards — exactly what she is supposed to be denouncing.

It doesn’t help that the Cinderella narrative completely disappears for about 150 pages, meaning that this is the only thing left to focus on.

Noah turns out to be gay, by the way. If you didn’t see that coming. He’ll fill the role of the fairy godmother, or as I like to call him, the Fairy God Gay Man. . . . yeah, the title needs work.

So let’s recap briefly. You have a Cinderella figure, except, not really because she isn’t a servant, she doesn’t have an oppressive family, and she has no desire to go to the ball. . . . Where’s our story, again?

Ah, right. Pointless high school drama. Got it.

The Cinderella narrative reemerges . . . ish . . . as prom draws closer and Cindy finds herself abandoned by India and Malcolm, who have both been asked to go, so they will not be standing with her in anti-prom solidarity. She’s complaining about all of this to BrklnBoy, who asks her to be his not-prom date. Thinking it’s a joke to make her feel better, she accepts.

So she’s in for quite a shock when he messages her the day of prom and asks what time he should pick her up. She’s all, “But you live 3000 miles away in NY!” and he’s all “Lol, no. I go to your school. Conveniently, I’m Adam Silver, your crush, and I’m anti-prom, too, isn’t that fantastic?”

All this is paraphrased, of course. In the novel, there’s much more chatspeak and unnecessary abbreviation, which just . . . fueled my irritation. She’s supposed to want to be a journalist more than anything. Doesn’t seem like it.

Sorry. My grammararian is showing.

So she realizes who BrklnBoy is and that he’s actually going to come get her to do something tonight, so what does our self-professed prom-dress-makeup-hating, t-shit-jeans-and-flip-flop-loving high school sophomore do? Does she go out in whatever, just happy to have time to spend with this boy she’s liked for ages and turns out to actually know? Does she say, “hey, I have to babysit my brother, so how about just hanging at my house watching movies?”

Nope! She calls her Gay Godmother Tutor Noah, and they go and BUY HER A FRICKIN’ PROM DRESS AND EXPENSIVE SHOES AND GIVE HER A FREAKIN’ MAKEUP SO THAT SHE CAN BE PRETTY FOR HER CRUSH AND I JUST CAN’TAESDFK;JOAR;LKAV;LKAJRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!!!

*deep breath*

I’m okay now. Really. I’m better.

Yeah, okay, they didn’t go to the actual prom, but they might as well have. She still went through the whole ritual, it doesn’t matter that she was freakishly overdressed at a carnival instead of crowded into a gymnasium somewhere, she became what she supposedly hated, and gave into the ritual she literally started the novel speaking out against!

Cindy Ella Gold, give me back your activist card because you’ve lost it.

She also loses a shoe on the ferris wheel. It breaks. And she has to be home by midnight because that’s when her dad and stepmom are getting home, and if they find out that she took their one-year-old son out to a carnival on her date (because yeah, that actually happened), they’ll kill her. Rightly so.

And the next day at school, he returns her shoe, saying, “I think you dropped this last night,” and kisses her in front of the whole school.

Okay. Setting aside all my prom-debate-characterization rage, I have another slight bone to pick.

This novel? It isn’t Cinderella. It isn’t. It tries to be. It throws in a lot of the elements. But a stepfamily and a party and a godmother and a prince and a pair of shoes do not Cinderella make. It’s not about the iconic images, it’s about the situations. Cinderella doesn’t boil down to losing a shoe. It’s a lot more than that.

At its heart, Cinderella is a rags to riches story. This is what you need: a young girl, oppressed in some way, looking desperately for an escape. She finds it in the form of a ball and a prince. She is transformed beyond recognition into the object of desire, but she is lost. A single clue left behind provides the means to find her, and she wins her escape. The rest is just details. Set dressing.

Cindy is not oppressed, not looking for escape, doesn’t want the ball. She’s transformed, but the mystery isn’t there. Her identity is never in question. He never has to search for her. Hell, they never even make it to the party, and that’s kinda key, because it’s not just the prince for whom she is transformed; it’s everyone. And that’s just not there.

There’s a party and a prince and a pair of shoes. But this isn’t Cinderella, despite how hard it tries. And in trying, it just becomes infuriating.

Checklist.

Give Cinderella control of her own destiny? She never needed it. She’s as in control as most 16 year olds. She’s a bit at the beck and call of her stepmother, but she’s never really controlled as such, and her destiny never really comes into play.

Enhance the role of the prince? I found Adam Silver to be shallow and two dimensional, playing at being insightful rather than ever showing any real sort of depth. Sorry.

Address the plot transgressions? Let’s see.

Why does Cindy’s dad allow her to be treated so horribly?  He doesn’t. Because she isn’t. She’s asked to babysit, guys. That’s the extent of it.

Why doesn’t Cindy fight her servitude or leave if she’s being treated so badly?  Again. Babysitting. Occasionally. And having to listen to her stepfamily’s shallow ranting. But that’s all.

Why hasn’t the fairy godmother made an appearance before this point, if she’s charged with Cinderella’s happiness and well being? Not a fairy godmother as such. Just a gay friend who helps her out in a moment of crisis when called on. Her well being was never really his charge.

Anybody going to question glass slippers? No glass slippers. Just designer heels that rip because she wore them on a ferris wheel.

Why don’t the slippers disappear along with the rest of the FG’s gifts? See above.

Why does the prince need the shoe to identify Cinderella, and is it really reasonable to assume that it will? He doesn’t need it to identify her, he just gives it back to her at school.

Guys, if you want a modern Cinderella, watch A Cinderella Story, which I've mentioned about twelve times in this review because this book really did read like a ripoff of that, frankly, much better movie. Yes, I enjoy that movie. Don’t judge me.