Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon and Dean Hale and Nathan Hale

Rapunzel’s Revenge by Shannon and Dean Hale and Nathan Hale

Target Audience: YA/Teen

Summary: Once upon a time, in a land you only think you know, lived a little girl and her mother . . . or the person she thought was her mother. Every day when the girl played in her grand villa and lush garden, she grew more curious about what lay on the other side of the ridiculously huge garden wall. Year after year, things just seemed weirder and weirder, until the day she finally managed to sneak over the top of the wall and was horrified to see what lay beyond . . .

Type of Adaptation: Retelling Expansion Combination in a graphic style

That is the most convoluted type of adaptation I have ever typed out ever. This is a graphic novel – Rapunzel meets Jack and the Beanstalk meets the Wild West. It is as brilliant as it sounds. And given that it’s a graphic novel, it reads pretty fast.

Basically, Rapunzel as a child grows up in this rich manor house surrounded by lush gardens and plenty of greenery. She wants for nothing, really, though her mother is a severe type of woman. The only thing is, there’s this wall. All the way around Rapunzel’s home. It’s far too tall for her to see over, and no one will tell her anything about it, and this, of course, makes her all the more eager to learn what lies on the other side.

So on her twelfth birthday, she decides to go see for herself. Using her climbing skills, she makes it to the top of the wall – and is astounded to see that beyond her home, all is gray and dusty and lacking any of the abundant life that defines the villa.

This is all brilliantly done in the illustrations – the stark contrast between the colorful gardens of the villa and the lifeless gray of the world outside. And Rapunzel is a far different girl than one might expect – no golden locks and big blue eyes here. Instead, she’s a fiery redhead with a determined look in her eye, and Mother Gothel looks as severe as she acts. I think the graphic style used for this adaptation is masterfully applied.

Anyway, Rapunzel drops down over the other side of the wall and finds Mason, one of her mother’s guards, who has always had a soft spot for Rapunzel, teaching her to lasso and use a rope – a skill that came in handy when she wanted to scale the wall. He tells her she has to get back to her mother before she’s discovered, but Rapunzel wants to know who the people she sees before her are – the bedraggled, worn out people she never knew existed.

They’re the mine workers, and they might as well be Mother Gothel’s slaves. Horrified, Rapunzel goes to them as they drink at the well, and she speaks to one worn out woman in particular. Rapunzel shares her name, and the woman reveals that her daughter’s name was Rapunzel, but she lost her some time ago. She was taken from her by Mother Gothel. And when she says that, suddenly, Rapunzel remembers this woman in front of her – her true mother. As she’s forced away by the guards, we get a really nice juxtaposition with flashback panels of when Rapunzel was taken away from her mother as a toddler.

Rapunzel, angry and defiant, is brought before Mother Gothel and demands answers. Mother Gothel is unrepentant, saying that Rapunzel’s parents were punished for thieving from her garden, and that after the incident, the wall was built so that Mother Gothel’s work would be entirely kept safe from those who would take it from her.

And here we get the explanation of why Mother Gothel lives in the paradise and why she holds all the power – she is a powerful sorceress, and her gift is growth magic. She can make plants grow in abundance – or she can cut off that growth. By controlling the plant life, she controls all of the world, essentially. And Rapunzel is to inherit her empire.

Rapunzel tries to stand up to her, though, because this is a kick ass heroine, as if the cover illustration of her in a cowboy’s get up using her long braided hair as whips didn’t give that away already. Unfortunately, at this point in the story, Rapunzel is only twelve and pretty weak, and so she is easily taken by Mother Gothel’s giant, Brute, to a massive tree in the middle of the wilderness with a hollowed room in the top – a prison made as only Mother Gothel can. And there Rapunzel will stay until she learns to be more agreeable.

Like that’s gonna happen.

Anyway, Mother Gothel shows up once a year, on Rapunzel’s birthday, for the next four years, to see if her imprisonment has made her more obedient. The answer each year is a resounding no. But the growth magic that surrounds the tree has an effect on Rapunzel – her hair and nails grow at an alarming rate. The nails she’s able to file down, but the hair, she can’t do anything about. Until she starts to get an idea.

On her sixteenth birthday, she finally tells Mother Gothel to go someplace not terribly nice, and Mother Gothel essentially gives up on her, leaving, cutting off the growth magic that grew food for Rapunzel, slowly closing the opening in the tree. Rapunzel knows she has to get out soon or she’ll be trapped forever, so using her long hair, she ropes a branch of her tree and swings not-to-gracefully to safety.

Or at least, to the forest floor. She soon learns that safety is still a ways away. On her way out of the forest, she encounters a passing adventurer, looking for a beautiful maiden he’s heard of who’s locked in a tower. He tells Rapunzel he intends to have some fun with the poor naive girl, but that he wouldn’t actually risk Mother Gothel’s wrath by rescuing her. So Rapunzel, getting some of her own back, directs him to the now-empty tree, telling him to just keep yelling – the girl’s a bit deaf.

And here we leave the Rapunzel tale behind us for the next two-thirds or so of the novel. Basically, Rapunzel is determined to get back to Gothel’s villa, free her real mother, and teach her fake mother a lesson or two. She’s not real sure how to do this, mind you, but that’s the plan. Along the way, she fells in with Jack of beanstalk fame, who is something of a ruffian, a thief, and a ne’er-do-well. (This is a Wild West set story; I can use words like that).

Nevertheless, her lot is fairy firmly tied in with his following their first encounter, and since he knows considerably more of the world than she does, she agrees to travel with him, as long as they quit stealing and he agrees not to call her Punzie. He keeps one of those promises.

I love these two – it’s banter and bickering and name-calling from the get-go, but at the same time, there’s that inherent trust that comes out of surviving life-threatening peril with another person.

Because believe me, there’s plenty of life-threatening peril. I’m not going to get into all of it, but suffice it to say, there are bandits, angry townspeople, wolves, monsters, and desperation, and Jack and Rapunzel manage to get on the bad side of all of it. But they also discover first hand just what living under Mother Gothel’s thumb is like, and Rapunzel is more determined than ever to bring her fake mother down and return the growth power to the land.

They meet, at one point, the old wizard who trained Mother Gothel, and he gives them important information about what they have to do to defeat her. They know now roughly how she’s been controlling the plants of the whole country, so all they have to do is stop her. And when the people they encounter in the towns they visit learn that that’s their ultimate goal, suddenly the help comes pouring in. They make it back to the area of Gothel’s villa just in time for the tribute feast, and manage to disguise themselves with a band of traveling players to gain entry. They split up – Jack goes to create a diversion while Rapunzel tries to find and free her real mother.

Jack’s diversion comes in the form of him sacrificing his lucky bean and growing a beanstalk – which, while infected with Gothel’s growth magic, grows an enormous amount in a very short period of time. Rapunzel is able to set her mother free, but then she and Jack are caught by Brute the giant and taken to Mother Gothel.

And here, we bring the adaptation back around to the Rapunzel story. Mother Gothel’s magnificent home has been lifted high above the ground below by the beanstalk. Gothel has discovered Rapunzel and her “prince,” and now it’s revenge time. Rapunzel uses her braid whips just once, and then Mother Gothel cuts them off and threatens to throw Jack from the tower. Brute gets so far as dangling him out the window, but Rapunzel begs him to spare Jack, pointing out to Brute how awful his life has been with Mother Gothel, how she used her magic to make him big, how she took him from his parents, just like she did with Rapunzel.

Once Brute is on Rapunzel’s side, Mother Gothel attacks in full force. But Brute has given Rapunzel the information she needs. She finds Mother Gothel’s totem, and using one of her gifts from the people who helped her, she breaks it, releasing the magic of the land back where it belongs, and taking Mother Gothel with it. The day is saved, Rapunzel gets her Prince (such as he is), and this Wild West telling gets its happy ending.

This is a brand new take on this story, and you know what? It totally works. Yes, it takes the story in a brand new direction, and it gives a backstory that takes us pretty far away from the original, but the thing is, it's still all contained within the original structure. No, Rapunzel isn't rescued from her tower, but her adventures in the Wild West? Fit very easily into that idea of Rapunzel wandering in the wilderness. Because we come back in the end to bring the story full circle. It's very cleverly done, to be honest, and the graphic style for this retelling suited it perfectly.

Let’s look at the checklist.

Explanation for the parents’ behavior? Yeah. It wasn’t just oh, look at that lettuce, it was a lot more than that. It was desperation for real food of any kind. And they didn’t agree to give up their child – she was forcibly taken.

Exploration of Rapunzel’s childhood? To an extent, yes. We definitely get a sense of what it was like, but it’s not necessarily explored at length. However, this was shortened in this adaptation because Hale expanded the story, so she had to leave time for the exploits and adventures that came after the tower – the, being stranded in the desert, if you will. So I’m giving this one a pass, if not a full check.

Explain the unexplained? Magical hair – a side effect of Mother Gothel’s growth magic, and I like that it was her nails, too. How does it affect Rapunzel? Turns her into a cowgirl, y’all! Okay, seriously, it’s a source of frustration until she figures out how to use it to her advantage – and she uses it for everything. I love that Mother Gothel inadvertently gave her a real nice weapon. Magical tears? Not an issue in this adaptation.

Wrap up the loose ends? Very nicely. Mother Gothel is taken care of, Rapunzel’s mother is freed, the country is saved, and what isn’t tied up (Jack’s story) is left open because there’s a sequel! But don’t worry. We’ll get to that in a few months. :)

HIATUS Announcement

Hello. Do to some personal things going on in my life right now, Fairy Tale Reviews is on hiatus until further notice. Hopefully, that will mean within the week, but there will be no review posted today.

Thanks for understanding, and I hope to be back soon.

Cassie

Rapunzel: The One with All the Hair by Wendy Mass

Rapunzel: The One with All the Hair by Wendy Mass

Target Audience: 9-12

Summary: Rapunzel is having the ultimate bad day. She’s been stolen by a witch, may have a ghost for a roommate, and doesn’t even have a decent brush for her hair. Prince Benjamin’s got it pretty bad, too. His father wants him to be more kingly, his mother wants him to never leave her sight, and his cousin wants to get him into as much trouble as possible (preferably with a troll). Both Rapunzel and Prince Benjamin are trapped – in very different ways. Once their paths cross, well, that’s when things REALLY get strange.

Type of Adaptation: Retelling

So, I like Wendy Mass. She writes for the 9-12 audience, and she does so very well. She has I think three of these fairy tale novels, and while they’re not the most life-changing or deep adaptations I’ve ever read, she does manage to adapt the stories for a younger audience without dumbing them down at all, and she makes the characters very relatable to the target readers.

She chooses in this novel to alternate narratives between Rapunzel and Prince Benjamin, which I don’t hate. It’s not the best example of multiple narratives I’ve read, but it serves its purpose in the story. For purposes of clarity, though, as I summarize, I’m not going to alternate perspectives.

I’ll start with Rapunzel. The first thing we notice about Rapunzel is that she’s nearly twelve years old and still living with her parents, which, if you’ll recall, runs a bit counter to the typical Rapunzel story. See, in Mass’s version, Rapunzel wasn’t raised by the witch. She was raised by her parents, who are rampion farmers. They are renowned for being able to grow rampion better than any other farmer, but we soon learn that it wasn’t always this way.

On the morning of Rapunzel’s twelfth birthday, a witch shows up at her door, telling her parents that the time has come, and that she is here to collect Rapunzel. Her parents don’t take well to this – they try to argue, try to fight, but a deal’s a deal, and in the end they have no choice but to tell Rapunzel the truth and let the witch take her.

Rapunzel narrates this, and she is incredibly twelve. A modern-day twelve, I want to stress. This is an interesting choice, but it works. Because the story isn’t set in the modern day, it’s set in the vaguely medieval fairy tale time, but giving Rapunzel a modern voice makes her a bit more accessible to the readers. And while some might find her view on things a bit childish and therefore irritating, she actually amuses me. A lot. She’s so very melodramatic, but in a way that allows her to stand up to the witch as much as she’s able. She’s got spunk.

Anyway, the witch allows her to collect a few things and then takes her to a tower in the middle of nowhere. Rapunzel isn’t pleased at being the witch’s prisoner, and she makes her displeasure known. Not that there’s much she can do about it. But as time goes by, Rapunzel begins to suspect that something’s up. Her hair, which was already pretty long, has started growing about a foot a day, and she’s never awake to see the witch enter or leave the tower. She’s pretty sure there’s enchantments going on around her, and she’s not particularly pleased about it.

And she’s also conflicted in what to think of the witch because on the one hand, the witch treats her horribly. But on the other, whenever she’s fed, she’s given little gifts and things that really lift her spirits, and it isn’t until she gets clever one day that she learns it isn’t the witch at all who is feeding her and leaving her these gifts – it’s a strange little green man who lives in her ceiling.

His name is Steven, and he is trapped in the tower much like Rapunzel, except that he is there because of a debt he owes Mother Gothel. Some time before, his child was suddenly unable to breathe when he was alone with his father. Steven yelled for help, and the witch was there and saved his child’s life. And so now, Steven must repay the debt. But he feels sorry for Rapunzel, stolen from her parents and locked up in the tower. Rapunzel becomes determined to find a way for the two of them to escape.

She also figures out that the witch didn’t rescue Steven’s son by accident. Rather, she was the cause of his distress because she needed to trick Steven into his debt. Steven points out that the witch probably did the same thing to Rapunzel’s parents, who had never liked rampion before the witch moved in next door, and who weren’t the kind of people to trade their child away for a vegetable.

Armed with this knowledge and a new anger against the witch, Steven helps Rapunzel up through the trapdoor in her ceiling and down the stairs that lead to the bottom of the tower. But unfortunately, due to some very poor timing, they’re making their escape just as the witch shows up. Steven gets away, but Rapunzel is not that lucky.                                                                           

And now, she truly is a prisoner. No food, no companionship, just her alone in the tower, and the witch wrecks the things Rapunzel brought with her, so all she has to do is sit there day by day and wait for the witch to bring her food. And Rapunzel’s hair is now long enough for the witch to climb it, which seems to be what she was waiting for all along, though this raises some questions that don’t really get answered satisfactorily – like, why Rapunzel? And why, if the witch wanted a child, did she wait twelve years to pick her up? And why was she forcing Rapunzel’s hair to grow so long she could climb it before she knew that Rapunzel would try to escape and so need to be sealed off from the perfectly good set of stairs above the tower room?

But anyway, this is where we’ll leave Rapunzel to circle back and pick up the prince’s tale.

Prince Benjamin is torn between a mother who constantly babies him and a father who wants him to learn to be more kingly. So he really has no idea what’s actually expected of him. To top it all off, his cousin Elkin is staying with him, and they’ve never really gotten along. Elkin has a habit of getting Benjamin into trouble.

Well, one day, Benjamin is chasing a hare along the bank, when he falls and breaks his glasses. He’s quite blind without them (bonus points if you know already how an end element of this story is going to come into play), so this is a bit of a problem. Luckily, he runs into a boy about his age whose father can fix the glasses. At this boy’s house, Benjamin is dismayed to learn that there are about fifty boys in this village alone who are all named after him, because this kingdom has the somewhat silly tradition of forcing all boys born in the three years after the prince to share the prince’s name.

Well, it hits Benjamin at this point that he really hasn’t done anything worthy of being named after, and he should probably try to fix that. He also feels bad for this poor family and wants to find a way to help them. He confides all this to Andrew, a squire and one of Benjamin’s only friends, and like the twelve year old boys that they are, they concoct a ridiculously complicated scheme.

See, Andrew’s heard a rumor about a troll that lives in a cave in the forest jealously guarding treasure. He figures if Benjamin can find it and defeat it, he can then lead the other Benjamin to the cave by “accident,” co-discover the treasure, and let the Other Benjamin leave with half of it. Because, you know, having the Other Benjamin’s father just come to the palace to be the chief spectacle maker for the prince who goes through them like it’s his job is not convoluted or plot-advancing enough.

But you know what? I buy this. Because I work with twelve-year-old boys. And this is accurate.

Unfortunately, the have to let Elkin in on the plan, but surprisingly, he’s totally down for it. He’s even incredibly helpful. So adequately unprepared, the boys journey into the forest in search of a ferocious troll! But when they find the troll’s cave, they discover that, rather than a troll, its occupant is actually a hermit who created the legend to keep people away.

So that sucks. But the hermit is able to give the boys some good advice once they tell him their convoluted plan. Now, the advice is not “Why don’t you make the Other Benjamin’s father the palace spectacle maker,” but rather some generic fairy tale advice about learning to listen to the song in your heart, but since it’s that advice that leads Benjamin to Rapunzel, which is deliberate, I’ll let it slide.

See, when Steven escaped, he discovered the hermit, and they were just discussing how to free Rapunzel when Benjamin and Elkin showed up. So, knowing that Rapunzel likes to sing, the hermit and Steven concoct their own convoluted plan rather than go to the palace and say, hey, there’s a girl trapped in a tower by a witch, let’s go free her.

But anyway, as they’re heading home, Benjamin hears Rapunzel singing and follows the sound. He finds her tower, watches the witch climb the hair, and decides to try it himself. He gets to Rapunzel’s room at the top and is promptly hit in the head with a pewter bowl, which made me giggle. He starts to tell Rapunzel off, but she rightly points out that he just tricked her and climbed up her hair into her tower uninvited. Benjamin concedes the point.

Rapunzel tells him her story, and he resolves to help her in any way that he can. She comes up with the idea of bringing silk to make a ladder that she can climb down. He returns the next day with all he could find in the palace, but it’s not quite long enough, so he resolves to search some more.

At this point, Rapunzel is so desperate to escape, and so close to it, that she loses her temper with the witch the next day and accidently mentions the prince. Yeah, it’s kinda the Grimm cop-out, but not as bad because a) this Rapunzel isn’t a bimbo, b) it’s made clear that this was comment snapped in exhaustion and irritation, and c) Rapunzel realizes how dumb a mistake she just made almost immediately.

So yeah, Mother Gothel cuts her hair, tosses her from the tower, and traps her in a clearing surrounded by very tall brambles. Then she waits for Benjamin to appear, which he does. He climbs the tower, gets attacked by the witch, and loses his glasses (did you get the points?). Then the witch throws him from the tower, but his pony catches him before he can die (one arched eyebrow . . .). But, he manages to grab the braid of hair on his way back down, effectively trapping the witch in her own tower.

Realizing that she’s probably gotten Benjamin into trouble, Rapunzel starts singing for all she’s worth, and Benjamin, blind without his glasses, lets his pony lead him to the sound. They get Rapunzel out of the brambles, take her back to the palace, and tell everyone their story. The witch is dealt with, Benjamin finally feels worthy of having boys named after him, the Other Benjamin’s father is brought to the palace as the chief spectacle maker (why didn’t I think of that!!), and Rapunzel is reunited with her parents.

Know what doesn’t happen? Rapunzel and Benjamin don’t fall in love and get married. She goes home, he marries a princess, and they remain friends. I love it.

This is a fun little story. And yes, I know before I’ve used “fun little” in a derogatory sense, but I don’t mean that here. I mean, this isn’t anything that’s going to shake the foundations of the world, but it’s an amusing look at Rapunzel, and I enjoyed reading it. It’s ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek, and that’s appealing to me. But let’s see how it does with the checklist.

Explanation for the parents’ behavior? Yep, and it’s pretty straightforward – they were enchanted. Now, I’m not sure why Mother Gothel fixated on them in particular or why she let them raise their daughter for twelve years, but those points fall elsewhere on the list. This is just looking at an explanation, and check – it’s there.

Exploration of Rapunzel’s childhood with Mother Gothel? Yep – she didn’t have one. She was raised by her parents, and what we see of her life is fun. She hates rampion with a passion, which amuses me. And then, in the tower, the way she relates to Mother Gothel is lovely, too. Rapunzel here really is a young girl who isn’t old enough to be afraid of her situation in the beginning. She deliberately antagonizes Mother Gothel because she’s pissed and it doesn’t occur to her that that might be a dangerous course of action. She learns soon enough, but that progression and growth was well done.

Explain the unexplained elements? Well, the hair was an enchantment (and Rapunzel was not happy about it!), and Rapunzel couldn’t feel the weight, also part of the enchantment. And there were no healing tears. Instead, Rapunzel had with her the spare pair of glasses Benjamin left in the tower after his first visit. And can I just say? I really enjoyed how Mass got around the blindness. That was legitimately clever, and entirely appropriate for the audience.

Wrap up the loose ends? Yeah, we did that fairly well. All of the questions the novel deliberately posed got answered. I can’t say the same for the questions that I think just occurred to me, but I’ll give the points.

So yeah, it’s not a perfect novel, and it’s not particularly deep. There are some plot holes, and the book as a whole is pretty fluffy. But I enjoyed reading it, and it made me laugh, so yeah. Give it a whirl if you have a couple hours.

Golden by Cameron Dokey

Golden by Cameron Dokey

Target Audience: YA/Teen

Summary: Before Rapunzel’s birth, her mother made a dangerous deal with the sorceress Melisande: if she could not love newborn Rapunzel just as she appeared, she would surrender the child to Melisande. When Rapunzel was born completely bald and without hope of ever growing hair, her horrified mother sent her away with the sorceress to an uncertain future. After sixteen years of raising Rapunzel as her own child, Melisande reveals that she has another daughter, Rue. She was cursed by a wizard years ago and needs Rapunzel’s help. Rue and Rapunzel have precisely “two nights and the day that falls between” to break the enchantment. But bitterness and envy will come between the girls, and if they fail to work together, Rue will remain cursed forever.

Type of Adaptation: Retelling

So, I may have mentioned before that Cameron Dokey (with one notable exception which we’ll get to later in the year) can basically do no wrong in my book? Yeah, that’s because she’s brilliant, most of the time, and Golden is one of the books that proves that in my mind.

We start with a typical Dokey meta-commentary on some aspect of the nature of storytelling, in this instance dealing with the fact that it’s the middle of the story that’s most important, more than what starts or ends it. And also that stories live on, not people, and so a story cannot truly grant immortality the way many seem to want. The prologue also speaks to how love happens, whether it can be the work of a moment, or if it doesn’t more often require more than that. It’s a Dokey prologue, in other words, and I love it.

Rapunzel narrates her own tale, telling us of her parents and the vegetable that her mother so craved, and it’s the story we all know. The husband climbs the wall and gets caught by the sorceress, but this is where things start to diverge ever so slightly. Before naming her price for the theft, the sorceress declares she must first see the man’s wife, and only then will she make her deal.

In meeting Rapunzel’s mother, it’s made clear to us that she is an incredibly vain and selfish creature. So the sorceress makes a deal with her. If, when the child is born, the mother can love her entirely and immediately, then there will be no further discussion of price. But if she can’t, then the child will be given to the sorceress to raise. Rapunzel’s mother agrees, almost dismissively. Rapunzel’s father is much more upset. But as the sorceress points out to him, with true regret, no action can be without consequence, and his consequence is that this decision is not his to make.

But when Rapunzel is born, she is bald. And not normal-baby bald, no-peach-fuzz, no hair to speak of, no chance of ever growing any. Now wait, Cassie, I hear some of you say. Rapunzel? Rapunzel, famed for her impossibly-long golden hair? Bald? Yes, I answer the imaginary and snarky among you. Patience.

But Rapunzel’s vain mother takes one look at her child and blanches, calling the baby hideous and demanding that she be taken away. And so, the sorceress takes her, though she assures Rapunzel’s father that he will see his daughter again someday.

So Rapunzel grows up with the sorceress, whose name is Melisande. And Melisande is completely honest from the beginning that Rapunzel is not her daughter, and is never to call her “Mother.” Rapunzel wonders about her parents, of course, but she leads a mostly happy life with Melisande, away from the village where she was born.

But Melisande’s original prophecy – that Rapunzel would never grow hair – turns out to be true. And when it’s just the two of them, this doesn’t bother Rapunzel.

But one day when they have to venture into the village, she gets away from Melisande and starts playing a game of soccer with the local children. She’s fine as long as her head covering is on, but then, during the game, it gets pulled off. When her baldness is discovered, the villagers all stare and whisper, saying she must be cursed. When Melisande comes to get her, she works her power on the villagers to show each of them the hate and distrust in their hearts. None of them can meet her eyes, but Rapunzel can. So Melisande basically calls a whole town wusses and takes Rapunzel back home. It’s kinda awesome, not gonna lie.

So, after this episode, in enters the tinker. His name is Mr. Jones, and he and Rapunzel strike up a conversation as he’s passing their home one day, and when Melisande comes out to meet him, they have a very odd exchange. Though they talk as if they’re strangers, Rapunzel is pretty sure there’s more being said than what she knows. (Spoilers – the tinker is Rapunzel’s father. Rapunzel, of course, doesn’t find this out until the end of the novel, but it’s made pretty clear to the reader from the get-go). The tinker gives Rapunzel a kitten, a fact that I mention now because it becomes important later on.

The tinker has an assistant who Rapunzel catches in the barn one night trying to run away. She convinces him to stay with the tinker who, while not his father, has made a place for the boy in his heart, just as Melisande did for Rapunzel. The boy’s name is Harry, and he and Rapunzel strike up a friendship, though being being two twelve-year-olds, it’s about what one might expect – lots of teasing and name calling.

And three years pass. Harry and Mr. Jones stop by relatively often, and each time they come, Harry brings Rapunzel a new head scarf, more and more elaborate. The first he ever brought her, though, is her favorite, for it’s embroidered all over with black-eyed Susans, and it makes her look, from afar, as if she has a head of golden hair. Harry, it should be noted, doesn’t think of odd in the slightest that Rapunzel is bald.

But then, a drought hits the land, and for a while they get by, but when the drought goes on and on without end, the villagers start to remember that there’s a sorceress living close to them. Mr. Jones and Harry are able to warn Melisande and Rapunzel in time for them to slip away from home and avoid the oncoming mob. Harry splits off from the party to try and lead the mob in the wrong direction and give the others more time to escape, but of course before he goes, he kisses Rapunzel because there’s romance abrewin’.

When they stop for the night, Melisande decrees that “it’s time.” And so she sits Rapunzel down to tell her the things that have never been told before.

Mainly, that Melisande has a daughter. Her real name is never to be spoken, but Melisande calls her Rue, out of her regret. Some years before, before Rapunzel was born, Melisande acted thoughtlessly in the presence of a wizard. She failed to use her gift to see into the hearts of others, and so inadvertently caused pain to another. The wizard who observed this cursed Melisande to live without what she treasured most until the curse could be broken. But he made a mistake. Since he valued his power more than all else, he thought Melisande would, too. But instead, Melisande’s daughter was snatched away from her, imprisoned in a tower in an enchanted stasis until Melisande could find the key to opening Rue’s heart and freeing her.

When Rapunzel was born and her mother forsook her, Melisande looked into her heart, and saw a piece of her daughter there, and so became determined to raise Rapunzel in love. But also, she now admits, she hoped that Rapunzel might one day be the key to freeing Rue.

Rapunzel is not exactly thrilled to learn this. She feels as if she’s been lied to her whole life, and she is very angry with Melisande until Mr. Jones can talk her down from this anger. So, slightly more calmly, she asks what breaking the curse will entail, but Melisande doesn’t know. All she knows is that Rapunzel has to agree to do it, Rue has to agree to let Rapunzel help her, and they have only two nights and the day inbetween to figure it out.

Which is an awful lot of “if”s to be building off of, especially when Rapunzel and Melisande get to the tower, climb up Rue’s hair, and meet her. Because Rue and Rapunzel? Don’t exactly hit it off. As angry as Rapunzel was to hear that Melisande had a daughter she’d never been told about, Rue is just as angry to learn that she has apparently been replaced in her mother’s life. And it looks for a long time like everything’s just going to go merrily to hell and leave everyone unhappy, when Rue meets Rapunzel’s cat, the one I told you would be important later. She falls in love with the cat, and Rapunzel is able to use the act as an analogy for the two of them both being able to love Melisande and help each other out of this situation.

What Dokey has done here is wonderful – she has doubled the Rapunzel story. You have the bald girl named Rapunzel who’s the one whose parents gave her up in exchange for some vegetables, and then you have the girl with the magical golden hair stolen away from her mother and locked in a tower. Melisande becomes both the mother and the witch. Rue and Rapunzel each make up half of the fairy tale damsel. And it’s wonderful. There’s no big plot twist at the end of this story – it doesn’t need it. The twist is that there are two, and so instead of being shocked by the end of the story, we get to see how all these seemingly too many pieces come together in the end to be the story we all know.

Well, Rapunzel agrees to try and break the enchantment, and so Melisande and the tinker leave them to try and work it out. But then Harry shows up. And Harry isn’t happy. He thinks Rapunzel is acting rashly, and he thinks she should have waited, and he says all these things that make Rapunzel so exasperated that she calls Rue to come out to the balcony to prove a point, but no sooner has she actually convinced Rue over her very great fears to do this, than she figures it was probably a mistake. Because the minute he sees Rue, Harry is struck dumb with wonder and awe at her beauty. And Rapunzel? Is made forcefully aware of the fact that she loves him.

Harry stumbles away, and Rapunzel is miserable, and she takes it out on Rue, which sets them back a few dozen steps. See, Rue was terrified to leave her tower at all, even the few steps it would take to come out onto the balcony, especially if it involves meeting someone. Rue is afraid that because of the spell she was under, no one will ever be able to like or love her, and Rapunzel wanted to prove that wasn’t true. Rapunzel had to coax her out the whole way to meet Harry, and now she’s acting like it was a mistake, and Rue gets angry with her for it, understandably. So Harry storms away and Rue storms back inside, and Rapunzel is left out on the balcony unable to sleep.

In a lovely throwback to the original, Rapunzel starts talking to herself about the whole mess of a situation, and much to her surprise, a voice floats up from below, answering her rhetorical questions. She is startled, and thinks it’s Harry, but he soon proves that he isn’t. His name is Alexander, and he is a prince. He wants to know if she’s a damsel in distress, because if she is, he might be able to rescue her, and if he does that, he’ll be able to marry her and not the foreign princess his father wants. When Rapunzel points out that he doesn’t know her any better than he knows the foreign princess, he replies that this may be true, but at least he’d be making his own choice this way.

And that’s when Rapunzel gets her brilliant idea. Maybe, she reasons, the key to breaking the curse lies with convincing Rue that it’s all right to leave the tower. That she wants to leave the tower. And since Rue confessed earlier that she wished so often for a knight to come rescue her, this seems like the perfect solution, especially since Alex hasn’t seen Rapunzel – he’s only heard her (and engaged in some marvelous banter, I will point out). If she can get Rue to open her heart to Alex, she hopes that this will break the enchantment.

So she makes Alex promise to wait until nightfall the next day and come back. Her plan is to convince Rue to step into the role she created in their conversation, but unfortunately, it isn’t going to be that easy. For one thing, Harry didn’t disappear like Rapunzel thought. He’s been there hiding, listening to everything, and now he believes that Rapunzel is planning to run away with this prince and abandon her task. He’s angry and jealous because he thinks Rapunzel is in love with Alex, and Rapunzel is angry and jealous because she thinks Harry is upset over her potentially leaving Rue, and – guys, this is what happens when we don’t use our words.

But she convinces him in the end to look after Alex, who managed to trip in the dark and knock himself out, and make sure he comes back the next night. And her next challenge is convincing Rue to agree to the plan.

Rue is incredibly not happy with Rapunzel’s plan. Rapunzel tries to argue that Alex wants to marry her, and Rue comes back with, no, he wants to marry Rapunzel, but Rapunzel argues that she doesn’t have to be the Rapunzel he falls in love with. She says if she just talks to him the next night and shows him her face, she’ll be the one he attaches to, and he never needs to know there were two of them.

This scene is marvelous because it takes that classic “love at first sight” trope and turns it on its head. Rue and Rapunzel are very much alike when all is said and done, and the conversation he had the night before he truly might have had with either of them. This novel puts forth the idea that love is as much circumstance and desire as it is any kind of predestination, and while that may not be a popular romantic theory, it is one that I support whole-heartedly.

And it almost works. Rue goes to the balcony. She looks over the edge. He sees her and attaches his love to this face with its amazing hair – and then he calls her Rapunzel, and Rue freezes again. Rapunzel has to step in and keep the conversation going. Alex says he loves her, and Rapunzel asks how he can, since they just met. She asks if he truly believes love can happen in an instant. He answers with a tale from his land, about a king and queen whose marriage was arranged. The queen on their wedding day asked for one thing – a room that would always protect her, keep her warm and dry and safe, etc, etc. In the typical way of those sorts of stories, he took it as a literal room, but in the end, it was the space he made for her in his heart that she had asked for. This story convinces Rue to open her own heart to Alex. She uses the magical gift that Melisande possesses to look into the hearts of both Rue and Alex. And what she sees there isn’t full blown love, but rather the seed of love planted, a seed that can grow into true love given time and energy.

She tells Rue of this, and makes one last request before the enchantment is broken – that Rue go with him using her name, Rapunzel. For Rue was never Melisande’s daughter’s true name. It was a name born out of sorrow, and she should go forth in her new life with a new one. Besides, Rapunzel tells her, she would much rather that Rapunzel live on in people’s minds as a girl known for her magnificent hair, rather than a girl known for being bald. And she never much cared for the name, anyway.

Rue agrees, and once she agrees to marry Alex and go forth with an open heart, the enchantment is broken. And Alex and new-Rapunzel make a life together, just as Harry and old-Rapunzel do as well. And Melisande is reunited with both her daughters, and Rapunzel, now Susan, is reunited with her family, and it all wraps up very nicely.

The book is very well done, and no, it isn’t as sappy as I made it sound. The message isn’t heavy-handed; it’s very well delivered, and as I said, it’s one of my favorites from Cameron Dokey. But let’s look at the checklist, yeah?

Explanation for the parents’ behavior? Yep – Mom was a selfish bitch. Rapunzel learns from her father at the end that she died not long after Rapunzel was taken away, and personally, I think Dad’s better off. I love that he continued to be in the story. I love that he found a way to be near his daughter, and I love that Melisande let him. You got the sense that she really did feel sorry for this man, asked to pay an unfair price. But in the end, he got to watch his daughter grow, and got to tell her who she was, and the romantic in me totally ships Dad and Melisande.

Exploration of Rapunzel’s childhood? Yes, and I love it! I love the relationship we see built between Melisande and Rapunzel – that Melisande makes clear the fact that she is not Rapunzel’s mother, but that she loves Rapunzel all the same. From the sounds of it, Rapunzel had a perfectly lovely childhood, apart from the bald thing, and Melisande is one of my favorite characters in this story. She is so strong, and I love the way her magic works – she sees into people’s hearts, and can show them what lies there. Beautifully done.

Explain the unexplained? Magical hair? Part of the wizard’s enchantment. How does it affect Rue? She hates it – she’s constantly tripping over it, it makes getting dressed very difficult, it’s just a nightmare. Magical tears? Didn’t come into play in this adaptation.

Wrap up the loose ends? Yes, and very nicely too. We know what happened to both Rapunzel’s parents. We know what happens to Melisande and the prince and Rue, and far from being a huge secret, the prince coming to the tower was something consciously worked for and towards. In the end, very nicely done.

Cameron Dokey can weave a story, folks. Very well done, all around.

Rapunzel (According to Cassie)

Rapunzel (According to Cassie)

Basically, there’s this couple who desperately want a baby, but can’t seem to conceive. The wife, depressed with longing, gets a glimpse out the window one day of the garden that belongs to the woman who lives next door, a woman who happens to be a witch.

Being a witch, she’s able to grow all sorts of things in her garden that won’t grow normally or as well anywhere else, and the wife catches a glimpse of a kind of lettuce called rampion that she then and there decides she absolutely has to eat right now, or she’ll die. Whether it’s an enchantment or just the wife being melodramatic is left up to the reader to decide.

Anyway, she pesters and pesters and pesters her husband to get her some, and refuses to eat anything else, to the point that she actually begins to waste away. The husband, so worried about his wife, resolves to obtain the rampion. Trouble is, the witch is terrifying, and he can’t bring himself to ask her for the vegetable. And so, like a dunce, he decides that scaling the wall and stealing the lettuce is the much better option.

And he actually gets away with it – the first time. But the wife is just not satisfied, and forces him to go back a second time, and a third, and because this is a fairy tale, on the third trip, he gets caught by the witch.

She, reasonably, asks him what exactly he thinks he’s doing, stealing from her, and since he’s not in a position to deny it, he tells her the truth – that his wife is desperate for this vegetable, and he was afraid she would die if she didn’t get it.

The witch is immediately sympathetic, which to me proves that the husband really could have avoided all this unpleasantness if he’d just, you know, told the witch all this from the get-go, but trust me. We’ll get to that.

The witch tells him that his wife may have as much of the rampion as she desires from here on out, on one condition – when the baby she’s carrying is born, the witch gets it to raise as her own. Yep, turns out these were pregnancy cravings!

And at this point, there are any number of things I would expect the husband to do – beg the witch to come up with some other price, offer his life in exchange for his child’s, say he’s gotta run this by wife. Really anything other than saying “Okay!” and agreeing on the spot. I get it, he’s a dunce and he’s scared of the witch, but she’s already proven that she’s sympathetic and not a scary as he seems to think.

Anyway, when the child is born, she’s handed over the witch, and the parents disappear from this story. The witch names the girl Rapunzel for the lettuce her mother so loved, and she raises the girl as her own.

Now, it’s interesting to me, in reading this story, that the classic tower Rapunzel gets locked in? Doesn’t make an appearance until Rapunzel is twelve. Before that? We don’t know. Did the witch raise the girl next door to her real parents, forcing them to watch as she presumably raised their daughter better than they would have? Or did she take Rapunzel away somewhere else? We aren’t told, we just know that Rapunzel grows up to be beautiful, and that when she’s twelve, the witch locks her in the tower to keep her safe and makes her grow her hair to incredible lengths so that she can use it as a climbing rope.

This continues for a few years, presumably until Rapunzel is 16 or 17, and then things get complicated when a man enters the story. See, a passing prince happens to catch a glimpse of Rapunzel as she sings  in her tower, and is so overcome with longing and love for her and her voice that he falls in love on the spot and won’t rest until he has won her heart. This seems to be happening to the witch a lot . . .

Anyway, he hides out when Mother Gothel comes by one day, and he hears her call the classic, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” and he decides to try it for himself.

When he gets to the top of the tower, Rapunzel is understandably alarmed. I mean, she’s been alone with Mother Gothel for how long now, right? So the appearance of a strange man is going to cause some tension. But he’s able to talk her down from her terror, and he confesses his love, and she comes to love him as well. He wants to steal her away, so they hatch a plan: he’ll bring a skein of silk every time he visits, and she’ll spin them slowly into a rope that she can use to escape. This is a clever plan, and it’s Rapunzel’s. Why is that important? Because of what happens next.

Now, at this point, whether or not we see this as a problem tale depends a lot on whose version you read. See, the Brothers’ Grimm loved their guts and gore, but they’re from 18th-19th century Germany, so they were real squeamish about sex. See, in the earlier version of this story, Rapunzel and her prince have sex up in that tower, and Rapunzel gets pregnant (did I just ruin your childhoods? Don’t blame me – blame the Grimms!). But the Grimm brothers weren’t about to put that in their fairy tale, so they wrote it out, and not particularly well.

See, eventually, the prince’s visits are uncovered. In the Rapunzel’s Pregnant! version, Mother Gothel notices that Rapunzel is pregnant, because she’s not stupid, and figures out from there what’s been going on. That’s a realistic and natural progression. However, in the Grimms’ version, Rapunzel’s not pregnant – she’s just an idiot. Because one day, she thoughtlessly says, “Hey, it’s a lot harder to pull you up than it is the prince. Why is that, mother?”

I mean, really?? Wilhelm and Jakob, I’ve got a bone to pick with you. I would expect such weak female characterization from Perrault, but you’re better than that! I mean, how dumb do you have to be to forget that the prince visiting in secret shouldn’t be mentioned to the over-protective mother who locked you in captivity to keep you away from the world?? This is the girl who’s been secretly weaving a rope – for her to just up and forget to keep silent about the prince is just monstrously out of character.

Anyway, however she finds out, Mother Gothel gets pissed, and because we know already that she takes these things to the extreme, she cuts off Rapunzel’s hair and banishes her to the desert to either bear twins or just wander around in the desert, depending on how squeamish you are about sex.

But Mother Gothel doesn’t stop there. No, she lures the prince to the top of the tower, then exposes that she knows what he’s done, and she’s sent Rapunzel away where he’ll never find her. Now, again, depending on the version you read, she either throws him from the tower into the briars that blind him, OR (Grimms again), he jumps from the tower in his despair at losing Rapunzel. I mean, really, dude? SurLaLune.com gives you the benefit of the doubt that you were jumping to escape the witch’s wrath, but that’s not how I read it. I read it that you were so despondent you tried to commit suicide, knowing full well that Rapunzel is, in fact, still out there somewhere. I mean, yeesh.

Anyway, this is the point where Mother Gothel disappears from the story, and as for Rapunzel and her prince, they bear their separation for years, until one day, when wandering blind through the world, the prince hears a familiar voice. He follows it until it leads him to Rapunzel, who, when she seems him, is so overcome with love for him and despair at his condition that she begins to cry, and her tears fall into his eyes and restore his sight. Why do her tears have magical healing power? We’re never told. It’s a fairy tale, we’re just supposed to accept things like that. But yeah, her tears heal his eyes (straight out of the original, folks – my knowing how Tangled was going to end was not as magical and psychic and some people seemed to think at the time), they’re reunited, and they live happily ever after.

My thoughts? I like this fairy tale a lot, the non-Grimm version, of course. It has a bit of an issue with loose ends and disappearing characters, but for the most part, it’s fairly well reasoned and contained, and I love the message of it. I also think it has a lot of potential, and it’s not quite “love at first sight conquers all” as a lot of other fairy tales. Rapunzel and her prince develop something of a relationship, and they have to work for their love in the end.

So what do I want in an adaptation?

Explanation for the parents’ behavior. Seriously. These guys are pretty far from being parents of the year, and I’d like to know why. Why was the husband so afraid of the witch? Why was the wife so insistent on that particular vegetable? Why did the father agree to hand over his child, and why didn’t the wife object really at all? And what happened to them after the witch took their child away?

Exploration of Rapunzel’s childhood with Mother Gothel. There’s twelve years before Rapunzel gets locked in her tower – what happened? What was her childhood like? What was her relationship with Mother Gothel like? Spend some time exploring these years and how Rapunzel grew up.

Explain the unexplained elements. How did Rapunzel’s hair grow long enough to hoist a full grown woman up a presumably tall tower, and how was Rapunzel able to stand having her head used as a ladder? Why did her tears heal the prince’s eyes? Could her tears heal other things? Has she always had this ability?

Wrap up the loose ends. There are a lot of them here. What happened to Rapunzel’s parents? What happened to Mother Gothel? Did the prince live in the wilderness with Rapunzel, or did he return to his kingdom to rule? What about the kids, folks? What about the kids? Oh, yeah, along with this – keep the pregnancy in or find a better way for Mother Gothel to discover Rapunzel’s secret.

So! The line-up for this month:

Week 1: Golden by Cameron Dokey
Week 2: Rapunzel: The One with All the Hair by Wendy Mass
Week 3: Rapunzel’s Revenge by Shannon Hale
Week 4: Zel by Donna Jo Napoli

I’m really excited for this month, and I hope you are, too! Feel free to read along!

The Little Mermaid Wrap-Up

The Little Mermaid Wrap-Up

So, here’s what I have discovered this month:
1. Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid” is not a terribly popular fairy tale for adaptation
   
2. 2 out of every 3 adaptations of “The Little Mermaid” suck because authors don’t take the time to identify what is so powerful and compelling about the original, and
   
3. The idea that I could find the time to write a book review the week the show I’m directing goes up was really, really silly of me.

That being said, it’s actually really convenient that I ended up doing this fairy tale this month, because of the first two points that I discovered: There really aren’t that many adaptations out there. Oh, there are plenty of mermaid books, and there are plenty of books about the Siren legend, but there are very few “Little Mermaid” adaptations.

And you know what? I’m okay with that. Really. To be perfectly honest, if you’re going to adapt a fairy tale poorly, I’d rather you not adapt it at all, and while I wish Anderson’s original version of this tale was more widely known than Disney’s, I appreciate the fact that most adaptors are taking the ideas that inspired Anderson and going in their own direction with them.

Because here’s the thing. If you read “The Little Mermaid” and you come away thinking, “Gosh, that would be a great story if it only had a happy ending!” then you’re kinda missing the point, and also, you don’t want to read “The Little Mermaid.” You want to read a story about forbidden love between two people from very dissimilar walks of life who overcome the obstacles in their paths and find a way to be happy together. And that’s fine. That’s perfectly good story, and it’s been written over and over again, and it’s been written over and over again about a mermaid and a human, and I fully support that! Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli does it really well, and is one of my favorite novels by her.

So, yeah. I’m well aware I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to this story – but here’s the thing. It isn’t just this story. It’s any story in the public domain with an actual author. You wouldn’t rewrite Peter Pan and have Peter decide to abandon Neverland and stay with Wendy. You wouldn’t rewrite Alice in Wonderland and have the Mad Hatter kill Alice before she can return home. You wouldn’t rewrite Little Women and have Laurie end up with Jo. Those examples would completely disregard the author's work and endings, and to me, villainizing the Sea Witch and the girl on the beach and giving the mermaid a happy ending with the prince is the same thing. Books belong to their readers and all that, but you have to have respect for the original. You can’t just completely disregard something you don’t agree with.

So yeah. Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon gets a Strongly Recommended, and Teenage Mermaid by Ellen Schreiber and Midnight Pearls by Debbie Vigue both get Not Recommends.

Other notable novels: No adaptations of the story per se, but Fortune’s Fool by Mercedes Lackey and The Mermaid’s Madness by Jim C Hines are both excellent novels that play on the mermaid trope, as does Sirena by Donna Jo Napoli mentioned above.

October’s fairy tale is Rapunzel! See you tomorrow!

Review Cancellation, what??

Hello all! Cassie here.

So, originally this last week, I was going to be reviewing Fortune's Fool, by Mercedes Lackey. But as I started my reread, I realized that that novel is less The Little Mermaid and more the siren legend with a taste of Russian folklore.

Okay, says I. Well, Jim C Hines sequel to The Stepsister Scheme is The Mermaid's Madness, and it promises to be a Little Mermaid adaptation, so we'll read that!

But about halfway through, I realized that that novel deals with the character of the little mermaid years after the events of her story, and the novel's events aren't even directly related, not really. It's less of an adaptation and more of a continuation with a brand new tale.

And then I said, you know, it's really to late to try and track down a fourth adaptation, let alone read it, plus I don't know that they're really out there beyond the three I've read, plus I've got a show going up this weekend, and I'm up to my eyeballs in tech week, so maybe we should just take a break, yeah?

So, for my sanity, plus the fact that the two novels for this week turned out to not fit the criteria, we're turning this into a three-adaptation month, and I will see you all on the 30th with our wrap-up!

Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon

Mermaid by Carolyn Turgeon

Target Audience: Teen
               
Summary: Princess Margrethe has been hidden away while her kingdom is at war. One gloomy, windswept morning as she stands in a convent garden overlooking the icy sea, she witnesses a miracle: a glittering mermaid emerging from the waves, a nearly drowned man in her arms. By the time Margrethe reaches the shore, the mermaid has disappeared into the sea. As Margrethe nurses the handsome stranger back to health, she learns that not only is he a prince, he is also the son of her father's greatest rival. Sure that the mermaid brought this man to her for a reason, Margrethe devises a plan to bring peace to her kingdom. Meanwhile, the mermaid princess Lenia longs to return to the human man she carried to safety. She is willing to trade her home, her voice, and even her health for legs and the chance to win his heart…

Type of Adaptation: Retelling

It should come as no surprise by now, but I have incredibly high standards for adaptations of this fairy tale. I know, you’re all shocked, right? Anyway, bearing that in mind, Carolyn Turgeon’s Mermaid absolutely blew me away, and I cannot wait to tell you about it, so let’s dive right in, shall we?

This novel is told in two alternating voices: Lenia’s – the mermaid – and Margrethe’s – the girl on the beach. And, of course, we all know about my love/hate relationship with multiple perspectives in novels, but this one is done really well, and really suits the story. That’s really one of my markers – if the story were to be told from only one perspective, would anything important be lost, and in this case, the answer is yes.

Anyway, we meet Margrethe, a princess from the Northern kingdom who has been sent into hiding at a convent because her paranoid father believes that their Southern enemies will make an attempt on her life if she stays in the castle. The Northern and Southern kingdoms have been at war for years, and it taints everyone’s lives. When Margrethe’s mother was alive, it was better, for she tempered the king, but since her death two years before, the king’s lust for war has been growing, and the tentative peace is nearly in tatters.

So Margrethe is stuck in this convent, realizing for the first time just how little she knows about her own kingdom, when one day, she’s out on the wall, and she sees an utterly impossible thing – a woman with a fish tail, impossibly beautiful, dragging a young man to shore. The mermaid looks up at her, and speaks into Margrethe’s mind: Come. Save him.

The mermaid, of course, is Lenia, obsessed with the human world, gone to the surface for her eighteenth birthday. Through her side of the start of this story, we learn how fascinated she is by the idea of the human soul – a web of light, as she pictures it, that exists inside them and offers them the chance to live forever.

And here we have one of the things I really like about this adaptation – it doesn’t shrink away from the religion. Let’s be honest – Hans Christian Anderson was a bit heavy-handed at times with his Christian message, and it seems to be the trend to leave that aspect of the story out of a lot of retellings, and indeed, of the fantasy genre in general. But the fact remains that religion and the idea of the Christian soul plays a huge part in Anderson’s original, and this novelization did that justice. Christianity and Christian ideals were very present, but not in a way that anything was shoved down the reader’s throat – it was just a fact of the world in which the story was taking place. That’s a difficult balance, but Turgeon hit the mark solidly.

Anyway, Lenia’s birthday happens to fall on the worst storm in the history of anyone’s memory, but she’s insistent on going to the surface anyway, and that’s when she sees the shipwreck. She watches a sailor die, and is fascinated by it. She’s hoping to see his soul leave his body, but when she doesn’t, the horror of what she witnessed hits her instead, and she can’t bear to let that happen to all of them. So she picks the nearest drowning man and tows him to shore.

But she knows she can’t save him. She can save him from drowning, yes, but not from his other injuries, and so she reaches out for anyone who can help – and the person she finds is Margrethe.

So Margrethe saves the young man – Christopher, he reveals – and it isn’t until he’s being nursed back to health in the convent that Margrethe learns he’s actually Prince Christopher, of the Southern kingdom, and she’s supposed to hate him because he is her enemy. There’s just one problem with that – Margrethe is already halfway in love with him. The way he speaks to her doesn’t help. He believes that she saved him, that she sang with a beautiful voice and brought him back from death. He also has no idea who she is. He believes her to be a woman of the cloth, and since she’s supposed to be in hiding, she can’t exactly correct him.

But once he’s well and preparing to leave, he lets her know that wrong as it is, he will always hold her in his heart. This doesn’t help the crush Margrethe is working away on.

But then he’s gone, and she goes back to life as normal, except that now she knows mermaids exist, and she’s as fascinated with Lenia and the underwater world as Lenia is with humans and their world. And Lenia is as in love with the prince she rescued as Margrethe is.

Lenia can’t stop thinking about him, and Margrethe, and wondering if he survived, if she was able to help him. Her sisters all think she’s fallen in love with a merman, and they try to uncover who it is, and that’s when she reveals that she’s in love with a human. Her sisters are shocked and warn her how dangerous this is – not because of a parents’ wrath, but because of the law of the merpeople – that they and humans shall be entirely separate.

Lenia knows all this, of course, but it doesn’t change how she feels, and one day, she can’t take it anymore, so she swims back to the surface, and there she encounters Margrethe, and I love this scene. They have a conversation about the realities of these other worlds and how they used to be connected. They talk of the prince, and they both recognize that they are both in love with the same man. But far from being a rivalry, it is, at this point, just one more connection, because he’s an impossibility for both of them. For Lenia, he’s another species. For Margrethe, he might as well be. This scene is so beautifully done, and I love what it sets up later, that they were aware of each other so early on. It really does ensure that this story belongs to the both of them, equally. It’s a parallel journey they’re on, and it’s wonderfully done.

Unfortunately for all involved, Margrethe’s father learns that the convent sheltered the son of his enemy, and he flies into a towering rage and takes Margrethe straight back home, convinced he can protect her better at the palace. It doesn’t matter how Margrethe tries to tell him that Christopher had no idea who she was, the king remains convinced that this is the next step of the devious South in launching war again. The stories that fly around are insane – that the evil Southern prince broke into the convent to ravage and assassinate Margrethe is the most common.

And Margrethe can’t reason with anyone, and she knows her father is going to use this as an excuse to start the war again, and she can’t stand by and let that happen. Between her and her old tutor, a plan is formulated. They will send a proposal to the Southern king in secret, offering Margrethe as a bride to Christopher, in a marriage that will unify the kingdoms. For Margrethe’s tutor is convinced that the Southern king is as weary of war as many of the Northerners are. And so, to stop the violence, Margrethe is willing to make this sacrifice. The fact that she loves Christopher and believes he loves her in return is secondary, really.

But Lenia provides a complication. Because while all this has been going on, Lenia has been to visit the Sea Witch, Sybil. And though Sybil does everything in her power to talk Lenia out of trading her tail, tongue, voice, and lifespan for a chance at a human soul, Lenia is headstrong and determined, and she will do this thing.

Sybil is wonderfully drawn. I’ll gush more in the checklist, but man. There’s a mystery about her that’s never resolved, a sadness and a personal touch to the warnings she gives Lenia that force you to imagine just what she’s been through in her own lifetime.

Lenia asks one last favor of Sybil, that she’ll tell Lenia’s family what happened, and that Lenia chose this, and that she’s happy. And then she has her tongue cut out, and man. Turgeon does not shy away from these descriptions. She is very blunt and very forward about exactly all the pain and agony that Lenia goes through in this transformation – but not in a graphic or distracting way. Just in a way that forces the reader to realize the extent of this decision, and I think that’s important. Too often with this story, we focus on the romance of the sacrifice without really considering exactly what it would have meant.

And Lenia, now human, washes up on shore in the Southern kingdom, without a tongue, without a voice, and without the protection against cold and injury that being a mermaid afforded her. Luckily, she’s found by the princess, who is taken with her strange beauty and wants to introduce her to her brother, the prince, who’s been moping since he returned from his expedition to the North some time before.

And here’s another thing I really love – watching Lenia traverse this world that is so utterly foreign to her. We watch her bathe for the first time, wear clothes for the first time, feel dry hair for the first time, and it all just drives home the fact that she is literally out of her element.

And the prince is immediately taken with her, as his sister knew he would be, and because this is a gritty and realistic look at very human characters, he takes the little mermaid to bed, and we get to be with her when she has sex for the first time. Again, not graphically, it’s very tastefully done. But it’s a remarkably mature upgrade of this story that really takes it out of the fairy tale world and puts it into a world of court intrigue where, yeah, this stuff happened all the time.

And it is fascinating. Because love isn’t the same as marriage, which is what the little mermaid has to achieve. And sex isn’t the same thing as love, though Christopher does, in fact, grow to love Lenia, while simultaneously being in love with the mystery girl who found him on the beach – who, though he doesn’t know it, is both Margrethe and Lenia. It’s deliciously complicated, and I love it. Because love isn’t simple, despite what fairy tales tell us. Love is an incredibly complicated emotion, and this novel really drives that point home.

Back to Margrethe, the Southern king has agreed to the plan, and Margrethe and her maid are set to travel to the Southern kingdom in secret, because Margrethe knows her father will never agree to the marriage unless given no other choice. But when they arrive, they learn that this isn’t going to be the fairy tale ending Margrethe was hoping for – Christopher was never told of the arrangement, and he’s not particularly happy about learning it in front of the whole court. He wants to chose his own bride, not have one thrust upon him, and on top of all that, learning that Margrethe is both the princess and the girl on the beach, he’s as pissed at her as he is at his father.

So what does he do? Makes it clear to both of them that he has his chosen love already – Lenia, who he’s been sleeping with for some time now, and who is carrying his child. Yeah. That happened.

And Lenia recognizes Margrethe, though Margrethe doesn’t recognize Lenia. And now the relationship between them changes utterly from what it was on the beach. Now, they are rivals. Now, they hate each other. Margrethe, to Lenia, stands in the way of her gaining a soul. And Lenia, to Margrethe, is keeping her from marrying Christopher as she believes God is willing her to do. And it doesn’t help that Christopher is in love with both of them, even angry as he is with Margrethe.

This is so wonderfully done. And that makes it all the more heartbreaking when Lenia realizes that she isn’t going to win this. She’s going to lose Christopher, because he’s a prince and she has no identity in this world. Because he could never have married her, despite his talk. Because the future of both kingdoms is at stake, and he and Margrethe have to be married, and he does love her, too.

Watching Lenia realize this is heartbreaking. But what’s even more heartbreaking is the moment when Margrethe realizes exactly who Lenia is. That changes everything, because now, it’s not just some random girl – it’s this mermaid she shared so much with so long ago who has sacrificed everything to be human and in this world and with the prince. The scene that truly broke my heart was the scene where Lenia was giving birth and Margrethe ran to be with her, and confessed that if it was in her power, she would give up Christopher for Lenia. “I would die right now, to let you have him,” she says, but it’s out of her hands. And this comes from only knowing all that Lenia gave up, not even that she’ll die as soon as Margrethe and Christopher are married.

But Lenia has come to terms with that. With the birth of her daughter, she knows, she has gained a kind of immortality, and she can be content with that. But she wants to be by the sea when she dies, so on Christopher and Margrethe’s wedding night, she slips away, down to the sea. But Margrethe sees her go, and, thinking she is going to kill herself, follows her to try and stop her. Instead, she overhears Lenia’s sisters offering her the knife and begging her to kill the prince, to spill his blood, and become a mermaid again. Lenia refused, and throws the knife away. It lands near Margrethe, and in that instant, she knows what she has to do.

She runs to the castle to get the baby, then runs back down to the beach just as the sun begins to rise. She tells Lenia she overheard everything, and she knows what must be done. “I am his wife,” she says. “His blood is my blood, and his soul is my soul.” And she uses the knife to cut her leg, and lets her blood spill onto Lenia’s legs.

And it works. Margrethe’s sacrificed blood undoes the magic on Lenia, returning her voice and turning her back into a mermaid. Margrethe swears that she will raise Lenia’s daughter as if she were her own child. And Lenia says goodbye to them both and the life she was willing to give up so much for, and returns to the sea.

This novel . . . it’s everything I wanted an adaptation of this story to be. Seriously. This is masterful, adaptation at its very best, and I am thrilled that it exists. But let’s to the checklist.

Exploration of the human characters? Check, check, and check. One check for Margrethe, one for Christopher, and one for all the side characters. Everyone in this novel is so fully and beautifully drawn. Their struggles were real and present, and I never once felt that Turgeon was making anything easy for anyone. What Margrethe and Christopher and Lenia went through and faced and had to struggle with, it was marvelously complicated and real and genuine.

No villainization of the side characters? Check. Sybil in this version fascinates me. She’s not in the novel all that much, but I have an incredibly amount of sympathy for her. She’s got a story, and though we never explicitly get it, we can guess. She has a much different flavor than Anderson’s sea witch, but I like her just as much. She’s not a villain. She’s someone with a history, and she’s warning Lenia away from some personal experience, and I love guessing what that is.

Message in the end? Okay, so no, the little mermaid doesn’t die in this version. She is rescued, in a sense. She’s allowed to live out her life as a mermaid instead of turning to foam or living her life as an air spirit. Do I have a problem with this? Not in the slightest. Why? Because the sacrifice is still there. She would have died. She was fully prepared to die. She had come to terms with it. It was Margrethe who couldn’t let it happen. And even though Lenia didn’t die, she still has to sacrifice everything she loved in the human world in the end – her love, her daughter, her friend. She has to leave it all behind and never return. And so the message is there and intact. There’s no easy happily ever after in this book, and I love that. No one is untouched by the complexity of this story. Christopher will forever be in love with two women. Margrethe will forever bear the burden of Lenia’s sacrifice. And Lenia has to leave her life behind her. They all live, and I think they’ll all find a way to be happy in the end, but because of what they’ve been through and the sacrifices they’ve all made, it will be a more mature and therefore better earned happiness, and I’m entirely satisfied with that ending.

Beautifully done. Absolutely beautifully done. This novel did this story justice, and I’m so glad.

Guest Post: Disney's The Little Mermaid by Matthew

Disneyʼs The Little Mermaid

or “Why Sometimes, Disney Should Just Leave Well Enough Alone”

After writing a whole review about how itʼs okay for Disney to make changes to stories like Beauty and the Beast because theyʼre part of the evolution of oral storytelling, Iʼm not about to lambast Disney for the work they did on Hans Christian Andersonʼs The Little Mermaid. I should probably mention, first of all, that though I dislike this movie, I donʼt have quite the same hatred for it that Cassie does. I still hate it, donʼt get me wrong . . . itʼs just that Iʼve already said my piece pretty thoroughly in my Books vs. Movies review on the subject, and to be honest, this movie does have a lot to offer, and I think it had a lot of potential. Squandered potential, but potential nonetheless.

The issue here is that The Little Mermaid, unlike Disneyʼs other faerie tale stories, is not based on an traditional faerie tale. Stories like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and so on have many, many variations to them, because theyʼre based in oral traditions, and the story changes a little bit from each telling. The Russian Cinderella story is very different from the French one. With The Little Mermaid, however, this is not the case. Hans Christian Anderson didnʼt collect the story--he wrote it. Itʼs an original story and, therefore, deserves the same respect that any book should have when itʼs being turned into a movie. That is, if youʼre going to make changes--which, of course, you almost have to with this story--do so for the betterment of the story, not to dumb things down for a “lesser” audience. On its own, Disneyʼs The Little Mermaid isnʼt a bad movie, by any means. As an adaptation of Andersonʼs story, however . . . well,
letʼs start from the beginning.

Now, in the opening credits of the movie, we do get to see one of the biggest things that this movie has going for it: the animation. You can really see how this was a turning point for Disney animation, because it is absolutely breathtaking. Everything truly does look as though itʼs underwater. It even looks amazing over twenty years later. Honestly, Iʼd be just as happy watching the images on the screen with the sound on mute . . . but weʼre not going to do that here, so on with the story.

Weʼre introduced to our underwater kingdom, where King Triton reigns, half-man and half-sea creature, with a retinue of sea creatures at his beck and call, including Sebastian, the uptight crab who will serve as Arielʼs comedic and completely ineffectual secondary guardian. (Also known as Animal Friend #1.) Sebastian is directing a huge musical concert for King Triton featuring his many mermaid daughter, who each introduce themselves in this scene, but as weʼll see them maybe twice more during the course of the movie, itʼs not terribly important. A tremendous build-up of music signals the introduction of the youngest and most beautiful daughter Ariel . . . who of course, isnʼt there.

Okay, this is a small, nitpicky point, but I have to address it. Sebastian is directing this little escapade, and anyone who has ever directed anything knows that once you get to performance, youʼve done all the rehearsing and critiquing you can do, and your main task is very simple . . . MAKE SURE EVERYONE IS THERE!!! How, exactly, did it escape Sebastianʼs notice that the star singer of the evening wasnʼt even there? You had one job, Sebastian! One job! And you blew it! I mean, okay, Ariel is irresponsible and flighty and all that but COME ON! (Itʼs also indicated that this isnʼt the first time something like this has happened, so in addition to failing as a director, the little crustacean doesnʼt even learn from past mistakes.) [Word. -- CG]

But, back to the story. Weʼre then introduced to our main protagonist, Ariel, the little mermaid herself. And itʼs pretty clear from the get-go that Disney was aiming to make her a pretty sharp contrast from the previous three princesses. With bright red hair and practically naked, Ariel was by far the sexiest princess Disney had created at that point, but the differences werenʼt merely physical. Ariel was clearly more outgoing, more rebellious, and more argumentative than Snow White, Cinderella, or Aurora. Itʼs like if that little bit of snarkiness and sarcasm we got from Cinderella on occasion was fully realized. Sheʼs also, to put it quite simply, a brat.

So, Ariel and her best friend, Flounder, who is a . . . flounder (Animal Friend #2, and also, what, did they just run out of creative names at this point?), are exploring this sunken ship. The friendship between them is a fairly typical case of one friend being aggressive and vaguely reckless, and the other having misgivings but going along with it anyway because of some sort of loyalty to the first friend. Despite feeling ill-at-ease, Flounder is basically bullied by Ariel into going on what is basically a scavenger mission. Ariel collects trinkets from the human world, hiding them away in secret because her father, King Triton, has a pretty big prejudice against the human world, and has forbade his kingdom--and his youngest daughter specifically--from having any contact with them.

This is a difference from the original story, but an interesting one. Unlike the original story where it was basically traditional for mermaids to visit the human world--playing off of the old siren legends--here, itʼs absolutely forbidden, and Triton is particularly passionate about it, to the point where you start to wonder what humans did to him. The question is never answered, but it does make Triton into a very interesting character.

But, back to the story. Arielʼs obsession with collecting human trinkets almost gets herself and Flounder killed by a hungry shark, but they manage to escape it, with the trinkets in hand, and swim to the surface to consult with a seagull named Scuttle (Animal Friend #3) who seems to have surpassing wisdom and knowledge of the humans, though heʼs voiced by Buddy Hackett, so we know that only goes so far. So after giving Ariel some hilariously incorrect information about what her trinkets are used for, Ariel suddenly remembers the concert that she was supposed to star in (honey, youʼre the freaking star performer, how do you just forget?) and hurries back home.

Triton and Sebastian both chew her out, and understandably so, and yet Ariel tries her darndest to make them out to be the bad guys here, because by golly, sheʼs sixteen years old and shouldnʼt be treated like a child! What this has to do with her being irresponsible and missing the concert, I donʼt know, but sheʼs sixteen and thatʼs what bratty sixteen year old girls do. She swims off in a huff, because thatʼs also what bratty sixteen year old girls do, and Triton sends Sebastian off to keep on eye on her.

The next scene is the famous “Part of Your World” song, which I will admit is a gorgeous piece of music, and does actually give Ariel some motivation other than a hot guy, at least at this point in the story. We see here that Arielʼs love of the human world isnʼt just a passing interest, but pretty much an outright obsession, with a hidden grotto filled with human trinkets from past scavenges. And this, again, is a point of interest in the story. Where does this obsession stem from, especially given how anti-human her father is? How did she come to start collecting these things? How does she even know about the human world?

So then, Ariel sees fireworks in the distant sky and swims up to investigate. It turns out that they are celebration fireworks for the birthday of Prince Eric, who is by far Disneyʼs most interesting prince to date. Snow Whiteʼs and Cinderellaʼs princesses didnʼt even have names aside from “Charming,” and Prince Philip from Sleeping Beauty was about as bland as white bread. Eric, on the other hand, actually has something of a personality. Heʼs interesting, a very likable guy, and actually has something of a story arc in this movie. Itʼs a fairly typical “Iʼm looking for the perfect girl” story, only in this case, when he finally encounters Ariel, he doesnʼt immediately think “This is it!” And his story arc is more about not chasing a dream and seeing whatʼs right in front of him.

But Iʼm getting ahead of myself. At this point, Eric is just a nice guy with a dog and a winning personality. Ariel sees him, becomes hopelessly infatuated, and then all hell breaks loose. There a storm, the ship sinks, and itʼs worth noting that the reason Eric gets himself in trouble in the first place is because he went back to save his dog. Seriously, you gotta love him for that. But as per the original story, he almost drowns and Ariel saves him, with the help of her three animal friends. Eric wakes up long enough to hear her singing and to get a brief look at her face, but she heads back to the ocean before anyone else can see her.

And now, Ariel and Eric are both obsessed. Ariel swims around with her head in the clouds--a pretty neat trick, when you think about it--which makes Triton suspect that there may be a man in her life, but he figures itʼs a merman, and is overjoyed that his daughter might finally be seeing some sense. Eric, meanwhile, has sworn not to marry anyone but the girl with the beautiful voice who saved his life. And while Ericʼs bumbling advisor person tries to help him see sense, Sebastian is doing the same with Ariel, extolling the values of being a sea creature in, of course, “Under the Sea.”

But during Sebastianʼs elaborate--and apparently completely improvised--musical number, Flounder and Ariel have sneaked off to the grotto. Sebastian is called off to meet with King Triton regarding this mysterious male someone that Ariel is obsessed with, and Sebastian confesses that Ariel is in love with a human, which sends Triton into a mighty rage. He finds Ariel in her grotto, and in what can only described as a godly passion, destroys everything, including the statue of Eric that has only recently fallen inside. He regrets his anger, but too late to keep his daughter from collapsing into despair . . . and to keep her from going to Ursula the Sea Witch for a magical solution.

Ursula has been established as a character by this time. We know that Triton has done something to her and sheʼs out for revenge. (Yet ANOTHER interesting aspect of the story that will get no further explanation.) And she figures, correctly, that the best way to get revenge on Triton is through his favorite daughter. Exploiting her obsession is, as Ursula says at one point, “too easy.”

Once again, things go pretty much the same way as the original story, but the terms of the deal are slightly different. Ariel loses her voice, but not permanently. Ursula doesnʼt cut out her tongue, rather she takes her voice magically and locks it away. Also, Ariel has a time limit. She has three days and three days only to make Eric fall in love with her, but in terms of Disney movies, thatʼs quite a lot of time. (I mean, it took the other princes all of two seconds to fall in love with their ladies.) And if she fails to do so, she doesnʼt die, but turns back into a mermaid and belongs to Ursula. So, sheʼs basically selling her soul here, but sheʼs dumb enough to go along with it. Now, Ursula is about as up front with her about the risks as the book Sea Witch, the main difference being that this Ursula actually attempts to sabotage the deal . . . but more on that later. [Also, Ursula's version of being "up front" is more along the lines of manipulating Ariel into agreeing rather than trying to be an actual voice of reason. -- CG]

Ariel becomes a human, and Flounder and Sebastian help her to shore, where she attempts to learn how to stand and walk and so on. Not only does she not seem to feel any pain when she does so, but it really doesnʼt take her that long. Sooner or later, Ericʼs dog finds her, which leads to Eric finding her. He suspects that she might be the girl who saved him, but upon finding that she canʼt speak, decides it must not be . . . which is probably about the dumbest conclusion you could possibly come to. I mean, itʼs been a little bit of time. Maybe she lost her voice in the intervening days since your near drowning. Maybe she had an accident herself! I mean, dude, you were all set to marry her right there until you found out she couldnʼt talk. Cʼmon, what did you think, that you just happened to find someone who looks EXACTLY LIKE the girl who saved you? Sigh.

Okay, so the next section of the story can basically be summed up with “hilarity ensues.” Ariel, having listened to Buddy Hackett as a seagull, has absolutely no idea how to be a human, which leads to actually some of the funnier moments of the film. Also, Sebastian almost gets cooked by a crustacean-hating cook, which is one of Disneyʼs more hilarious moments in cinema history. And through a montage of scenes, we see Ariel and Eric getting to know each other and getting closer and closer as they do, and I will admit that itʼs nice to see Disney actually doing this for a change. Itʼs not a lot of time, to be sure, but they still show a building relationship rather than an instant one. And toward the end of it, we do see Eric finally make the decision to drop this obsession with a dream and take the perfectly nice, adorable girl that heʼs found and formed a close friendship with. Eric actually learns a good lesson here.

So basically, up to this point in the story, I have absolutely NO PROBLEM with this movie. I really donʼt. It looks good, the music is great. The main character is a brat and vaguely stupid, but still likable and engaging, and sheʼs sixteen, so we can forgive the negative character traits. The love interest is, likewise, interesting and likable and actually has a story arc. And the story itself is engaging and fun.

But hereʼs where it goes downhill for me. Ursula, upon realizing that Ariel is actually succeeding in making Eric fall in love with her--at least enough to get a kiss--decides itʼs time to step up her game. So, using Arielʼs mystical voice, she disguises herself as a human, and makes her way to Ericʼs castle. But it isnʼt just enough for her to “fool” him into thinking that sheʼs the girl who saved him. The voice actually hypnotizes him into believing that he must marry this girl as soon as humanly possible. Now, to give Disney some credit, this is actually closer to the old siren legends, with men being hypnotized by the voices of the sirens. What I do not like, however, is that they have not only demonized the Sea Witch at this point, but also the girl who the prince ended up marrying in the original story. This bugs me a little because one of the things I always wondered about the original story is how did the girl feel about all this? I mean, from all indications, she became friends with the mermaid. The mermaid was happy for them, she held her train and everything. How did it affect her when the mermaid, for all intents and purposes, committed suicide?

But, back to the story. And at this point, everything that might have been interesting about this movie--Tritonʼs story, Ericʼs story, Ursulaʼs story--theyʼre all sacrificed in favor of the “love conquers all” story. Ariel pretty much abandons all hope, not even stopping to question what the hell happened to Eric between last night and this morning, and goes away to have herself a little cry. But, because thatʼs what villains do, Ursula stupidly sings her evil plot to herself while preparing for the wedding in her room, and Scuttle overhears and flies off to tell Ariel. And Ariel, to her credit, does actually act. Itʼs the only point when she does, but she tries to stop the wedding and stop Ursula, and almost succeeds . . . but that blasted sunset comes just a little early, and Ursula drags her back down to the sea.

Triton, acting exactly as Ursula knew he would, sacrifices himself to save Arielʼs life. Which . . . okay, itʼs all very noble and itʼs the one place in this movie where Andersonʼs message of sacrifice exists [despite the fact that it's completely negated by the end of the movie -- CG], but . . . dude, youʼre king of the sea! Youʼve got a whole kingdom to think of here, and youʼre turning it over to this witch! I know you love your daughter and all, but this seems like a “needs of the many, needs of the few” type of deal to me. But I guess itʼs a fatherʼs love for his daughter, and what father wouldnʼt give up the whole sea to keep his daughter safe, so we can forgive it.

So, Arielʼs free and Ursula is now the new queen of the sea, and she decides to exercise her power by . . . growing really big and making a bunch of storms. Yeah, this is where a lot of Disney villains lose me. They gain their power, and then they donʼt do anything with it! But anyway, Eric comes to save the day, and unlike the previous princes, actually does so in a pretty badass way, eventually ramming Ursula through with a ship (most badass slaying of a bad guy EVER!) and as is usually the case with Disney films, everything goes completely back to normal, including King Triton [And, message of the importance of sacrifice negated. --CG].

So, what have we learned here? Very little. Has Ariel changed at all? No. Has she learned not to be so impulsive and stupid from the fact that she endangered the entire kingdom for the sake of a boy? No. Has she learned that her love for the human is unfeasible and unrealistic? No. Is she, at the very least, going to be grounded for the next three hundred years for her actions? No! In fact, Triton, this king who has such a deep prejudice against humans that it caused him to go all godlike and destroy a whole grotto of trinkets, decides to let Ariel have her way and become human so she can be with Eric. Gag me. I mean, I guess she sacrifices her family and home for the sake of love, but itʼs not like sheʼs that broken up about it. What exactly did she sacrifice, then? Where is Andersonʼs message in any of this?

But letʼs look at the checklist:

Exploration of the human characters?--Well . . . technically, yes, given that the human girl isnʼt really human at all in this version. I do have to give Disney props for Prince Eric, though. Heʼs not looked at quite as deeply as some of their later love interests, but he does actually get his own story arc, his own issues to overcome, and more character development than the protagonist. And heʼs just a thoroughly likable and enjoyable character, so weʼll give this a check.

No villainization of the side characters?--Yeah, seeing as how the Disney movie is the whole reason this category even exists, this one gets an anti-check. Ursula is pure evil, Ursula actually becomes the human girl in the story, making her pure evil. Even King Triton is villainized a fair bit in this story. I mean heʼs not a bad guy, but heʼs definitely an antagonist in the context of the story. Heʼs the overbearing father to a sixteen-year-old girl, which pretty much automatically spells villain. So yeah. -1 point for this one. [Ooof. Negative points, folks. A first for the blog. -- CG]

Message at the end? Well, itʼs not drowning of a broken heart, but itʼs not Anderson either. Disney seems to have the same attitude toward this story that a lot of people have toward Romeo and Juliet . . . that just because thereʼs love or romance in it, that makes it a love story. But The Little Mermaid, at itʼs core, is a story about sacrifice, and what did Ariel sacrifice? Nothing. I mean, I guess you could argue that she sacrificed her life in the sea, but she was pretty much ready to get rid of that from the get-go. This isnʼt really supposed to be a “happily ever after” type of story. And I realize that Disneyʼs not going to have their main protagonist die or not get what she wants. Believe me, I understand. But thatʼs the point where you really have to ask . . . if youʼre going to adapt a story for kids . . . why this one?

Iʼm not going to go so far as to say itʼs a bad movie. I can see why people enjoy it. But . . . itʼs not Andersonʼs The Little Mermaid, plain and simple. And honestly, it doesnʼt even replace Andersonʼs message with one of any substance. Maybe if they had taken some of the interesting subplots from earlier in the film and given them a bit more prominence in the end, this could have been a good film with a happy ending and a strong message, even if it wasnʼt Andersonʼs message. As it was, however, they chose the standard, stale “love conquers all” message, without examining the consequences.

Maybe thatʼs enough for you, and if so, fine. But I need a little more from something claiming to be an adaptation of Andersonʼs story.

Midnight Pearls by Debbie Vigue

Midnight Pearls by Debbie Vigue

Target Audience: YA/Teen

Summary: They say the prince married a girl who was not what she appeared and that another girl who saved the kingdom vanished without a trace. Some said it was witchcraft. Some said it was only a legend. For those who knew the truth, it was magic. Rescued from the sea at an early age, Pearl grew up within sight of the water, and the castle. With her pale skin and silvery hair, she was an outcast in the village. Her only friend was a boy she met on the beach – a young prince named James, who understood Pearl’s desire just to be like everyone else. Their friendship is viewed from afar by many: a disdainful king, Pearl’s worried foster parents, a jealous young mermaid, a lovestruck merman, and the powerful sea witch. Now a storm brews in the kingdom, with a tidal force that could keep James and Peal apart.

Type of Adaptation: Retelling

Every time I read one of these Once Upon a Time books, I am less and less impressed with whoever’s in charge of writing the advertising blurb. It’s called misrepresentation, guys, and it’s annoying as hell. But that’s neither here nor there, really.

We start this novel with a spot of intrigue, or at least, with Vigue’s best attempt at it. In an italicized prologue, a girl named Pearl, who we have no real reason to feel any attachment to yet, is walking down the aisle on her wedding day full of fear and panic and heartbreak because the man waiting for her at the end of the aisle is not who she wants to be marrying. And once we’ve whet our appetite with that, we start the book for realsies with a jump into the past to see who this girl named Pearl is and why we should care about her.

Years before, a fisherman was out on the ocean when a storm came up out of nowhere. He had no warning, no time to get to shore. Convinced that he was about to die, he did his best to soldier on bravely and face his death with dignity and honor, when a voice spoke in his head, telling him to cast his nets over. He did so, and when he pulled them back in, there was a child, pale as death, caught in them. Knowing that God wanted him to find this girl, the fisherman knew he would make it through the storm. And he and his wife took the child in as their own, and named her Pearl for the large black pearl she had clutched in her hand.

Then we jump ahead thirteen years, and it should be noted at this point that each chapter starts off with another italicized sentence that takes us that much further down the aisle, and, I dunno, I guess I understand what she was going for here, but there’s really only so many times and ways you can say “This was a horrible moment for Pearl, walking down the aisle toward someone she didn’t want to marry,” and this book uses all of them and then some.

But in the main storyline, we see Pearl with James, her only real friend who, it turns out, is the prince. They’ve been meeting in secret once a week for ten years, and they really are the closest of friends. The afternoons he spends with Pearl are the only times the prince has to just be James and not a prince, and for Pearl, they’re the one time no one is staring at her too-pale skin and silver hair. Lately, though, the friendship has been changing, because they’re both of marrying age and both being pressured to consider marriage by their families.

And I’m gonna come right out and say it – JAMES WANTS TO MARRY PEARL. Seriously, it’s really obvious, and I’m stressing this because it’s going to be very important when we get a little further into the story. James wants to marry Pearl. He cares about her a great deal, she’s his best friend, she doesn’t care that he’s the prince, and he doesn’t want her to marry the blacksmith who’s twice her age. He’s given this a lot of thought, and he knows that marrying Pearl would give him not only a bride he loves, but also a Queen who can help him rule the country effectively.

He’s setting up everything to ask for Pearl’s hand – he finally introduces himself to her parents and reveals their long-standing friendship, he urges her not to accept the blacksmith, and he asks her to accompany him out for a sail so he can ask her a very important question in a setting that is special.

Now, Pearl has spent her whole life with nightmares that tell her that if she goes into the ocean, she’ll die, so she’s naturally pretty nervous when James asks her to go for a sail, but she figures she’ll be all right on the ocean, as long as she’s not in the ocean. She really wants to go, because the ocean has called to her all her life (spoiler: she’s a mermaid-turned-human. Don’t worry, it’s not a real big spoiler. It’s made pretty obvious, just like James’s plans to ask Pearl to marry him), she’s just kept away because of the nightmares.

So, of course, this means that once out on the water, long enough that they’re out pretty deep, but not long enough for James to have actually asked his question, the boat springs a leak and they start to sink. Pearl is terrified because she doesn’t know how to swim, but through her frantic efforts and the surprisingly helpful tide, she’s able to make it back to shore. James, unfortunately, isn’t so lucky.

He’s injured as the boat sinks, and caught in a current that starts to pull him out to sea. However, he is in some bit of luck – a mermaid, acting on a premonition, has swum to the surface, and sees the danger. She darts forward and, with the help of her brother, drags James to shore and kisses him because she just can’t help herself – he’s so beautiful. The mermaid’s name is Faye, and her brother’s name is Kale, and after James’s life has been saved, Kale pulls Faye away, back down to the depths where they came from.

Pearl finds James washed up on the beach, and he starts babbling his thanks to her for saving him. Pearl’s confused, because she did nothing of the kind, but James is adamant. He caught a glimpse of his rescuer as she dragged him to shore, and she had Pearl’s distinctive skin and hair, so it couldn’t be anyone but Pearl. Pear continues trying to tell him that she didn’t rescue him, but he just looks her in the eye and finally says what he came there to say – kinda. He says, “I will marry the girl who saved me.” I want to stress this again, he says this because he’s convinced that girl was Pearl. He continues to believe this, even when Pearl, just as adamantly tells him, “Then you will not be marrying me.”

We shift then to the underwater world, to Faye and Kale, and we get to learn a little about these two. We learn that they are a prince and a princess of the underwater world, and that Faye’s obsession is with the human world, and Kale’s obsession is keeping his sister out of trouble and finding out what happened to his betrothed, Adriana, who disappeared thirteen years ago and is presumed dead (spoilers: She’s not. That’s Pearl.) And currently, Kale is pretty worried about Faye, because she can’t stop thinking about that human she saved, and he’s afraid she’s going to do something reckless and stupid.

Which is exactly what she does. She disappears, and by the time Kale is able to track her down, he knows there’s only one place she could have gone: to the sea witch. The sea witch, in this version, is thoroughly evil, an immortal sorceress who has a grudge against the royal family and is constantly seeking to hurt them. She was imprisoned by the royal family to a set of caves, but she can still lure young merkin to her home, and that’s what she did with Faye.

Kale goes to visit her, and initially, he just wants confirmation that Faye was as stupid as he’s afraid she was, but he ends up blurting out that he’s fallen in love with a human. See, when he and Faye went to the surface, he caught a glimpse of Pearl in the water, and he’s pretty well convinced that she’s Adriana, his childhood betrothed, and somehow, for some reason, he ends up making a deal with the sea witch of the exact same parameters that Faye did – he’ll be given legs and human lungs, and he’ll have seven days to win the heart of the one he loves. If he can’t, he’ll die. The sea witch tricks him, though, and he isn’t aware that the price she’ll ask will be his eyesight – for he doesn’t know Pearl’s human name, and he’s never heard her speak. He has only seen her, and so that is what is taken away from him.

Up until this point in the novel, I really liked Kale. He seemed like a solid sort of character, but making this deal? I mean, talk about monumentally stupid, folks. He did the exact same thing his sister did – the exact same thing, I’ll add, that he was ready to kill his sister for doing. And you know, if his actions had been motivated differently, if he had become human to protect his sister and bring her home, then we would have been fine. But instead, it’s to go chase after this girl he saw once, who may or may not be this lost girl that he knew and supposedly loved back when they were toddlers.

And honestly, this is where everyone’s characterizations start to fall apart for me, actually. You’ve got Kale, who has inexplicably turned into an idiot. Then you’ve got Pearl, who refused the blacksmith’s proposal because she didn’t know him very well, and feared James’s proposal because she didn’t think she knew him well enough, but then goes and accepts the proposal from Robert, a nobleman she’s never met. This is after, of course, she meets newly-human Kale on the beach and listens to him tell her that she’s a long lost princess from his land named Adriana, that her heart knows him and loves him, that they’re betrothed. They even share an incredibly cheesy kiss. And then she goes and agrees to marry stranger number 4. And you know, for a girl who is supposedly an outcast who won’t get any offers, she’s turning down a whole hell of a lot.

And then there’s James. Oh, sweet Lord, James. Let’s talk about James for a minute.

You remember how James was going to ask Pearl to marry him? You remember how James loved Pearl and was convinced that she’d saved him on the beach? You remember how James had decided that Pearl was the best possible wife, both for him and for the kingdom, because of her intelligence and the way she interacted with him? Well, in comes Faye, and out goes any respect I ever had for this prince.

See, James takes one look at poor, mute Faye who can’t walk, figures out that she must be the one who saved him (and kissed him), and immediately decides that he’s head over heels in love, and must marry this strange new girl who looks just like Pearl!

... okay, so wait a minute. Literally the only things he knows about this girl at this point are: she looks exactly like Pearl, except that she’s more willing than Pearl, because she kissed him. See, Pearl made it pretty clear that she was going to turn down a proposal from James, so he turns around and falls “in love” with a girl who looks just like her but probably won’t say no to being his bride? I’m sorry, that doesn’t really fill me with the confidence that this is going to be a healthy relationship.

And, I’m sorry again, and this is probably the firm realist in me speaking, but I absolutely hate the message this sends. Now, I am not a fan of the "love at first sight" trope in the best of circumstances. But the message that a fairy-tale “true love” marriage based on instantaneous infatuation is preferable than a marriage between based on years’ foundations of respect, equality, and very strong friendship? This gets on my bad side before I'm halfway through typing the sentence. James knows nothing about Faye – he doesn’t know if she’s intelligent, or if she’ll challenge him, or if she’ll help him lead his kingdom, and yet, the moment he meets her, it’s like he never intended to propose to Pearl. In fact, it’s like he forgets about her entirely.

Except that she’s still there, still engaged to Robert but inexplicably drawn to the blind man Kale she met on the beach, who has since be arrested as a murderer because of an overly complicated subplot as full of holes as worn-out pantyhose where Robert and his father are trying to kill the king and James so they can take over the kingdom, and Robert asking to marry Pearl has to do with that . . .? I dunno. Really. I dunno.

And following fast on the heels of characterization in the “things falling apart” department, is this novel’s structure, because we hit the halfway point, and I don’t even know what’s going on with the passage of time anymore. It’s bad enough to start the chapters with this flash-forward to Pearl’s ill-fated wedding, but the even within the chapters, we’re jumping around all over the place as we switch perspective. We leave Pearl wondering if she’s going to accept Robert, and in the next chapter, we see her at the palace, without explanation, only to jump back in the next chapter and pick up where we left off, and . . . it’s incredibly confusing.

And you’d think that, since Faye and Kale are the ones with the draining hourglass in terms of needing to get things done, we’d spend some time in their perspectives to keep the urgency alive, but no. We’re in Pearl’s head, or James’s, and three days pass like it’s nothing, and the focus is just continuously out of place. I felt like I was constantly missing the most important part of the story, having to wait for the next chapter, to hear it in retrospect.

And then there’s this subplot. And honestly, I can’t even summarize it without sounding like an idiot because it just plain does not make sense. Robert and his father are trying to frame Kale for murder because of reasons, but even though Faye finds him in the dungeons and Pearl, more importantly, finds him in the dungeons, at no point does he say to her, “Hey, I’m a merman, you’re a mermaid, you were cursed by this evil sea witch, and so was I, and if you don’t agree to marry me by the end of the week, and James doesn’t agree to marry Faye, we’re both gonna die,” despite the fact that he, unlike Faye, has not lost his voice, and nothing in the sea witch’s curse prevents him from saying any of this. Debbie Vigue, I just ended your novel fifty pages sooner than you did.

But seriously, he says nothing that actually helps Pearl, speaking instead in these vague riddles that are supposed to, I don’t know, not freak her out, but your life’s on the line, dude, and so is your sister’s, and all you have to do is open your mouth and speak coherently, you know. And Pearl! All you have to do is bring James down to the dungeon, and we can all go home!

But no, Vigue has to give us the last ditch crashing the wedding (somehow) scene where Kale spouts more vague platitudes, and Pearl leaves Robert at the alter to go confront her destiny by diving into the sea and using her midnight Deus-ex-machina pearl to suddenly remember all the things and defeat the sea witch and undo all her curses just by . . . clutching this pearl and saying, “I undo all your curses.” Seriously. Seriously.

Because the sea witch had a necklace of midnight pearls that she could use to harness magic and break the bonds the royal family put on her, but when she kidnaped Adriana, adriana grabbed one, and with the necklace broken, its power was gone, apparently, but then why not work the incredibly powerful magic that a single pearl seems to have when you have, like, twenty of them still, and – no. I’m done with trying to introduce logic.

Pearl saves the day! Yay! She’s magical and crap!

Anyway, she lifts the curse on Faye and Kale, turning them back into merkin, and she has regained her mermaid form, and the king’s guard catch Robert and his father, and then, for one shining moment, I thought that maybe we were going to salvage a bit of this at the end. Maybe we were still going to separate the mermaid and her prince, but no. Magic Pearl Adriana uses her magic pearl to give Faye legs and human form free of charge! Voice included! And so everyone lives happily ever freakin’ after. Except Cassie.

This one just plain tried too hard, from about a third of the way in onward. I was on board in the beginning, let’s be clear. I loved the set-up and where I thought the story was going. But then, we had to find a way to work in an eventual happily ever after, and we had to find a way to add conflict beyond just unrequited love, and we had to find a way to wrap everything up in a neat little package, and I don’t know why I’m surprised, really. Checklist.

Exploration of the human characters? This is James, and technically Pearl, and I liked both of them a lot better before the mermaids showed up. Well, okay, to be fair, I was pretty on board with Pearl all the way through. She was done pretty well, consistently, even if the situations she was forced into were subpar. Her characterization never wavered, and I liked her, and I was rooting for her. As for James, though . . . pre-near-death-experience James, I like a lot. The James who wants a best friend who treats him like a person, the James in love with Pearl, making the smart marriage choice for the kingdom? He’s great. James in love with the mermaid? Get him away from me. So, partial point.

No villainization of the side characters? Yeah, the sea witch was evil through and through, and cruel and vindictive and had no soul or redeeming characteristics to speak of. And that wasn’t enough villainization, it seems, because we added Robert and his father, so poorly characterized as to be utterly forgettable. No point.

The message in the end? Your best friend who’s hesitant to marry you because you’re a prince and she’s a commoner can and should be replaced with a mute look-alike who’s willing to kiss you? Yeah, fantastic message. Totally giving you that point. Hans Christian Anderson’s message has nothing on yours. / sarcasm.

And see, here’s the thing. I feel like, somewhere in this novel, there is a seed of a good story, if you can just get past the incredibly poor adaptation of “The Little Mermaid,” and the absolutely horrific story structure and the erroneous and unnecessarily complicated subplots. The story of a girl who doesn’t fit in but finds a friend in the Prince, who agrees to a marriage of equals with him despite her doubts and insecurities, forsaking the idealized notion of “true love” for the real and far more present friendship that can grow into strong love? I’d read that story.

But unfortunately, this book isn’t that story any more than it’s an adequate adaptation of “The Little Mermaid.” So better luck next week. Here’s hoping.