Deerskin
Like many retellers of fairy tales, Robin McKinley returns to the roots of her chosen story. You probably think you know “Donkeyskin,” but Charles Perrault's original version, written in eighteenth-century France, is both shocking and grisly. McKinley's prose both evokes the familiar once-upon-a-time feel of a fairy tale and brings it painfully close to home, as the beautiful but lonely Princess Lissar abandons her father's castle with only her faithful dog Ash for a guide.
Read an excerpt from Deerskin on Robin McKinley's website. You can also “look inside” and read the first few pages on Amazon.com. Check it out from SPL!
Briar Rose
Setting a fairy tale during the Holocaust is almost a no-brainer, because of the unthinkable nature of those events and because of the ancient, fairy-tale nature of Germany and Poland. Jane Yolen's retelling of “Sleeping Beauty” is a story-within-a-story which juxtaposes the fairy tale absurdly with mid-nineties American life and yet weaves it inextricably into the history of our century.
Briar Rose was a Nebula nominee and won the 1993 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. Read Jane Yolen's notes about Briar Rose with links to resources and reviews. Read the first few pages on Amazon.com or check it out from SPL!
Snow White, Blood Red
If you're in the mood for a short story rather than a full novel, or if you want a quick overview of authors and styles, Datlow and Windling's series of modern fairy tale collections, which starts with Snow White, Blood Red, is just the thing. Twenty authors, including Tanith Lee, Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman, and Jane Yolen, offer short stories and poems of every possible style and color, though most are subtle and creepy in one way or another.
Read the first few pages on Amazon.com or check it out from SPL! (Also: see other collections by Datlow and Windling.)
Other Titles
- Holly Black
- Tithe: A Modern Fairy Tale
- Marion Zimmer Bradley
- The Mists of Avalon
- Orson Scott Card
- Enchantment
- Emma Donoghue
- Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins
- Gregory Frost
- Fitcher's Brides
- Margaret Peterson Haddix
- Just Ella
- Tracy Lynn
- Snow
- George MacDonald
- The Princess and the Goblin
- Juliet Mariller
- Daughter of the Forest
- Robin McKinley
- Beauty
- Robin McKinley
- The Door in the Hedge
- Donna Jo Napoli
- Beast
- Donna Jo Napoli
- Zel
- Edith Pattou
- East
- Mary Stewart
- The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, & The Last Enchantment
- Vivian Vande Velde
- The Rumplestiltzkin Problem
- Debbie Viguie
- Midnight Pearls
- Bill Willingham
- Fables: Animal Farm
- Terri Windling & Delia Sherman (eds.)
- The Essential Bordertown