Best of
Retellings

2011

The Princess Curse


Merrie Haskell - 2011
    Everyone who tries disappears or falls into an enchanted sleep. Thirteen-year-old Reveka, a smart, courageous herbalist’s apprentice, decides to attempt to break the curse despite the danger. Unravelling the mystery behind the curse leads Reveka to the Underworld, and to save the princesses, Reveka will have to risk her soul. Princess Curse combines magic, suspense, humor, and adventure into a story perfect for fans of Gail Carson Levine.

Glitches


Marissa Meyer - 2011
    She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. In Glitches, a short prequel story to Cinder, we see the results of that illness play out, and the emotional toll that takes on Cinder. Something that may, or may not, be a glitch…

Deathless


Catherynne M. Valente - 2011
    But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.Deathless, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever child of the revolution, to Koschei’s beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, Deathless is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death, which will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.

Little Orphan Anvil


Joseph Beekman - 2011
    When the Land of Iron and Anvil is brought to ruin by a wicked storm, the robot becomes lost in the wilds of the lands. But after being discovered by a little boy and his dog, the robot is reunited with its creator and together they set off to the Land of Shadows to free a group of orphans from the dark magic of the witch…and save an entire realm from her rule!

The Story of Antigone


Ali Smith - 2011
    Ali Smith’s retelling of Sophocles’ tragedy, about a young Theban princess, who decides to bury her dishonoured brother Polynices, against King Creon’s express orders — with heart-breaking consequences.

The Story of Gilgamesh


Yiyun Li - 2011
    In answer to the prayers of his oppressed citizens, the gods create Enkidu, a wild man whose destiny is to first fight Gilgamesh, and then become his life-long friend. They embark on adventures together, but when they - together - kill the Bull of Heaven, Enkidu must pay the ultimate price. In his grief and fear of his own death, Gilgamesh goes on a journey to discover the secret to immortality...

A Rosary of Stones and Thorns


M.C.A. Hogarth - 2011
    For her insolence, she is driven from grace and ends up in the parking lot of a Jesuit high school. But can she, a priest, a demon and two high school kids stop the Apocalypse... and redeem the Fallen?

The Princess and the Peanut: A Royally Allergic Fairytale


Sue Ganz-Schmitt - 2011
    But when the royal kitchen is fresh out peas, the queen tries a peanut instead. The princess turns out to be as real as her food allergies. This vibrant and humorous tale inspires, and educates children with allergies, as well as those who live in, and around food sensitive kingdoms. Includes a food allergy guide for adults, and kid-friendly allergy definitions.

Jane Eyre's Husband - The Life of Edward Rochester


Tara Bradley - 2011
    This is the Rochester of Charlotte Brontë’s novel: proud, arrogant, privileged, and searching for love and a better life. Beginning with his early years, then continuing to his time in Jamaica and his nightmarish first marriage, his desperate wanderings in Europe, his love for Jane Eyre and the tragedy that follows his attempt to marry her, his recovery from his injuries, and his married life with Jane, this story will take you inside the secret workings of Rochester’s mind.Edward Rochester is one of literature's most compelling male characters, and this book discloses Rochester’s own intimate experience of his life in vivid narrative. This is a story that is always original, while set firmly within the context of Charlotte Brontë’s work.

New World Fairy Tales


Cassandra Parkin - 2011
    The interviews that follow have echoes of another, far more famous literary journey, undertaken long ago and in another world.Drawing on the original, unexpurgated tales collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, six of their most famous works are re-imagined in the rich and endlessly varied landscapes of contemporary America.From the glass towers of Manhattan to the remoteness of the Blue Ridge mountains; from the swamps of Louisiana to the jaded glamour of Hollywood, New World Fairy Tales reclaims the fairy tale for the modern adult audience. A haunting blend of romance and realism, these stripped-back narratives of human experience are the perfect read for anyone who has read their child a bedtime fairy story, and wondered who ever said these were stories meant for children.

Circe


Nicelle Davis - 2011
    Primarily narrated by Circe herself, the book records her post-Odysseus "withdrawal..". Her laments are interrupted and enriched by a series of poems voiced by a bevy of canny and dangerous sirens. Their incantatory "recipes" produce a provocative admixture of visceral wisdom and sensual bravado... Circe is a deeply moving, endlessly inventive, and enlightening exploration into the terrors of abandonment, the ageless plight of aggrieved women, and the bittersweet and sustaining powers of love. Nicelle Davis has given us an entirely new and riveting version of Circe, a woman painfully scorned, whose path towards healing leads her into a greater awareness of herself. -Maurya Simon, author of Cartographies Nicelle Davis' work emerges from the origins of light and fire, quickly, wildly and with cracks from which tendrils emerge, a longing for sense to be made for those left behind by Odysseus, those sirens, singing gasps of poetry. This poetry wills the reader into a time/space where light burns and language runs off the edge of the world. -Kate Gale, author of Mating Season "To fight the quiet, I talk to my selves," Circe says. Nicelle Davis's poems are the manysided chorus of that complicated character: passionate and resigned, angry and forgiving. They shimmer with Circe's energy and despair, and, most of all, with her love: for her son, for Odysseus, finally even for his wife Penelope. Not least, Davis's vibrant language is a love song for us, her readers and listeners, "entering me with my eye / in your palm-seeing my face, not / as a void, but a window." -Dawn Potter, author of How the Crimes Happened "There was never enough about the sirens," says the foreword to Nicelle Davis's book of poems, which then remedies that omission by giving voice to the "other woman" of the Odyssey. "I thought love would swallow pain," says Circe, whose Homeric version turns her enemies into animals. The magic in Nicelle Davis's poems, however, is the blend of anger, regret, and love that spurs them-the complicated brew that poetry exists to make clear. -Natasha Saje, author of Bend

The Coyote Under the Table/El coyote debajo de la mesa: Folk Tales Told in Spanish and English


Joe Hayes - 2011
    Like his signature collection The Day It Snowed Tortillas, this book is full of lively characters and laugh-out-loud stories. There's a trio of unsuitable suitors who court a clever young girl and end up being scared out of their wits one midnight in a haunted church. And a greedy man who learns his lesson on a day when he couldn't stop dancing. And a spotted cat who is actually a guardian angel in disguise."Once again Hayes intrigues and amuses with this charming compilation."—Booklist"These wise and witty tales continue to repay fresh encounters."—Kirkus ReviewsJoe Hayes is a nationally recognized author and storyteller. Joe lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and travels extensively throughout the United States, visiting schools and storytelling festivals.Antonio Castro L. was born in Zacatecas, Mexico. He has illustrated dozens of children's books including other Joe Hayes classics Pájaro Verde and The Day It Snowed Tortillas (Cinco Puntos Press), as wells as Barry, the Bravest Saint Bernard (Random House) and The Life of Louis Pasteur (Twenty-First Century Books). He lives in El Paso, Texas.

Hatter


Daniel Coleman - 2011
    – Cheshire CatSomeday Hatta will save the kingdom. In his mind, at least. But his talents of uncharacteristic kindness and a passion for colors hardly qualify him for such a destiny. In a kingdom that doesn’t need saving, a young man ignorant of social norms is the unlikeliest of heroes.Along the way, the Cheshire Cat, Queen of Hearts, White Queen, and other familiar characters emerge to fill their eminent roles as well. Witness literature’s most lovable lunatic’s tangled ascent into madness.

Love Never Dies: Phantom: The Story Continues...


Andrew Lloyd Webber - 2011
    Our folio features 13 vocal selections to Lord Lloyd Webber's follow-up to the global phenomenon The Phantom of the Opera that's set 10 years after the original in Coney Island. Songs include: The Beauty Underneath * Dear Old Friend * Devil Take the Hindmost * Look with Your Heart * Love Never Dies * Once upon Another Time * 'Til I Hear You Sing * Why Does She Love Me? * and more. Includes color photos and songs from the London production.

The Randolph Family Saga, Book One: The Ballad of Tam Lin


Patricia A. Leslie - 2011
    This insightful coming-of-age story, set in the Scottish Borders country, takes the youthful and very human protagonists on a fairytale journey of imaginative twists and turns through both humourous and risky plot complications. On May Eve of 1790, Janet, a very sheltered but wilful twenty-year-old Earl's daughter, wanders into Carterhaugh Wood. Handsome, seductive Tam Lin, who has been nineteen for the past seven years, appears and accosts her in a glade that burgeons with black roses. While navigating an ever-shifting maze of love, doubt, trust, fear, honour, passion and laughable human foibles, both lad and lass mature and learn much about themselves. But will the young man end by choosing the naïve girl who loves him, or another, who is the ideal embodiment of passionate womanhood?

Re:Telling


William WalshRoxane Gay - 2011
    This collection of fiction, poetry, and art features some of the independent publishing world’s favourite, most talented writers using recycled material: purloined plots, stolen settings, borrowed premises, and appropriated characters. It is subversion; it is homage. It is a ransacking of the treasure troves in our cultural basement, and nothing is off limits. The stories range from retellings of Shakespeare to Law & Order, from classical theatre to video games. Each piece is something picked up and dusted off, reworked and made new.

The Blacksmith's Daughter


Arley Cole - 2011
    Acwellen Lex'Magen rules as liege lord of a small country bounded by forbidding mountains and powerful neighbors. When the neighboring baron, allied with a powerful wizard, attempts to take over his land, first by political, then by covert means, Acwellen finds an ally of his own in Enith Roweson, an unassuming blacksmith who possesses powers he's only known of in legends. As he attempts to unravel both the plots against him----including the nature of the monsters sent to assassinate him----and the mysterious powers Enith is only beginning to understand she has, he also finds himself falling in love with the blacksmith's daughter.

The ugly duckling returns


Tony Bradman - 2011
    Now he's a famous model, but does being the biggest celebrity in the Forest mean he can't help save it?