Fairy Tales

Hilary McKay's Fairy Tales is a collection for 8 year olds that goes back to the old stories and finds new people inside them.

What happens

You'll know the titles. Rapunzel, Cinderella, Rumpelstiltskin, The Princess and the Pea. What you won't know is who's telling them.

Rapunzel's story starts with two children buying a caged bird at market. It takes days of knocking and every coin they have, and when they finally open the cage door the little yellowhammer won't come out. Their mother watches him and understands exactly why, because she was shut in a tower for eighteen years and some of her is still in there.

Rumpelstiltskin is told from the hob's side. He's a small, kind, lonely creature who sweeps yards and brews herb cures and gets paid in bread and milk, and all he has ever wanted is somebody to work for. The miller's daughter is the one who lies. It changes how the whole bargain feels.

That's the pleasure of reading these. McKay takes a story your reader already half knows and shifts where you're standing, so the person you were told to cheer for is suddenly not the point at all.

The writing is gorgeous, too. A tower that looks "like a deliberate insult inked against the stars". A forest that's "a green ocean of trees". It reads beautifully out loud.

Now, the bit to check before you hand it over. These are the old versions, with their teeth still in.

In the Rapunzel story the witch cuts off Rapunzel's hair with a knife, throws the Prince from the tower window, and he's blinded by the thorn bushes he lands in. Then the witch kills herself. In the Rumpelstiltskin story the hob is driven out of his village with stones, his hands are left broken and bleeding by the spinning, and a mother dies before her son can find him. Both of those stories end well. The middles do not.

So if your reader is on the sensitive side, or you've been enjoying the gentle picture-book versions, read the first story yourself first. You'll know within a few pages.

For a child who takes it in their stride, though, this is exactly the right kind of scary. The stakes are real, so the happy ending actually means something.

What to read next

Another collection that works the same trick is Blackberry Blue and Other Fairy Tales, which is in the library as well. Jamila Gavin wrote new tales rather than retelling old ones, so there's a baby found in a bramble patch and a princess riding across the Milky Way, and she says in her preface that she wanted more children to look at the heroes and think, that could be me.