Away to Whimsical FairyTale Land Wrap-Up & Giveaway! (INT)

Away to Whimsical Fairy Tale Land has come to a close and I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful bloggers who participated - Tory @ The Baozy, Angie @ Angela's Anxious Life and Lory at Emerald City Book Review.  Thank you guys so much for your time and your interesting posts!  With this event we covered the fairy tales "The Six Swans", "Twelve Dancing Princesses", "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Robin Hood"  (just noticed the popularity of 'hood' there! :D)  

And of course much thanks and appreciation goes to my lovely event co-host Ana @ Read Me Away who did so much of the planning for this event and whose google doc updates I always looked forward to reading! And our twitter shenanigans were the highlight! :)  (Check out her post for her recap of our chat!)  It was wonderful to co-host this with you m'dear! 

Now for the giveaway - Ana and I are each offering a giveaway to win one of three books with a fairy tale theme (we are each picking our own books to give away so check out Ana's post to win a choice of Shannon Hale books!)  This is an international giveaway, because I will be sending the winner the book through Amazon or The Book Depository (with Amazon I can send the book in the U.S. with my prime shipping so it will get there faster!)  

These are the books I've chosen to offer in my giveaway - 

"Daughter of the Forest" by Juliet Marillier (my thoughts on it here), a retelling of The Six Swans fairy tale.

"The Sleeper and the Spindle" by Neil Gaiman, an illustrated short story which retells Sleeping Beauty (such a gorgeous looking book!) 

"A Court of Thorns and Roses" by Sarah J. Maas. which is a Beauty and the Beast and Tam Lin retelling.  It's released in the U.S. on May 5th, 2015, so I will be sending the winner a notification that the book has been preordered for them.

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AWFairyTale - My Five Favorite Fairy Tales

For the Friday funtimes discussion, I'm going to rank my top five favorite fairy tales.  This was so not easy!  Because I love all these fairy tales so much!  But I did it, and I'll start with number 5 -

My favorite Disney film? Yes.  But the fairy tale itself, I have some issues with (namely the ending!!) which means this has to be in the number 5 spot.  I still love the poetic beauty of the story though - the mermaid who longs to be a part of something she was not born into (or born with), and of the tragic nature of falling for someone who does not return her love.  Her self-sacrifice is very touching as well, which even if I don't know if the Prince deserved it, I appreciate that she didn't want to do something so horrible to save her own life.  And in the end, she got something of what she wanted and so a measure of happiness.

The Robber Bridegroom is a Grimm fairy tale that is appropriately dark.  The heroine finds out that her future husband is a criminal and a murderer and what does she do about it?  Traps him and incriminates him at the right moment which results in his death.  The justice of it is a pretty great ending to such a dark fairy tale, and I feel like this would make a great dark YA retelling - it has mystery, suspense and danger.  And I'm sure a little romance can be worked in.  

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AWFairyTale - The Voice of Death

For Thursday's discussion post, I read a fairy tale I've never read before called "The Voice of Death".  I think the macabre title attracted me to reading it (I almost went for the Princess one!) but I'm glad I read this as it's really an interesting little story.  You can read it here if you are interested, but I'm going to summarize it below.

A man is intent on never dying and so goes on a journey to find a place where the people never die.  He finds a village and they tell him that no one ever dies, but their population is not overrun because sometimes someone calls for them and that person never returns.  The man ridicules these people who leave because they will eventually die, but the man is happy to move to the village himself.  So he takes his wife and children with him and they live happily for several years.  One night though, his wife hears someone calling for her and she wants to run out.  The man tries to keep her inside, but she is desperate to go so he lets her.  Many more years pass, and the man is called himself while getting a shave at the barber's.  The man yells and threatens the person who is calling him, but no one else in the shop can see this person.  The man gets up and runs after the person intending to chase him away, but instead falls to his death just outside of town into a ravine.  The next day the ravine is gone and the people realize what's been happening and from then on they die just as everyone does.

The ending was a bit of a twist for me, since while reading this story, I expected that the "call" everyone was getting was really death, but I did not know that this particular village was really getting  visited by the person of Death to lure them away.  It's interesting that because they did not know they were dying, that they did not die in the usual way.  Sort of on par with human hubris though - to imagine that we can really change the natural order of things and even alter death by our knowledge.  Which is of course what the man in the story does in his attempt to find a way to live forever.

That fear of death is integral to the story though - perhaps not knowing what it is makes it easier to bear, as is the idea of death being just a different place that you go to.  With the ending, this story strips away any comforting thoughts though, so I'm not really sure what the take home message of the tale is.  To face the truth?  That's the best that I can come up with!  If anyone has any more ideas, I'd welcome more thoughts in the comments!

Link up! 

 Please add a link to your own Away to Whimsical FairyTale Land post below!

AWFairyTale - The Retellings

I read two retellings of the fairy tale The Six Swans - "Daughter of the Forest" by Juliet Marillier and "Swan Kingdom" by Zoe Marriott.

I'll have a proper review of both of these books coming in a week or two, but right now I 'm just going to focus on comparing these books to the original and my thoughts on how well they retold the fairy tale.  For reference, here's my post on The Six Swans from yesterday.

To compare these two books to the original, I'm going to go over what I thought were the important points in the "The Six Swans" and how these retellings captured that.  I think retellings of fairy tales really impress me when they can do these three things:

• Stay true to the emotion and intent of the original tale
• Add a new take on the plot (but not in a way that deviates too much from the original)
• Make the fairy tale feel real 

And if these retellings can do that and capture what I think in "The Six Swans," are the important themes (a strong family connection, the strength of women, and the pain women have to endure) then I feel these were very successful books as retellings.

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AWFairyTale - The Six Swans

Day 2 for Away to Whimsical FairyTale Land is a post exploring the fairy tale I chose!

In The Six Swans  a jealous stepmother curses the children of her husband, the King, and turns them into swans.  Only the daughter is left, and when she finds out that the only way to break the curse is to make six shirts for her brothers, while keeping silent for six years, she undertakes the task.  Meanwhile, another King or Prince happens upon her, falls in love, and marries her, although she never says a word.  She gives birth to three children, and each time her jealous mother-in-law takes the child and makes it appear that the child was eaten or killed by their mother.  When this happens the third time, the King has to order his wife's execution, but the six years are up and at the stake, the sister throws the shirts on the swans and is finally able to speak.

The biggest theme of this story is family love and fidelity, with the sister going through a lot to save her brothers.  She won't even speak up about her children, in her dedication to break the curse.  Such a chilling aspect to this story - it's worse than the curse placed on her brothers, that the mother-in-law would possibly try to kill the children (I think in some versions, she orders their death but it's not done) and then blame their mother for the deaths, just because she's not happy that she married her son!  Two examples of awful, manipulative and jealous women are juxtaposed by a paragon of virtue in the sister in this story.  It's interesting that the women play the active roles in this tale - the brothers and the Kings are just sort of in the background as the sister works to save them.

Another aspect that I thought was interesting to this story (that is explored in a note on the SurLaLune website) is the role of silence.  Swans were thought to be silent and said to only sing when they were close to death, and the idea that a woman must be silent and endure is probably a virtue that was well thought of when this story was circulated.  It is an anti-feminist way of looking at it, but it can also be seen as a way to show just how strong a character the sister is - that in addition to the hardships she goes through, she also maintains her silence and can not have the comfort of sharing her troubles for all that time.  She is utterly alone.

I was familiar with this story before, but reading and thinking about the text for this event, made me appreciate it more.  It has so much more of an impact for me now, and I'm looking forward to picking up on some of those themes and ideas I've mentioned here in the retellings I'm reading!

Link up!

Please add a link to your own Away to Whimsical FairyTale Land post below!

Away to Whimsical FairyTale Land - Introduction

It's the first day of the week long fairy tale event I'm co-hosting with the lovely Ana @ Read Me Away!  If you want more information about the event - check out my post here.  If you haven't signed up but would like to participate a little, I hope you can join us for our #AWFairyTale twitter chat this Saturday, March 7th at 6pm PST/9pm EST.  It will be for an hour and we'll have questions and trivia to answer!

To the wonderful participants of this event: there is a link-up below on this post, so please add the URL of your introduction post so we can all visit each other! :)  Now on to my introduction answers--

What is the fairy tale you picked? 

The fairy tale I picked is the Grimm Brothers tale - The Six Swans.  I was already familiar with this story and liked it, but analyzing it for this event has given me a better appreciation for the story.  And it has a depth and an emotional drama to it that was surprising to me, since I never really noticed it before.  It was very easy to delve more deeply into this fairy tale (which is what I do for tomorrow's post!)

Why did you pick your fairy tale of choice? 

I picked this one because I've been wanting to read 'Daughter of the Forest' by Juliet Marillier for a long time now, and this gives me the perfect incentive to finally pick it up!  I'm also planning to read 'The Swan Kingdom' by Zoe Marriott because I've really enjoyed a Marriott fairy tale retelling in the past, and this one sounds excellent!

        

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The Refined Reader (34) Fairy Tales & "Away to Whimsical Fairy Tale Land" Introduction

The Refined Reader aims to take a look at the journey to where we are as readers today.  It's part history, part commentary - providing a brief, conversational summary of various aspects of our bookish past and comparing it to how it has affected us in modern times.  I love history, but I am no historian, and while I plan to do my research, if there are any errors, please let me know!  This is as much a learning venture for me as I hope it is for my blog visitors!

I'm pairing this Refined Reader post with an introduction to an event I'm co-hosting with Ana from Read Me Away that will celebrate fairy tales, so please keep reading for more information!

The history of the fairy tale is very murky.  It was largely an oral tradition so it's difficult to know just when it appeared in our consciousness.  The earliest instances of a fairy tale appear to be Aesop's tales from 6th century BC Greece and Chinese Taoist philosophers would discuss fairy tales in their ancient philosophical works.  In the 18th century there was a resurgence in popularity of these magical tales in Europe which led to a concerted effort to write them down which resulted in the collections of the Grimm Brothers and Charles Perrault.

What is a fairy tale?  This was before the genre of fantasy was conceptualized, so they generally fit into that genre, although a fairy tale is differentiated from a legend in that it is known that a fairy tale is not possibly true.  There is also an inclusion of magic or enchantments in the story and the setting is in an earlier but unidentifiable time.  There are sometimes debates over what is a fairy tale, but it is much less confused now then it was before.  Before fantasy became a genre, many early fantasy tales were labeled 'fairy tales' such as The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, and Animal Farm.

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The Fairy-tale Survey

Mel at The Daily Prophecy created this fun fairy-tale themed bookish survey which of course I just had to participate in!  I love how these surveys are a quick way to highlight great books (and sometimes not-great books) which lets me put some book recommendations out there for other bloggers! (If you get anything  from this survey it's Go ahead and pick up some Melina Marchetta!)

PART 1. CLASSIC PRINCESSES.

Pinocchio – The boy whose nose grows when he lies.

Is there a book you lie about, because you feel ashamed for liking it?

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer.  I know, it's a crazy book.  My jaw dropped so many times reading that book.  But I liked it!  Everybody got their happy ending, it made sense to me, and it was a satisfying read.  Full circle and happy.  I'm a sucker for happy endings.  Although I don't really lie about liking it, I just don't say anything about it. :)

Beauty and the Beast – The girl who fell in love with personality.

Which book do you love that has a hideous cover?

Well I wouldn't say "hideous" but The Lumatere Chronicles by Melina Marchetta.  Actually the more I see it, the more I'm upset that such a wonderful, beautiful book has such a mediocre cover.  The cover blending looks a bit amateurish (especially for the last book - Quintana of Charyn) and the books are just so much more than the cover indicates.  In fact if I was more talented at photoshop I would try to do a re-cover for the whole series.



Snow White – Hunted down for her beauty.

Do you ever buy a book based on the cover alone and if so, what is the last one?

Not really - I mean I pick up books based on the cover and then evaluate from the synopsis if I would like to read it.  The last book I bought because of it's eye-catching cover was Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan.  Mostly because the publishers changed the cover and I don't like the new one, so I wanted to own the original cover before they stopped selling it.



Sleeping beauty – Cursed to sleep, awakened by true loves kiss.

Who is your favorite book couple?

Oh well of course my number one favorite would have to be Jane and Rochester from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.  My perfect romance, and it's a wonderful love story based on mutual respect and the characters getting to know each other through conversations.



Little Mermaid – Gave up on her old life for love.

Do you ever branch out to new genres or do you like to stick with the ones you know and love? If you try new things out, what is the latest book?

Sadly I don't really branch out, mostly because I know what I like and I'm usually disappointed if I try something new.  But I think the last book I read in a genre I don't normally read is Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta which was... well disappointing.  But I think it's mostly because contemporary is really not my thing.



Cinderella – Who lost her shoe after midnight.

What is the last book that made you stay up all night?

Cress by Marissa Meyer.  I just had to finish it!  (And it's a fitting book for this survey!)  Towards the end everything just started getting more and more nerve-wracking, I could hardly take the stress of the suspense!  But it was such a good book!



Rapunzel – Locked up in a tower.

What is the worst book you’ve read last month?

Although it wasn't that bad, my lowest rated book from last month was The Vanishing by Wendy Webb.  It was very atmospheric and creepy but ultimately I was disappointed by the characters and the resolution.

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