A Trio of Fairy Tales: "The Little Book of Princesses," "The Rumpelstiltskin Problem," and "The Ordinary Princess"

1.

Back when I was toying with decoupage as a possible hobby, I was kind of evil at book sales, buying books with every intent of cutting them up for their illustrations. I stopped for three reasons:

               

1.      I found out most of the paper I was using to form my magnificent collages was rife with acid and would yellow and eat away with time. Nothing quite puts a damper on a hobby like finding out it’s not going to last long enough to be put on exhibit at the museum.

2.      There’s only so much you can decoupage. And, while peeling dried Mod Podge off ones hands does have a strangely pleasant aesthetic appeal, it simply wasn’t as interesting as I’d thought.

3.      The Little Book of Princesses, compiled by Clare Charlton and edited by Philippa Wingate

I got The Little Book of Princesses for the illustrations.* Years later when I discovered this little-known backwater website called Pinterest I began a board for art from fairy tales, and lo and behold all these artists like Arthur Rackham and John Bauer are actually famous.  And here I thought this book was the only place I could get a-hold of them!

At the time I had no idea of this, however. As a matter of courtesy I thought I’d read the book before cutting it up. The introduction, “What is a Princess?” caught me by surprise:

“Princesses are the daughters of kings and queens, but in fairy tales there is a lot more to being a princess than that….The girls in these fairy tales are prepared to risk danger or disgrace in order to behave like a ‘proper’ princess.”

The first story is East of the Sun West of the Moon, and reading this destined-for-confetti-book was the first exposure I had to what eventually became a favorite fairy tale of mine.  Needless to say, I kept the book.

2.

I love fairy tales even as an adult. But even as a child, I had issues with some of them. The characters are usually not characterized, and the plot devices sometimes made me close the book and bang my forehead against it, they were so nonsensical. (I mean, Hansel and Gretel, really. How come Hansel can’t get out of their house to get white stones the second time? Because the door was locked. From the outside. Apparently. I guess?)

Vivian Vande Velde provides some possible answers to one of the stories in The Rumplestiltskin Problem, a collection of short stories all based on Rumplestiltskin. Some are scary.  Some are funny. Some are ironic. But each one provides a solution to the many inconsistencies and questions posed by the original fairy tale.

I would like to note a possible parental objection for one of the stories, Straw into Gold, which ends with The Miller’s Daughter running off with Rumplestiltskin…after she married the king.  Granted the king forced her to marry him, and was by all accounts an unloving at best, homicidal at worst, character.  But I’m still recommending this book for older tweens/teens who possess the maturity to consider such moral implications. 

3.

M.M. Kaye wrote The Ordinary Princess in a short span of time, and it is just as possible to read the entire book in an afternoon. It’s a simple tale, with no real villains and a very ordinary heroine named Amethyst Alexandra Augusta Araminta Adelaide Aurelia Anne…Amy for short. She is “cursed” with ordinariness by one of those “fairies that come to the christening,” making her different from her perfect, archetypal princess sisters. When she grows up and it’s clear that she doesn’t fit into people’s expectations of what a princess should look or act like, she runs away to find a place where she’ll fit in.   

It’s a very sweet, simple book with warm humor and neat line-drawn illustrations. Not an actual fairy tale re-imagining per se, but there’s plenty of references to Sleeping Beauty and other tales to firmly situate The Ordinary Princess into the same universe as Grimm and Perrault.