Girls: Life Isn't a Fairy Tale by Annet SchaapMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
These are familiar fairy tales retold, and mostly modernised in some way: Rumpelstiltskin, Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, The Frog Prince, Bluebeard, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast. (Well, at least I think "Monster Girl" is a gender flipped Beauty and the Beast, since I can't figure out any closer comparison.)
There's a wry humour that runs through these stories, and it's especially amusing to me how Schaap twists the original stories to new and unexpected endings. Whilst all the stories are pretty dark, there's also a thread of hope - and if not hope, a kind of resilience - that turns up at the unexpected times and in unexpected places in most of them. There's also a stark realism to them; I'd like to imagine that these retellings would have the same impact on us as the originals did in their time, in warning the readers about the dangers of the world. And also in telling us how to overcome them.
Note: I received a digital ARC of this book from Pushkin Children's Books via Edelweiss. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
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