December 21, 2021 - the first day of winter and Short Story Day. I selected Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears an anthology of re-envisioned fairy tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling for my December 2021 review. This anthology contains stories from Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Jane Yolen, and others. It is the third volume in a series. Detailed biographies of Datlow and Windling are at the end of the anthology.
Before each story, the editors have included a brief biography of the author and what motivated them to select the fairy tale they have chosen to reinterpret.
Whatever you do, do not skip the introduction by Windling and Datlow. It includes a brief history of fairy tales and how they evolved from old oral folk tales of many cultures to the Disney blockbusters our kids adore.
It shouldn’t surprise you that folk tales and fairy tales weren’t originally meant for children.
The authors have taken different approaches to re-telling the original tales of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Sleeping Beauty, The Wizard of Oz, and other classics.
Some are set in modern-day, while others remain in their time periods but may reverse the hero and the villain. Often, it’s hard to find the good guys and the story more closely resembles the original folk tale than the sanitized versions of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen we read today.
I didn’t enjoy all the stories in this anthology, but I appreciate the creativity of their authors. It isn’t easy to take an original tale that has morphed through the years and give it a new twist. Reading this anthology makes me want to research the evolution of these tales and I’m curious about other books in this series. I dare you to read this and not start re-envisioning your favorite folk tales and fairy tales.
Image of Ellen Datlow taken from https://ellendatlow.com/about/ with no intention of copyright infringement.
Image of Terri Windling taken from https://www.terriwindling.com/ with no intention of copyright infringement.
Image of book cover: By https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/431429-L.jpg, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58687554