Since quite a few of you were interested in my last fairy tale post (which you can read here), this post is here to let you know that I am still very much into fairy tales and have been collecting quite a few more since we last spoke of them.

As of late, my bedside table has been home to a veritable tower of books.  (That’s not to say that I’m talented enough to read all of them at once, though I very much wish that I was.) Living in this book-tower are two books that I’m excited to let you know about right now in this very post, so without further ado….they are St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and  My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell

You may remember St. Lucy’s from an earlier post by Zita.  I believe she referenced it as “an awesome little book of short stories,” and that could not be closer to the truth.  I recently gifted this book to a friend of mine, who in the middle of writing her honors thesis and finishing up all of the other requisite undergraduate work, found time to read a bit and said that the stories really stuck with her.  Russell was named one of The New Yorker’s “Top 20 Under 40 Writers” this summer and with good reason.  I personally wish that I could crawl into the world she has created—a world of sleep-away camps for “disordered dreamers” where one of the remedies is to fall asleep in a hot air balloon, alligator-wrestling theme parks hidden away in swamplands, and cities made of large, abandoned shells.  I recently received an advance reading copy of Russell’s new novel Swamplandia!  (happy early Christmas to me)and can hardly wait to get started on it.

My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer

This book is a fairy tale anthology, but what Kate Bernheimer has done is asked contemporary writers like Aimee Bender, Michael Cunningham, Neil Gaiman, and Joyce Carol Oates (the list of wonderful authors goes on and on) to take a fairy tale “classic” (think La Fontaine, the brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson) and write a new version or spin-off inspired by that classic. It’s a fun book to read, and since it’s an anthology, it’s easy to just pick up and read one story whenever the mood strikes.

Bernheimer is an Associate Professor of English and Writer in Residence at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette and has written several books of her own.  She founded the Fairy Tale Review in 2005 and remains the editor.  Check out her website here.

Gregory Maguire (author of Wicked) writes in the Foreword:

Let’s open the door to the green room and peek to see who is waiting. A bevy of beauties…an evanescence of sprites…an abundance of adversaries…a passel of princes…Maybe we should have brought that bubbly; but there’s something being served here more deeply inebriating than champagne.  Hush.

What are some of your fairy-tale favorites?  The last time I wrote about fairy tales I received some lovely suggestions, and I’d love to add more books to the soon-to-be-toppling-tower on my bedside table.  -Kaycie

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