Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

That Rumpelstiltskin is my name

Rumpelstiltskin by Mac Barnett and Carson Ellis

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Do you like fairy or folk tales? Do you like pure telling of said fairy tales with a small change? And do you like Rumpelstiltskin? Or at least the story, it is a little hard to like Rumpelstitskin. And if you answered yes to any of the above, you should read Mac Barnett’s version of the story. It is the story we know: king meets a miller, who brags about how awesome his daughter is, the king is greedy and wants the spun gold, the […]

Do you let your children read Stephen King?

Hansel and Gretel by Stephen King and Maurice Sendak

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You might have heard that Stephen King took Maurice Sendak’s illustrations and sent them out into the world as a picture book called  Hansel and Gretel. Here is the story of how I finally read it:  One Saturday I needed a change of scenery and took a few hours to browse my local library. I sat at a table (in a too tall chair), read half of an adult graphic novel (while charging my phone, and after breaking a fingernail trying to get said book), […]

Out of the Mouths of Nursemaids and Travelers

The Watkins Book of English Folktales by Neil Philip

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England has a great culture of letters, but when it comes to folklore, people often don’t think further than Jack and the Beanstalk. In this collection of English folktales though, we can see that the isles have a great tradition of oral storytelling beyond it. In my ongoing pursuit of folklore from around the world, I never really stopped to consider English folktales until this book reminded me that my knowledge of it was in fact pretty scanty. Over the course of about 400 pages, […]

Fairy Tales: a genre by and for “we the people”

Old Wives' Fairy Tale Book by Angela Carter

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I picked up this fairy tale collection in Tim’s Books, a tiny off-the-path used bookstore in Provincetown, because it had Angela Carter’s name on it, and I’ve been dedicating my book-buying to hoarding collections by the best fairy tale scholars, especially the feminist ones. It has, as you can see, a delightfully dated cover, but its ideas are very radical and timeless. The book is a selection of fairy tales and folktales chosen by Carter (author of the brilliant The Bloody Chamber), highlighting some of the […]

Radicalize your reading through fairy tales

The Castle of Truth and Other Revolutionary Tales by Hermynia Zur Mühlen, Jack Zipes

Smack-Bam, or The Art of Governing Men: Political Fairy Tales of Édouard Laboulaye by Édouard Laboulaye, Jack Zipes

The Dragon Daughter and Other Lin Lan Fairy Tales by Juwen Zhang

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If you ask me “What’s the best thing about fairy tales?” my brain will combust. But in this very moment, I’ll say one of the best things is that there are so many forgotten or “undiscovered” tales to enjoy. In an effort to bring some forgotten folklorists to the forefront, fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes (my nerdiest old man crush) and Princeton University Press came together for a new-ish series called Oddly Modern Fairy Tales. Each volume concentrates on a writer or movement in fairy […]

Land of the Rising Sun

Ancient Tales & Folklore of Japan by Richard Gordon Smith

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Smith, a Victorian traveller to Japan, compiled into this book a number of folktales that he heard from the people around him while there. I have always been interested in mythology and folklore. My great-grandmother used to tell me stories from Hindu mythology when I was four or five (though unfortunately her versions are now lost to the sands of infantile amnesia), and throughout elementary school I branched out to Greek and Norse mythology as well. I’m not sure why I love fairytales and folklore […]



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