Fairy Tale Fridays - The Mermaids

It's been years since I read Hans Christian Andersen's original tale of The Mermaid (who, by the way, in my copy at least, wasn't little). The closest I've come to it in the past twenty years is repeated viewings of the Disney adaptation. Just after Christmas, though, I picked up a copy of Andersen's Fairy Tales and The Mermaid was the first tale in the book, making it the perfect place to start.

On her fifteenth birthday, the youngest daughter of the king of the mermen is at long last allowed to travel to the surface of the ocean. There she sees a ship with a handsome prince traveling on it and she is immediately smitten. As she watches him, a storm comes up and the prince is thrown into the sea. The mermaid saves the prince, depositing him on the beach where a young woman finds him. The prince, who had been unconscious for some time, awoke, believing this young woman had saved him.

The mermaid continued to travel to the surface to watch the prince from the distance. As her love for him grew, she became determined that she must be with him. She has also been told that humans, unlike merpeople, have souls, making them immortal. The mermaid had long yearned to have a soul and decided to visit a witch to see if her dreams might be made to come true. The witch assures the mermaid that she can be made human but she warns the mermaid that the pain of her tail separating intolegs will be excruciating and that the price of becoming human is the mermaid's voice. Furthermore, if the mermaid is unable to win the prince's heart and he marries another, then the mermaid will die and return to the sea as foam. Despite all of that, the mermaid agrees and the witch cuts out her tongue.

The mermaid swims to shore, drinks the potion and is found sometime later by the prince. He is enchanted by her beauty, as is the kingdom. But the prince cannot stop thinking of the young woman he believes saved his life. When she turns out to be the daughter of another king, and not a religious woman as he believed, he marries her. The mermaid is devastated and prepares to die. Just as that begins to happen, she is visited by the daughters of the air, who tell the mermaid that if she joins them and does good deeds for three hundred years then she will earn a soul. It's a price she is more than willing to pay.

Reading the original tale gave me a much greater appreciation for what Carolyn Turgeon has written in Mermaid. In it, she retained much of the original story, playing up the darkness that Andersen only hinted at. What struck me most about Andersen's tale was not the love story between the prince and the mermaid but the story about the mermaid's desire for an eternal soul, something that makes the story even more universal.

In My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (edited by Kate Bernheimer), Katherine Vaz has used the tale of the mermaid as the inspiration for her story "What the Conch Shell Sings, When The Body Is Gone." She was also influenced by the story of the real life Million-Dollar Mermaid, Annette Kellerman, a woman who performed self-styled ballet inside water-filled tanks.

Vaz tells the story of Meredith and Ray, a couple who started as friends and eventually married. By the time we meet them, however, Meredith and Ray are hardly talking. Meredith suspects, rightly, that Ray is having an affair. When she confronts him, she warns him that the other woman is only using Ray to promote her own career. The two divorce and Ray marries the other woman, only to find out that Meredith was right. Years later, when Ray is again divorced and Meredith finds herself battling breast cancer, the two find themselves together again, more in love than ever.

As I was reading this story,  I didn't initially understand where the story of The Mermaid had played a part, beyond obvious references to the ocean plants and tank that Ray and Meredith had installed in their house to practice holding their breath under water. But as I read, I was able to see the influence. Ray allowed himself to be drawn from the woman he truly loved to marry the woman he thought was 'saving" him. As with the tale of The Mermaid, What The Conch Shell Sings is the story of a love triangle but also the story of eternal love.

As with all of the stories in My Mother She Killed Me, I very much enjoyed Vaz's explanation at the end of the story of how she came to write it. She had long been interested in the life of Annette Kellerman and even a walk through a perfume department in a store played a part in her story.

Next week, I'll be reading stories about The Little Match Girl, including the original tale and an adaptation from My Mother She Killed Me. I'll also be looking at how that one has been sanitized for children.

Mermaid: A Twist On The Classic Tale by Carolyn Turgeon

Mermaid: A Twist on the Classic Tale by Carolyn Turgeon
256 pages
Published March 2011 by Crown Publishing Group
Source: I bought this at the Omaha Lit Fest

In a convent, high on a mountain top, Princess Margrethe of the Northern Kingdom is being hidden from her kingdom's enemies. One cold morning, Margrethe is out walking in the gardens when she is startled to see a mermaid emerging from the sea with a nearly dead man in her arms, depositing him on the rocks, Margrethe is certain, even from as far away as she is  that she can hear the mermaid calling to her to save the man. Margrethe rushes to the man, covering him with furs and then goes for help, risking her own life in the process. Hours later, after she recovers, she makes her way to the man and the two are instantly drawn to each other. When the man rushes away from the convent the following day, it is then that Margrethe realizes that he is Prince Christopher of the Southern Kingdom, sworn enemy to her people.

Margrethe's father, King Erik, rushes to her "rescue" and uses the situation to convince his kingdom to go to war with the Southern Kingdom. But Margrethe is sure that the mermaid brought the man to her for  a reason and concocts a secret plot to unite the two kingdoms by marrying Christopher.

Lenia, the mermaid princess, who saved Christopher, also finds herself in love with this human. She has always longed to know more about humans and believes the stories her grandmother told her about humans living forever through their souls. Unable to shake the memory of Christopher from her mind, Lenia visits Sybil, a witch, who promises her that there's a way that Lenia can become human and join Christopher. The price is great and Lenia must convince Christopher to marry her or she will never have a soul and if he marries anther, she will die.

It's been a long time since I've read the original tale of the Little Mermaid, my comparison as I read being primarily with Disney's version of the classic fairy tale. As far as I could recall, there was much of Andersen's story retained in Turgeon's retelling, with the grittiness that is more authentic to classic fairy tales while retaining the magic that appeals to all ages (although this is definitely not a story to read to your children). The story could occasionally fall into sappiness and the characters a bit caricaturized (I know, I know it's not a word but you get my point).  Overall the book was fun and I found I couldn't put it down. There was, of course, the twist spoken of in the title and plenty of others that kept me guessing as to which woman would win the hand of the handsome prince. Sometimes, happily ever after means someone has to suffer.

Fairy Tale Fridays - Fairy Tales Japanese Style

This was meant to be a post about fairy tale princesses but the first thing I saw (well, after I sifted through hundreds of images of Disney princesses, little girls in princess costumes and some naughty princess costume shots) was a lovely Japanese book titled "Japanese Fairy Tales: Princess Splendor." My mind immediately changed tracks. "Princess Splendor" is more widely known as The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.

There once lived a poor, elderly bamboo cutter and his wife; their great sadness was that they were never able to have children. Every day, the bamboo cutter, Taketori no Okina, went out to cut bamboo which he brought home and fashioned into items that he sold. One day when he was in the bamboo forest, a soft light began glowing from one of the bamboo stalks. When Taketori no Okina looked closely, he discovered, in a notch in the stalk, a very tiny girl, who glowed as if light by the moon. He took the girl home and he and his wife adopted the girl as their own. Everyday after that, when the bamboo cutter went off to work, he found gold and precious gems in the bamboo stalks and he and his family were soon wealthy.

The tiny girl. Kaguya-hime, blossomed into a fully-grown young lady whose beauty soon became known throughout the land. Soon suitors began appearing at the home but the girl had no interest in marrying. Five suitors came to beg for her hand and she set them all off on impossible tasks. None of them succeeded. When the Emperor of Japan, Mikado, heard of Kaguya-hime, he came to see her, fell in love with her and asked her to marry him only to be turned down. Kaguya-hime told the Emperor that she was not of his country so could not go to his palace.

That summer, whenever the moon was full, Kaguya-hime became depressed. When her worried parents questioned Kaguya-hime about her sadness, she finally told them that she was from the Moon and must return to her people there. As the time drew near for Kaguya-hime to leave, the Emperor sent an army to protect her from the Moon people.

But when the Moon people arrived, the guards were blinded by a strange light. Kaguya-hime announced that she must return to her home, despite her love for her parents and earthly friends. She wrote her parents and the Emperor a sad apology for leaving, gave her parents her own robe as a memento and entrusted the elixir of life to a guard to take to the Emperor. When a feather robe was placed on her shoulder, all of Kaguya-hime's sadness was forgotten and the heavenly group left for the Moon.

When he received the elixir, the Emperor said that he didn't want to live forever without Kaguya-hime.  He sent a guard to the top of the mountain closest to the heavens to burn his message to her, along with the elixir of life, hoping that his message would reach her. Legend tells that the Japanese word for immortality became the name of the mountain...Mount Fuji.

The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is still widely told today and has been adapted in many forms. It seems hard for me to believe that it wasn't an inspiration for Hans Christian Anderson's Thumbelina. It has been made into a film and an opera and both Sesame Street and Hello Kitty have included the story in special episodes. For manga fans, you may be familiar with the idea of Moon people from the book/television series Sailor Moon.

Once again, in looking into fairy tales, I've come across something new to me that has only piqued my interest in learning more. More Japanese fairy tales to come!

Fairy Tale Fridays - What's New In Fairy Tales

In my last Fairy Tale Fridays, I focused on Giambattista Basile, one of the first people to commit fairy tales to paper. This week, I wanted to focus on what's happening with fairy tales more recently.

Kate Bernheimer (who I've raved about endlessly when talking about Omaha Lit Fest specifically and fairy tales in general) recently released the third in a trilogy of novels about the Gold sister. In March, The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold was published by FC2 completing the trilogy started in 2001 with The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold and continued in 2006 with The Complete Tales of Merry Gold. HTML Giant has an in-depth (3000 words in-depth!) review of the trilogy.

Previously I mentioned SurLaLune as a great source of annontated fairy tales. There is now a blog associated with the site as well. From there I see that there is not just one but four movies in the works Snow White, three of which are a trilogy starring Kristin Stewart of Twilight fame. The other is a Julia Robert's project. A Beauty & The Beast movie adaptation in the works, starring Emma Watson of Harry Potter fame, is being pulled together by Guillermo del Toro among others. All of those, in conjunction with the upcoming ABC t.v. series Once Upon A Time appear to mean that I'll be watching fairy tales almost as often as I'm reading them.

New sites I found while doing research on the internet (okay, playing), are Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine and on dictionary.com fairytale flashcards and a quiz.  Now I'm off to go play (er, research) some more. Can't wait to see what else is out there is discover!

Fairy Tale Fridays - Giambattista Basile

When I had the idea to start Fairy Tale Fridays, I largely envisioned myself re-reading beloved fairy tales, reading the new takes on them and discovering the original versions. Perhaps a little research here and there into the origins of the tales. But the more I've read, the more I've wanted to learn about how the stories morphed over time, who passed them down and who's telling them now and I'm always looking for new sources of information. Today I found The Journal of Mythical Arts thanks to Veens at Giving Reading A Chance. I doubly excited to find this site because it covers not just fairy tales but myths as well.

As soon as I started poking around the site, I came across the name Giambattista Basile. You may remember that I only recently discovered Basile (shocking, now that I know how much he contributed to fairy tales) and I decided I wanted to learn more about this man who seems to be one of the first people to record fairy tales which had, until that time, been primarily oral.

Born in 1575, Basile was both a poet and a military man who held posts in Neapolitan courts. As different as those two roles are, he's best known for two wildly divergent works. One was a series of nine satires of popular culture in Naples, the other a fairy tale collection, the title of which translates to The Tale of Tales or Entertainment for Little Ones. Basile took the tales that he had heard and made them into original tales which are heavily metaphorical and written in the local dialect. The stories were never published until after Basile's death and then fell into relative obscurity until the Brother's Grimm praised the work. For a guy that's been dead nearly 400 years, Basile is remarkably modern--he's got his own Facebook page! So now, in addition to my previous pledge to learn more about religion in fairy tales, I also want to read Basile's original work (well, the English translation, anyway!).

Fairy Tale Fridays - The True Bride

With June being the traditional month of weddings, I thought it was only appropriate that Fairy Tale Fridays make its return with tale about a bride and so I selected "The True Bride" from my Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales. As I was reading along, I was enjoying all of the similarities that this tale has with so many of the other tales: wicked stepmother; poor, down-trodden stepdaughter who is forced to work day and night; and even a fairy godmother (although she is not actually called a fairy godmother in this tale).

About half way through this tale, though, the story switched gears. The fairy godmother had seen to it the the wicked stepmother met her demise and that our heroine had been left to thrive in a magnificent castle filled with everything she would need. This is where most fairy tales would end. It is a happily-ever-after ending after all. But this tale launches right into its next incarnation wherein our heroine must find herself a husband. Because, of course, she certainly can't really be happy until she has one, right? There are no end of suitors wooing our young lady but none of them strikes her fancy until a handsome prince comes along. It had to be a handsome prince, didn't it? When our girl promises herself to the prince, he tells her to wait for him under a lime tree and he'll be back shortly after he speaks to his father. When he doesn't return, the girl goes in search of him. Having no luck, she finally buries the fine gowns and jewels she has brought along on her journey and hires herself on as a farm hand. You heard me right, a farm hand. Has a castle she got as a reward after being forced to work so hard for so long that she doesn't return to, opting instead to work hard all day. I don't get it either.

One day, who should ride by but that same prince who does not even recognize the young lady he so recently wanted to marry. The next day he rides by again. Finally the girl decides to dig up her jewels and gowns and go to the castle. Now here is where I started to think to myself "didn't I already read this story?" The first night the girl showed up in a dress with golden suns, the next night a dress with silver moons and the third night a stardress. Well, of course, the prince finally remembered the girl and off they went to her castle to be married. Thanks heavens because everyone knows you have to be married to be happy.

Now, where had I heard this story before? Oh yes, on April 1st Fairy Tale Fridays featured the tale of The Princess in Disguise, a tale where a young woman uses three gowns, one the color of the sun, one the color of the moonlight and one with the twinkle of the stars. It seems that as the tales got told from place to place, different storytellers must have adapted the tales, choosing the parts that they liked from one tale and weaving it into another. I had never heard the story of The True Bride before, but Jim Henson had heard of it and liked it well enough to include it in his mini-series The Storytellers which ran on HBO in the late 1980's. In Henson's version, our heroine has a name (Anja) and rather than a wicked stepmother, she suffers under a troll. The prince is originally a gardener and instead of a series of gowns, Anja must use her jewels and wealth to convince the troll's daughter to let her spend time with the prince who is under sleeping spell. A reverse Sleeping Beauty, if you will. I would love to see if I can find a copy of this entire series! For the version of the tale that Henson must have used, check out the full story, troll and all.

Up next week, more wedding stories including The Heavenly Wedding.

Fairy Tale Fridays - Maria Tatar

Last fall, when I was at the Omaha Lit Fest (are you getting tired of me talking about that yet?), there were a couple of names I had never heard before that kept coming up during the panel discussions. With my interest in fairy tales piqued, I decided it was probably important to learn more about those people. Included in that group were Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Joy Williams, and Maria Tatar. Carter, Calvino and Williams are all highly respected authors whose works include fairy tales and I'll get to them soon. This week I want to introduce you to Tatar.

Maria Tatar is a teacher and a writer, two things that make her interesting to me immediately. She's not just any teacher though; Tatar teaches folklore, children's literature and Germanic culture studies at none other than Harvard University. She chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythology. In an interview you can see at the Barnes & Noble website, Tatar says that the combination of horror and beauty is what drew her into the study of folklore. The woman is a prolific translator and annotator of classic fairy tales and has made herself "the" expert in the field.

In this interview for the Harvard Gazette, Tatar talks about writing her book The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales (W.W. Norton 2002), teaching fairy tales and why she thinks the tales appeal to such a wide age group. Those morals I was looking for when I started reading fairy tales? Tatar says that fairy tales don't provide them. Any morals you find in the stories were probably added by the people that made the tales into stories for children. Sometimes the morals even run counter to the stories, she says.

Enjoy what Ms. Tatar has to say about storytelling, folklore and children's literature at her blog, Breezes From Wonderland.

Fairy Tale Friday - The Princess In Disguise

Because it's April Fool's Day, I thought a fairy tale about trickery was in order, so this week I read The Princess in Disguise, wherein a princess disguises herself first to flee her father and then to trap herself a husband.

Once upon a time there was a queen who was dying. Shortly before she died, she made her husband, the King, promise not to remarry unless the woman was a beautiful as the Queen was and had hair as golden. After she died, the King's men searched far and wide but never could find such a woman for the King to take as a second wife. So the King finally decided that he would marry his daughter (I know, yuck!).When he told his daughter his plan, she was creeped out by the idea as well. To put him off, she told him that she first she wanted three gowns, one as golden as the sunshine, one as silvery as the moon and one as glittering as the stars. She also asked for a mantle made from a thousand skins of rough fur sewn together. Impossible tasks, thought she. But she was wrong. So when the King presented them to her, she decided she needed to run away. One night she folded the gowns up so small that they fit in a nut shell (what the heck material were these dresses made of?), stained her hands and face with the juice from a walnut, and took three gold tokens with her before she left, a ring, a spinning wheel, and a hook.

She walked all night then fell asleep in a forest. It just so happened that day the King of that country's men were out hunting and thought the girl was some new kind of animal. Fortuitously, the King ordered the animal captured alive and when the men found that this was a girl and not an animal, they decided to try to help her. They brought her back to their castle where she became an assistant to the cook and was known as Roughskin. Some time later, the King was hosting a party and Roughskin asked to watch the visitors arrived and the cook agreed. Swiftly, the princess, washed off her face and hands and changed into the gold dress and joined the guests. The King was enchanted but the princess left without telling him who she was. Later the King asked for a bowl of soup and the cook let Roughskin make the soup. Into the soup she dropped the gold ring. When the King asked the cook about it, she said she hadn't made the soup and Roughskin said that she didn't know where the ring came from.

The next time visitors were coming, the princess did the same thing with with the silver dress. Again the king was taken by her but again she disappeared. This time when he asked for soup, she dropped in the golden spinning wheel, then , as Roughskin, denied knowing anything about it. The third time the King had guests, the princess donned the shimmering dress but the King was smart and snuck the ring on her finger before she left (really? she didn't feel that?). The princess was late getting back and this time didn't fully get her face stained and could only hide her dress under her mantle. When she sent the king the soup, she dropped in the hook. When he came to the kitchen, he saw uncovered the princess and found the ring on her finger. She finally told him all of her history. Where upon he asked her to marry him and "they lived happily till their death."

This is actually quite a short story that carries quite a lot of symbolism. The number three repeatedly appears in the story (three dresses, three golden pieces, and three attributes that made the princess appeal to the king), a number that was historically significant. The attributes of the princess (wealth, beauty and the ability to cook) are symbolic of the way men have traditionally valued women. Each of the golden pieces is symbolic on its own. The ring, given first, represents a promise; the spinning wheel represents femininity; and the hook...well, the hook is obvious, isn't it? It's interesting to note that the princess only had value when she was with her father or future husband but only when she was away from them did she have a name, her own identity.


For a humorous look at the story, checkout this version in play form.

Fairy Tale Fridays - Rumpelstiltskin

Rumpelstiltskin, or Rumpelstitzchen as he was originally known in Germany, was a little gnome of a man who "stars" in a tale of the same name that first gained popularity in a collection of fairy tales put together by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. In fact, the brothers actually collected four versions of the tale during their time in Hesse, Germany.  The story has (like so many other fairy tales) origins much further back in time.  The earliest variants of the story appear to go back as far as the early 16th century.  The story is not limited to the tales collected in Germany; there are versions of this fairy tale found in countries world-wide, including "Tom Tit Tot" in England, "Whuppity Stoorie" in Scotland and "Ruidoquedito" in South America. The name "Rumpelstiltskin" literally means little rattle stilt and a rumpelstilt was a type of goblin that made noise by rattling posts.

There once was a miller who, wanting to curry favor with the king, said that his daughter could spin straw into gold.  The king, being avaricious, immediately had the girl brought to the castle and put in a room filled with straw and a spindle.  As if the fear of making her father look like a fool weren't pressure enough, the king told the girl that he would have her killed if she couldn't complete her task.  While she is bemoaning her fate, a little man came into the room and asked her why she was crying.  When she told him why, he told her he could complete the task for her and in return she gave him a necklace.  The king was pleased the next morning, but, being greedy, he was not content and put her in an even larger room filled with straw the next night.  Once again the little man appeared to help the girl and this time she gave him her ring.  On the third night, as he put the girl in a still larger room, the king told her he would marry her if she could complete her task this night.

Coming to her rescue again, the little man appeared but this time the girl had nothing left to give.  The little man said that as payment he would accept her first born child.  The girl, seeing no other way out, agreed.  A year later the girl was Queen and had given the king and heir when the little man reappeared.  The girl had completely forgotten about her promise and begged the man not to take her child, instead pledging all of the riches in the kingdom.  But the little man said "I would rather have something living than all the treasures of the world." The queen begged and cried and finally the little man took some pity. He told the queen she could have three chances to guess his name.  If she succeeded, she could keep her child.  Twice the little man returned but, despite sending emissaries far and wide to collect names, the queen was not successful.

Just before the little man returned for the last time, however, one of the men the queen had sent out returned saying he had heard a little man dancing and singing in the forest about how the queen would never guess that his name was Rumpelstiltskin.  When the little man returned to the castle, the queen teased him for a bit but when she finally guessed "Rumplestiltskin," the little man went crazy "and in his anger he stamped with his right foot so hard that it went into the ground above his knee; then he seized his left foot with both his hands in such a fury that he split in two, and there was an end of that."

Except that for Kevin Brockmeier, it wasn't the end of that.  When he was 22 and still in college, he was so intrigued by the idea of half a person that he wrote the story "Half of Rumplestiltskin" which is now included in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me. The story is entirely what life might be like for a person who is literally half a person who has been torn asunder.  Poor Half of Rumplestiltskin must hop every where, he has to use mouthwash with his head tilted so that it doesn't run out of his mouth and into his open chest.  All because he wanted a child so badly.  The story opens with Half of Rumplestiltskin having a dream about spinning himself completely into gold.

"Half of Rumplestiltskin is the whole of the picture and nowhere in it.  He is beautiful, and remunerative, and he isn't even there to see it.  Half of Rumplestiltskin has spun himself empty.  There is nothing of him left."

I really impressed with Brockmeier's writing, particularly in light of the fact that he was only 22 when he wrote this.  You have got to love a story that uses words such as "slumberous" and "scabrous." I've been looking forward to Brockmeier's The Illumination since I heard him talking about it at the Omaha Lit Fest last fall and this story has really convinced me to pick up a copy..soon!

Fairy Tale Fridays - Mother Hulda

This week I was flipping through my copy of Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales and chanced to come upon a drawing that reminded me so much of something you would find in a Shel Silverstein book that I had to read the story it went with.  That story is "Mother Hulda," again a new one for me.  This one seems to have its origins in both German and Norse mythology (hmm...maybe I can tie this one in again on Monday!).  In the Norse mythology it's associated with the Norse goddess, Hel, the queen of the underworld. In the Germanic mythology, she was the goddess of marriage but in German folklore Hulda became a name to denote a single goddess, inclusive of all nature.  In some versions, she lives at the bottom of a well.  Which is where we find her in the Grimm Brothers tale.

There was once a widow who had two daughters.  One was her stepdaughter, who was beautiful and a hard worker.  The other was her own daughter who was ugly and lazy.  Just like in the tale of Cinderella, the stepdaughter was made to work hard.  Every day she was made to sit by a well and spin.  One day she pricked her finger and in trying to wash the blood off in the well, she dropped the spindle in the well.  When she told her stepmother, the woman immediately sent her back to fetch the spindle.  So the girl threw herself down the well after the spindle.  Instead of finding herself at the bottom of the well, she found herself in a beautiful meadow.  She began walking and soon heard some bread calling that it needed to be taken from the oven.  So, taking the baker's peel, she took the loaves out.  Further down the road, she came to an apple tree where the apples called out to her that they needed to shaken from the tree.  So the girl shook the tree until all of the apples had fallen. Soon she came to a small home and saw a woman with great teeth.  She was frightened of the woman and made to leave but the woman called out to her.  "Come and live with me," she called. "Do my housework and shake up my bed thoroughly so that the feathers fly and it snows on the world.'  The girl, no longer afraid, stayed and did everything the woman asked.

After a long while, the girl becomes homesick (why ever in the world, I cannot imagine), and tells the woman she should must go home.  Mother Hulda has been so pleased with her; when she leaves through a door to return home, Mother Hulda drapes the girl in gold.  When she returns to the widow, the widow sees an opportunity for her own daughter.  She sends the ugly girl to spin by the well.  Immediately the girl pricks her finger, throws the spindle down the well, and jumps in after it.  She, too, finds herself in the meadow but being the lazy girl that she is, she won't take the loaves of bread out of the oven and she won't shake the apple tree.  Mother Hulda, however, offers her the same opportunity she offered the stepsister and the girl agrees.  For one day, the girl works hard but soon her laziness begins to show itself.  Mother Hulda says she must be own her way and the girl is happy because she thinks she'll soon be covered with gold.

Mother Hulda has quite a differently plan and as the girl left through the door, she was covered in pitch.  She returned home covered in the stuff and remained that way for the rest of her life.

Fairy Tale Fridays - The Lambkin and The Little Fish

Because March came in like a lamb here (which generally means that the whole month will work the opposite of the way it usually does and March will go out like a lion), I thought it was only fitting that this Friday I tell you about The Lambkin and The Little Fish.  There seems to be no other history for this one other than it is a German tale collected by the Brothers Grimm.

There once lived a brother and sister who loved each other with all their hearts.  Their mother was dead and they lived with their stepmother who not only was not kind to them but seemed to go out of her way to be cruel to them.  The pair loved to play beside a lake that was just outside of their home.  One day their stepmother say them singing and playing a game with their friends and became infuriated.  Since she understood witchcraft, she put a spell on the brother and sister turning the girl into a lamb and the boy into a fish.

After some time had passed, strangers arrived at the castle and the stepmother decided that this was a good time to do away with the girl.  She ordered the cook to kill the lamb and serve it for dinner.  But as the cook was sharpening his knife, he heard the lamb talking to the fish in the lake outside the window.  The cook took another sheep and used it for the dinner; he sent the lamb and this fish to a good woman and told her all he had learned.

This woman immediately suspected that the lamb might be the little girl and took it to a wise woman who pronounced a blessing over the lamb and the fish, restoring them to their human form.  She took them both into a great forest, where they lived alone, but were contented and happy.

Certainly one of the tamer fairy tales I've read but it does bring up a couple of questions for me.  Just where are the fathers in these stories and why do they marry such awful women?  And why are the "bad guys" always stepmothers?  Given the mortality rate at the time these stories were originally told, there were an awfully lot of stepmothers.  I can only guess that the tellers of these stories needed to put someone into close proximity to the innocents who has no deep affection for them.  What do you think?

Fairy Tale Fridays - Beauty and the Beast

For the final Friday of the month of love, it seems only fitting to showcase "Beauty and the Beast."  Of all of the fairy tales I've read (so far anyway), this one exemplifies love developing in a way that is most believable.  That is, if you find it more believable that two people might learn to love each other over time, even despite appearances, rather than love at first sight as is so common.

One source states that the story was first collected in 1550 and that Charles Perrault popularized the tale in 1697.  But versions of this same story seem to go back as far as the second century and Apuleius' The Golden Ass and the story of Cupid and Psyche.
The version of the tale as we have come to know it was first published in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve with an adaptation in 1756 that even more closely resembles the story that I read this week (although it is to her that the book gave credit for the tale) and which dropped the back stories of Beauty and Beast that de Villeneuve had incorporated.

Beauty is one of 12 children of a once wealthy merchant who has fallen on hard times.  His sons now have to farm and the daughters work hard in the house; the sons don't so much mind it but the daughters, with the exception of Beauty, are very saddened by their hardship.  After a couple of years, the merchant hears that one of his ships has finally come into port and he hurries off to take care of business with a long list of things his daughters want him to get them.  Beauty asks only for a rose.  Unfortunately when the merchant arrives in town, his former partners have already split up the profits from the ship. 

Despondent, the merchant sets off, six months later, on his return journey.  As the weather was so bad, his journey was taking an exceedingly long time and when he came upon an avenue leading to a castle, he decides to seek shelter.  He finds the castle welcoming although no one seems to be around until he plucks a rose for Beauty and is suddenly confronted by a beast.  The Beast agrees to let the merchant go after he learns what has happened to the merchant on the condition that in one month the either the merchant will return to stay or one of his daughters will.  The man agrees and the Beast sets him on his way with trunks full of treasure. 

When Beauty learns that the reason her father was found out by the Beast is because of the rose, she volunteers to take her father's place and eventually the two of them return to the castle.  Once again, when the merchant leaves he is sent off with trunks full of gifts.  Over time Beauty grows to understand Beast and to feel for him.  Every night at dinner he asks if she will marry him and every night she declines.  After some time, the Beast allows Beauty to return to see her family for two months.  While with her family, Beauty dreams every night of a handsome prince but she's also warned in her dreams that if she doesn't return, the beast will die.  When it comes to her in a dream that he is, in fact, dying, she rushes away from her family to return to Beast.  When she discovers him, she finally realizes she loves him.  That night when he asks her to marry him, Beauty agrees to be Beast's wife breaking a spell and returning Beast to his human self.  This being a castle, he is, of course, a prince.  And "Beauty and the prince lived happily ever after." 

As one of the early versions of the tale of Beauty and the Beast is the story of Cupid and Psyche, I decided to read Francesca Lia Block's take on that tale in My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.  But I'm going to wait to tell you about this story ("Psyche's Dark Night") until Monday when I'll be launching Mythology Mondays.  The story of Cupid and Psyche is as much a myth as it is a fairy tale so it seems like the perfect way to end the month of love and kick off the new feature. 

Fairy Tale Fridays - Rapunzel

This week's fairy tale love story is "Rapunzel."  The story of "Rapunzel" as we are most familiar with it is the Grimm Brothers version.Here's something interesting I found while researching the tale of Rapunzel, however, a side by side comparison of the Grimm Brothers' take on the Rapunzel.  It appears that even the good brothers had multiple versions of the tale!

The Brothers Grimm was adapted their story from "Persinette" which was written in 1698 by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force (the dauphine of Louis XIV of France).  Another influence on the familiar tale was "Petrosinella" told by Giambattista Basile (yeah, him again). But the origins of "Rapunzel" are much older.  A 10th-century Persian fairy tale, Rudaba, appears to be the original twist on the tale of a woman letting down her hair for access to her tower prison.

Once again we have a fairy tale that opens with a couple wishing for a child.  In their home, there is a small window in back that overlooks a walled garden owned by a witch.  One day as the woman is looking out at the garden she sees some rampion radish (rapunzel) and is overcome with a desire to have some. Eventually her craving becomes so great that she tells her husband she will die without eating some.  So two nights in a row he risks the witch to get his wife some rampion.  But on the second night the witch catches him.  When he tells her why he is there, she allows him to take all he wants in order to keep his wife alive but the cost will be his unborn child (although the version I read doesn't say so, it's clear that the woman's insatiable craving is a result of pregnancy).  The man agrees and when the child is born, the witch takes her and locks her in a tower where there are no stairs or doorways.  To gain access the witch calls to the child, Rapunzel, to lower her hair which the witch scales to reach the top.  One day a prince riding nearby hears Rapunzel singing and is enchanted.  But he can't figure out how to get to her until he happens to see the witch, one night, calling out to Rapunzel.  The next day he does the same thing.  Of course, Rapunzel, who until then had never seen a man, falls in love with him and allows the prince to visit her daily and they devise a plan to help Rapunzel escape.  But just before they are able to effect the escape, Rapunzel lets slip to the witch that the prince has been visiting.  The witch chops off Rapunzel's hair then takes her to a remote desert.  When the prince returns, the witch lowers the Rapunzel's hair.  When the prince reaches the summit, the witch tells him he will never see Rapunzel again but before she can kill him, the prince leaps from the tower.  He survives but has landed in thorns which blind him, fulfilling the witch's prophecy.  Despondent, the prince wanders then land until one day he stumbles upon Rapunzel.  Recognizing him, she cries because of what has happened to him.  Miraculously, her tears heal his eyes and the couple...and their child...return to the prince's kingdom.

Fairy Tale Fridays - Sleeping Beauty

Giambattista Basile.  There's a name I had never heard of until last week when I was researching Cinderella.  This week he turned up again when I began researching Sleeping Beauty.  Just who was this guy?  Basile was a Venetian who is chiefly known for writing a collection of fairy tales, first published after his death in about 1634.  The collection was basically forgotten until the Brothers Grimm commended it for being the first national collection of fairy tales.  Battista's version of the Sleeping Beauty tale was called "Sun, Moon and Talia."

Sixty years after Basile's collection was first published, Charles Perrault published his version of the Sleeping Beauty tale.  While Perrault made some changes to the story (notably in Basile's version the sleep was not caused by a curse but by a prophesy and some sites mentioned that Basile's tale actually had the prince raping the sleeping princess), much of the story remained the same.

I found Perrault's version in A Child's Book of Stories but I clearly hadn't read this particular tale to my children.  I'm sure I would have remembered that the story did not end with the prince waking the princess up with a kiss and then the two of them marrying.  Instead, after they are married the prince must split his time between the princess and his own kingdom in order to hide his marriage (and eventually his two children) from his mother.  She is an Ogress. who, as it happens, likes to eat children.  After a couple of years and the death of the King, the prince brings his family to his own kingdom.  Some after that, when the prince must be away from the kingdom for some time, his mother decides she'll eat the children and the princess.  The cook cannot make himself kill them and hides them.  When the Ogress finds out that she's been duped, she makes preparations to kill the three of them as well as the cook and his family.  Fortunately, in true fairy tale fashion, the prince arrives just in time and saves the day. 

Having read the Perrault version, I was eager to get to the Brothers Grimm version. If Perrault's version is that gruesome, what might the Grimms have done with it?  Not much, as it turns out.  At least not as related in Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales where the story ended exactly has I grew up believing it ended.  Something of a disappointment, I must admit.

More than three hundred years later, Rabih Alameddine wrote "A Kiss To Wake The Sleeper" for My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.  While Alameddine's tale is informed by the Sleeping Beauty tale, he does away with the "how it all happened" as well as everything that surrounds the sleeping princess.  Instead, while she sleeps in a tower, everything with three leagues of her has died, the surrounding country a desert.  Our narrator, a young girl with a severe disorder that's required her to spend her life in a bubble.  The young girl's mother hears of a group of nuns who may be able to help her daughter.  When she brings the girl to the nuns, they send her off to find the princess.  Eventually the girl tires of the princess' perfection and longs for some change in the surrounding.  No sooner does she wish for it, than things begin to change radically. Dangerous animals begin to appear, dangerous plants to grow all around the tower.  An old crone appears and hundreds of princes' begin to try to make their way to the tower.  When one finally succeeds, things get more than a little R-rated as the prince wakes the princess.  Yeah, this book is not for your grandma.  But then I'm not so sure, the further I look into fairy tales, that fairy tales are for children.

Fairy Tale Fridays - Cinderella

In honor of this being the month of love, I thought it was only appropriate that we look at some of the princess fairy tales in February.  Kicking it off is the tale of Cinderella.  There are thousands of versions of the tale of Cinderella from countries all over the world as from as far back as 100 B.C.

One of the earliest versions to incorporate the wicked stepmother, stepsisters, slipper and hunt by the king for the owner of the slipper was written in 1634 by Giambattista Basile, an Italian. But it was Charles Perrault who introduced the elements of the fairy godmother, the pumpkin and the glass slipper in 1697.

 In the 19th century, the Brothers Grimm recorded the German version of the tale which is called Aschenputtel.  In this version, there is no fairy godmother.  Cinderella receives help from a tree growing on her mother's grave.  The wicked step-sisters do much more than just try to squeeze their feet into the slipper; they each cut off a portion of their foot to make it fit.  And the retribution for their meanness to Cinderella in this version?  Not her forgiveness and generosity, which they find in the Perrault version.  In true Grimm Brother's fashion, pigeons pluck their eyes out.

I found the Perrault version of this tale on a new-to-me site called SurLaLune Fairy Tales.  This is the version that Disney adapted, although they did include the birds that help Cinderella in the German version.  Of course they did; they're Disney and there always have to be helpful animals.  Except that, not surprisingly, the animals in the Brothers Grimm tale do not talk and sing. In Perrault's hands, the stepsisters are ugly and Cinderella's father was a doormat for her stepmother and allowed his daughter to be treated like a servant.  No wonder she was so eager to rush off and marry a man she hardly knew who seemed to only love her for her looks.

 In the Grimm Brothers version of the tale, beauty inside doesn't equate to beauty inside; the stepsisters are also beautiful on the outside.  But once again, Cinderella's father seems to have forgotten that the third girl in the house is his own flesh and blood.  I was happy to see the my Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales included a version of this story that had not been sanitized.  When the slipper doesn't fit the first stepsister, the stepmother hands her a knife, telling her to cut off her toe, which she does, making the slipper fit.  Off she rides to be wed to the prince but singing birds betray her secret.  The second stepsister then tries on the slipper and is convinced by her own mother to cut off part of her heel to make the slipper fit. She, too, is betrayed by a bird.  At the wedding procession of the Prince and Cinderella, the stepsisters, wishing to curry favor, walk alongside the carriage but pigeons deliver their just reward by plucking out their eyes.

In My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, Stacey Richter uses the basic premise of the Cinderella story (girl is saved by boy) in a modern setting where being swept off your feet by a man is not necessarily a good thing.  In A Case Study of Emergency Room Procedure and Risk Management by Hospital Staff Members in the Urban Facility, our young heroine was actually kidnapped by Prince, a meth making, hog riding, gang member who turns his Princess into the premier meth maker in the area as well as an addict.  The story is written in the style of an actual case study, citing notes and records from Princess' time spent in rehab.  It's an unusual way to tell a story but it works well, probably because it was inspired by actual research into methamphetamine conducted while Richter was also contemplating a fairy tale she was writing for a friend.  Lesson to all of the young girls out there: boys are bad!

Fairy Tale Fridays - The Bremen Town Musicians

Once again I'm returning to the stories of the Brothers Grimm this week with the tale of The Bremen Town Musicians.  In this tale, a donkey, who has gotten too old to be of use to his master any longer decides he needs to strike out on his own before his master cuts him loose.  He decides to head to Bremen where he hopes to be a town musician.  Along the way he comes across a a dog, a cat and a rooster all of whom have also outlived their perceived usefulness.  The quartet agree to travel together, hoping to all become musicians.  Along the way, they stop to spend the night under a tree.  But when the rooster spots a house and they all decide they'd prefer to stay there.  When they look in the window, they see a group of thieves enjoying a fine feast and decide they'd like to be there.  Working together they crash through the window scaring the thieves away.  Later that night, one of the thieves returns.  Startling the animals, the thief is attacked by each of the animals in turn but never really sees what he has been attacked by.  When he returns to the rest of his band, he tells them he has been attacked by a "gruesome witch, and I felt her breath and her long nails in my face [the cat]; and by the door there stands a man who stabbed me in the leg with a knife [the dog]; and in the yard there lies a black specter, who beat me with his wooden club [the donkey]; and above, upon the roof, there sits the justice, who cried, "bring that rogue here!" [the rooster].  Needless to say, the thieves never returned and the animals enjoyed the house so much that they never went on to Bremen.

So many fairy tales are little more than stories but this one clearly has a lesson, one that, with our aging population, is more important that ever.  While those around them felt that these animals were too old to be of any use, they decide to head for Bremen, which was known for its freedom. They knew they still had value.  And their ability to take care of themselves against the thieves, proves that.

I paired the Brothers Grimm version of this story with Joyelle McSweeney's play The Warm Mouth (from My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me).  McSweeney takes the structure of The Bremen Town Musicians and uses it to "take up the problem of shelter, including the body as a king of failed shelter."  McSweeney populates her play with characters that reflect their setting in the Michiana area of Indiana that includes the town of Bremen.  When I tell you that the figures in this play include road kill, a starving boy, a murdered girl and a shot up dog you'll get a good idea of how much darker this modern fairy tale is than those to which we are accustomed.  A word of caution to the squeamish, this tale is very gritty and very raw as you might imagine.

Fairy Tale Fridays - The Juniper Tree

Back in September, when I told you that the book My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me had arrived on my door step, I explained that the title of the book came from the Grimm Brothers fairy tale "The Juniper Tree."  I had actually forgotten that when I chose that story for this week's Fairy Tale Fridays, so I was excited when I started reading the story as told in "Grimms Complete Fairy Tales."

In The Juniper Tree, a man's first wife pricks her finger below a juniper tree. When she sees the blood drop into the snow, she wishes for a child as red as blood and as white as snow.  Nine months later she gives birth to a son but is so overcome with joy that she dies.  Her husband then buries her under the tree.

Years later, the man has remarried and he and his new wife have a daughter.  The woman dearly loves her daughter but hates her step-son and abuses him regularly.  One day as he reaches for an apple she has offered him from a large chest, she drops the lid on his neck.  When she realizes that the lid has chopped off the boy's head, she scrambles for a way to hide her guilt.  Using a handkerchief to hide the wound, she places his head back on his neck and sets him outside of the house with an apple in his hand.  His sister, seeing the apple asks him for it but gets no response.  Her mother tells her to ask him again and if she gets no response to give him a box on the ear.  Of course she gets no response and is alarmed when his head falls off.  Her mother tells her that to protect the daughter they must hide what she has done.  Her solution?  She cooks up the son into a meal that she then serves her husband who loves it so much it gobbles it all up.  The daughter, who loved her brother, takes his bones and buries them under the juniper tree.  Shortly the tree parts, and amidst a cloud and fire, a bird flies up from the tree.

The bird flies off and begins singing a song in a nearby village which is so lovely that people are willing to give the bird things to hear the song again.  Once the bird has the things he wants, he flies back to the house and lands in the tree and begins singing.  The father goes out to hear the bird and the bird drops a gold necklace over his head.  When the sister also goes out to listen, the bird drops a pair of red shoes for her. But when the stepmother finally dares to come outside, the bird drops a millstone on her head and crushes her.  Then there was another cloud, another fire, and the bird disappeared and the boy reappeared.

And just what was the song that so entranced everyone?

"It was my mother who murdered me;

It was my father who ate of me;

It was my sister Marjory

Who all my bones in pieces found;

Them in a handkerchief she bound,

And laid them under the juniper tree.

Kywitt, kywitt, kywitt, I cry,

Oh what a beautiful bird am I!"

To pair with the original telling, I read Alissa Nuttings adaptation "The Brother and The Bird" from My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.  Nutting stays very true to the original story but give it a fresh slant. In her take, Nutting makes the stepmother a cleaning fanatic who skulks around and whispers, frightening even her own daughter.  The father loves his children but is "aloof" and clearly still obsessed with his first wife.

This time the mother kills her stepson by smothering him with a pillow and a Bible.  Seeing that he has died, she forces her daughter to help her chop up his body, package up the pieces and put the body into the deep freeze.  Then she begins serving her husband sauerbraten made with his body, meals that her husband loves.  The daughter is so appalled that she sneaks the rest of her brother's body out and begins to bury it under the juniper tree.  Again the tree magically transforms the body.

This time the daughter begins hearing flapping noises that soon begin to be heard on the radio as the family listens at night followed by Nutting's take on the song above.  This eventually drives the mother insane.  When the son returns in his new state, the stepmother runs out to chop down the tree and try to kill him again.  But the tree takes its revenge and the son is returned to life.

Nutting says that in her retelling she wanted to "retain not only the father's ignorance but also the original source of hope for the murdered brother, his sister..."  She was fascinated by the Grimm Brothers tale as a child and still finds the story relevant.

This tale has everything I love in a fairy tale, a wonderful beginning (in the Brothers Grimm version the story started "A long, long time ago..."), a wicked stepmother (who not only kills her stepson, but also feeds him to his father and implicates her daughter in his death), and an ending where the bad person gets hers but even then the ending is not altogether happy. 

Fairy Tale Fridays - Snow White, Rose Red

A few weeks ago I mentioned that one of my favorite Grimm Brothers fairy tales is Snow White and Rose Red.  I was excited to find that Lydia Millet had written a new take on that beloved tale for the compilation My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, titled Snow White, Rose Red.

Millet launches the story with much of the same detail as the original tale.  The two girls have essentially the same names, they are staying in a "cabin" in the woods and they are both very good people.  Except in Millet's hands, these are two very rich little girls whose mother is a former Russian ballerina with an eating disorder and mental challenges and whose father is a businessman with almost no time for them.  The "bear" turns out to be a man who is hiding from his soon to be ex-wife who comes across them in their yard one day.  Just as they do in the original tale, the girls befriend their bear.  But in this version there is no angry dwarf that must be slain, it is the girls' own father who has to be dealt with.

Just as it can be hard to adapt a beloved book into a movie, it's a risk to take the well-known fairy tales and give them a new spin. I found that Millet had managed to kept just the right elements from the fairy tale I love and created a truly original spin that I very much enjoyed!

Millet says that she was inspired to write the story after developing a fondness for landscapes and nature.  Finding herself interested in the forests of the Adirondacks made her think of all of the fairy tales set in forests and from there it was only a short leap to this tale.

Fairy Tale Fridays - Can You Tell A Fairy Tale By The Ending?

As I've begun reading fairy tales, I'm trying to read with an eye toward what things they might have in common, perhaps a moral to the story.  This week I began reading from Grimms Complete Fairy Tales, the compilation that my son and his girlfriend gave me for Christmas.

I started with the first story in the book, not because it was the first story but because it was The Frog Prince" and I collect frogs. When a princess agrees to become a friend to a frog if he will rescue her beloved golden ball, she doesn't think there will be any way for him to follow her and hold her to her promise. But eventually he does make his way to the castle.  When the princess confides to the King why the frog is there, the King insists that the princess make good on her promise.  He forces her to let the frog up onto the table and to share her dinner.  But when she is forced to take the frog up to her bedroom, she is repulsed by the idea of sleeping with the frog and throws him at the wall.  Before he hits the wall, though, he turns into a prince and then marries the princess.  What?  He marries the girl who broke her promise, whined about keeping it and then tried to injure him?  Okay, I know some cases where this really has happened but I don't think of that as much of a moral.

Some of the stories don't even seem to have endings.  For example, The Golden Key tells the story of a poor boy who discovers a key and an iron chest.  After much trouble, he finds the lock, fits the key in and turns it and then..."we must wait until he is quite unlocked it...and then we shall learn what wonderful things were lying in that box."  Except we don't.  That is the ending of the story.  In The Old Beggar Woman an old beggar woman (surprise!) who is always exceedingly grateful for any kindness shown her, gets too near a blaze and her skirt catches on fire.  The "friendly rogue of a boy" who invited her to join him by the fire could not find any water but still might have "wept all the water in his body out of his eyes" to put her out.  But the story ends without the reader knowing whether or not he did that.

Just when I began to believe that there really were no morals to the stories, I read Sharing The Joy and The Sorrow, about a man who abused his wife but was punished by the magistrates, and The Nail, about a man who was in such a hurry to get somewhere that he didn't put a nail in his horse's shoe which eventually caused the horse to go lame and his leg to break causing the man to be very late.

The funniest story I read this week was Fair Katrinelje and Pif-Paf-Poltrie.  A young man is made to ask permission of an entire family before he will be allowed to marry the youngest daughter.  After he has gotten all of the permissions, he asks her about her dowry.  She has almost none but that's okay because he has almost nothing to offer in return.

Fairy Tale Fridays - "The Mermaid In The Tree

This week at Fairy Tale Fridays, I'm featuring a story by Tim Schaffert from My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me titled "The Mermaid In The Tree."  Each of the stories in this compilation is based to some extent on another fairy tale.  Schaffert's story is based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid," a tale that Schaffert says is not only his favorite fairy tale, but also his favorite short story.

Desiree and her sister Miranda live in Rothgutt's Asylum for Misspent Youth where they have spent nearly their entire lives after being arrested for stealing candy from a baby.  The asylum is in the village of Mudpuddle Beach where mermaids regularly wash up and die on the shores.  Parades are held in Mudpuddle Beach featuring the bodies of some of the mermaids, preserved, posed and floating in giant tanks set on platforms pulled by rickshaws peddled by the girls of Rothgutt's.  After one of the parades, Desiree meets Axle, a young man who attends Starkwhip Academy of Breathtakingly Exceptional Young Men and the two are soon sneaking out to meet.  One night the two meet and Axle is in the process of giving Desiree an engagement ring when it slips from his hand and falls into the water below.  At nearly the same time, the two see a carousel figure break loose in a storm, wash out to sea and return to view with a mermaid clinging to it's neck.  Axle rescues the mermaid but Desiree is prevented from going with him to seek care for her and will not see him again for many months.  Axle falls in love with the mermaid and it proves his undoing.

 In the original tale of The Little Mermaid,  it is the mermaid who saves the prince and her love for him that proves to be her undoing.  In Schaffert's hands, there does seem to be more of a mutual affection although the mermaid's addiction to a drug that originally saved her seems to be more important to her than does Axle.

In addition to The Little Mermaid, Schaffert borrows the mermaid's name from a fairy tale (Rapunzel).  The darkness so prominent in early fairy tales is abundant in "The Mermaid In The Tree."  There is no living "happily ever after" for any of the characters.  But while the tale has many of the elements of classic fairy tales, there was nothing that set in a particular time.  In fact, there was something about it the had the feel of a dystopian story to me.  It also reminded me of Lemony Snicket's "A Series Of Unfortunate Events," notched up grown up levels. 

You may recall me saying that Schaffert is the driving force behind Omaha's Lit Fest.  He has also published several books which are part of Unbridled Books' catalog (you all know how much I love Unbridled Books!).  I'm looking forward to reading his "The Coffins of Little Hope" which will be published April 2011.