Introduction
Greetings, everyone.
I suppose I should introduce myself.
I am a normal human who likes doing normal human things. For more information, see my profile. Enough about me; let's move on to something interesting.
Somehow this picture immediately brings a story to mind. Why?
This blog is designed to take a closer look at an area of Young Adult Literature (YA) that I find intriguing. The fantasy genre is thriving in all age ranges, and there's a closely related subgenre that focuses on fairy tale retellings. Many of these retellings are marketed for young adult audiences. They cover an impressive range of genres, from horror to realism, although most of them fall clearly into their parent genre of fantasy.
I read so many of these retellings growing up. The question that I've always been left with is simple. Why tell this story again? Why do over 180 Cinderella retellings show up on a quick Goodreads search? To rephrase this question slightly, who benefits from all these versions of a story?
I hope to answer some of these questions by talking about some theories connected to folklore and fairytales in this blog. Plenty of really smart people have written about their interest in the underlying reasons and —more importantly— the effects of this phenomenon. In addition to collecting some different theories, I want to show how those theories play out in real time by using them to analyze some of my favorite YA retold fairytales.
Perhaps this process will only yield more questions. Even so, having good questions is a step closer to having a good answer. I'm excited to begin asking some of these good questions.
I suppose I should introduce myself.
I am a normal human who likes doing normal human things. For more information, see my profile. Enough about me; let's move on to something interesting.
Somehow this picture immediately brings a story to mind. Why?
This blog is designed to take a closer look at an area of Young Adult Literature (YA) that I find intriguing. The fantasy genre is thriving in all age ranges, and there's a closely related subgenre that focuses on fairy tale retellings. Many of these retellings are marketed for young adult audiences. They cover an impressive range of genres, from horror to realism, although most of them fall clearly into their parent genre of fantasy.
I read so many of these retellings growing up. The question that I've always been left with is simple. Why tell this story again? Why do over 180 Cinderella retellings show up on a quick Goodreads search? To rephrase this question slightly, who benefits from all these versions of a story?
I hope to answer some of these questions by talking about some theories connected to folklore and fairytales in this blog. Plenty of really smart people have written about their interest in the underlying reasons and —more importantly— the effects of this phenomenon. In addition to collecting some different theories, I want to show how those theories play out in real time by using them to analyze some of my favorite YA retold fairytales.
Perhaps this process will only yield more questions. Even so, having good questions is a step closer to having a good answer. I'm excited to begin asking some of these good questions.
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