Daily children’s book recommendations and events from Anita Silvey.
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Toward the end of March, World Folk Tales and Fables Week has been set up to encourage children and adults to explore the lessons learned from folk tales and fables. I’d like to finish our celebration with one of the most popular retellings of a folk tale published in the last fifteen years. Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted relies on the content and structure of “Cinderella.” Although this fairy tale can be traced back to the first century B.C., the best-known version in the west was created by French writer Charles Perrault in 1697. For anyone hunting for a folk tale to show children how the same story is told in different cultures, Cinderella remains one of the best—with great cultural adaptations such as Steptoe’s Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, Martin’s The Rough-Face Girl, and Ai-Ling Louie’s Yeh-Shen.
For Ella Enchanted, however, Gail Carson Levine took the story and expanded and changed it, making it into something completely new. As a baby, Ella, daughter of a wealthy merchant father and fairy mother, receives a gift from the fairy Lucinda. She is given obedience—something that proves to be a curse. If someone commands Ella to do something, she cannot refuse, even if it would be in her best interest to do so. While her mother lives, Ella can be protected from the worst problems this gift causes. But after her mother’s death, she suddenly finds herself in finishing school and at the mercy of an odious student who has discovered her secret. In this vaguely medieval land of giants, elves, and ogres (languages that Ella can speak), Ella runs away, searching for Lucinda to get her curse removed.
In the meantime, the prince of the realm, Prince Char, has fallen in love with Ella, and she knows that her condition will only be a curse to him. In the end, only her love for the prince and her own determination make it possible for her to overcome her affliction. Like the original fairy tale, Ella participates in a series of balls with the prince—where she rides in a coach pumpkin and wears glass slippers.
Ella emerges as such a compelling protagonist, and her curse of obedience seems so real and terrible. Fabulous creatures and epic journeys add to the texture of the story. Ella’s triumph over her condition creates a totally satisfying read. A favorite of ten- to fourteen-year-olds, Ella Enchanted proves that the best folk tales can be retold again and again in different forms. In Ella Enchanted, Cinderella has been transformed into an exciting, page-turning, and romantic novel.
Here’s a passage from Ella Enchanted:
Although the prince was only two years older than I, he was much taller, and he stood just like his father, feet apart, hands behind his back, as though the whole country were passing by on review. He looked like his father too, although the sharp angles of King Jerrold’s face were softened in his son. They each had tawny curls and swarthy skin. I had never been near enough to the king to know whether he also had a sprinkling of freckles across his nose, surprising on such a dark face.
Other books for this day
Also recommended:
- Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley
- Bound by Donna Jo Napoli
Additional Information
A few other events for
- Happy birthday Patricia C. Wrede (The Enchanted Forest Chronicles) and Julia Alvarez (Return to Sender, Before We Were Free).
- It’s the birth date of Dick King-Smith (1922–2011), Martin’s Mice, The Water Horse, and Babe: The Gallant Pig, who died very recently (January 4) at the age of 88.
- On this day in 1886, Geronimo, an Apache warrior and chief, surrendered to the U.S. Government after a thirty-year struggle to protect his tribe’s homeland. Read Geronimo by Joseph Bruchac and I am Apache by Tanya Landman.
- Root Canal Awareness Week begins today. Reread Doctor De Soto by William Steig.