Resources

Years of college has given me many things, one of which is the obsessive need to cite every claim I make. So here are the resources I've been using.

Anderson, P. (2001). Nursery Rhymes. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~pfa/dreamhouse/nursery/rhymes.html

Borgia, V. (2002) Origins of nursery rhymes. http://www.sca.org.au/bacchus_wood/origins_of_nursery_rhymes.html

Harris, V. (1997). The history of nursery rhymes and Mother Goose. http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/ENGL/courses/engl208c/esharris.htm.

Opie, P., and Opie, I. (1997) Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Panati, C. (1987). For the nursery. In The Extradinary Origins of Everyday Things (p. 168-198). New York City, NY:

   	Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.

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Traditional Tales with a Twist

These aren't resources, so I'm not going to cite them, just give author and title. They're not resources, as they are, by and large, works of fiction. I include them here because I'm guessing that if you like the premise of this webcomic, then you'd also like the interesting takes some of these authors have on the fairy tales they've been writing about. Some of the works below are completely different (like Gingerbread) and some are simply the re-telling of a classical tale. This list will continue to grow as I remember more books/authors. Feel free to share with me any good titles you know of, I'm a bookworm. :-}

  • Black Thorn, White Rose Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. This is the volume I happen to own, but there are several others, including Snow White, Blood Red; Black Heart, Ivory Bones; Silver Birch, Blood Moon; Black Swan, White Raven; and Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears. These anthologies, written for adults, contain short stories by many authors reshaping traditional fairy tales.
  • Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. A children's book that retells the Cinderella story with so many twists that I didn't actually notice that it was the Cinderella story until close to the end.
  • The Princess Stories by Gail Carson Levine. A collection of fairy tales with a twist, also intended for children. Very humourous. They're published both by individual hardcover story and in paperback collections.
  • Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner. A collection of fairy tales written to be "politically correct" with hilarious results. The series includes the title just mentioned as well as Once Upon a More Enlightened Time, and Politically Correct Holiday Stories.
  • Kissing the Witch by Emma Donaghue. Several lyrical, interlinked retellings of old tales, generally from a feminine viewpoint and tending to savor the darker sides of the tales.
  • Transformations by Anne Sexton. Winner of the Pulitizer Prize for Poetry, I found most of them a little disturbing, but that may have been the frame of mind I was in when I first read them.

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