Tag: Meta

The Thing about Fairy Tales Is: Once Upon a Time, Happily Ever Afters and Meta

Ingredients of A Fairy Tale=

1 Upon a Time

4 or 5 Stereotypes

3 or 4 Stock Characters

1 simple plot

Good versus Evil

True Love Manifested (depressingly or not)

and possibly ending with Happily Ever After

Told and Retold, Reshaped and Reworked: I LOVE reading all of the versions of fairy tales!

But the thing about fairy tales is that that they are a collection of data on the human race. The more versions you read, the more insight you build about the human race, and the more you allow the stories to interact, the more you start to understand who we are, and how we work!

That’s what is amazing about fairy tales–the more they are stock the more true they are, the more versions exist, the more the human condition is explained…That is what is SO META about fairy tales!!!

Katy’s Ultimate Fairy Tale List

First off if you need to know anything about fairy tales I recommend references by Maria Tartar, Jack Zipes and www.surlalunfairytales.com, Jane Yolen is fairly good as well (although she is focused on feminist fairy tales)

Secondly, here are all of the fairy tale things I love

Please note that fairy tales are meant to be oral i.e rewrites are not only allowed, they are within the VERY essence of what makes up a fairy tale–so even bad fairy tales are valid

TV:

Disney: Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Tangled (although they are Disney-fied they are still valid)

Once Upon a Time (obviously),

Jim Henson’s StoryTeller

10th Kingdom (which is usually only about $15 to buy),

Fractured Fairy Tales in Rocky & Bullwinkle,

Nickelodeon’s Grimm Fairy Tale Classics, Fairy Tale Theater

Ever After (Go DaVinci)

Belle and La Bete (The Original French movie in Black and white)

Books

Golden Book of Fairy Tales http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Book-Fairy-Tales-Classics/dp/030717025X (my first love of fairy tales)

The Color Fairy Tale Books by Andrew Lang (of course), my second love fairy tales

Gateway books

Alice and the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Peter Pan by James Barrie

Wizard of Oz L. Frank Baum

so-called-adult-fairy-tales

“The Golden Ass” The last myth and the first fairy tale

“Fables” the comic book (precedes Once Upon a Time the TV show with some similarities)

Enchanted Forest Series & Snow White and Rose Red by Patricia C. Wrede

Deerskin, Beauty, Spindle’s End, Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley

Beast by Donna Jo Napoli (excellent)

Beastly by Alex Flinn (pretty good)

Zel by Donna Jo Napoli

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine (so amazing and better than the movie)

Just Ella Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Godmother’s Apprentice by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (the sequels aren’t as good)

Five Hundred Kingdoms series by Mercedes Lackey (inconsistant, but fine)

Ash & Huntress by Malinda Lo

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

Goose Chase by Patrice Kindl

A Well Timed Enchantment by Vivian Vande Velde

Other

Arthur Rackham’s Illustrations

Maxfield Parish’s Illustrations

Kingdom Hearts video games

Wicked “the musical”

Into the Woods “the musical”

Beauty and the Beast on Broadway