Cinderella, retold by Cynthia Rylant

                                      Retold by Cynthia Rylant with pictures by Mary Blair
                                                       New York:  Disney Press (2007)

I never was a Cinderella girl, who watched the Disney movie ad nauseum until I had it memorized.  I liked Hercules, and the Lion King, and, if there had to be a princess, I liked her paired with a Beast. So when I first pulled this book off the shelf, I had no idea what awaited me.  I opened it expecting to find a familiar story, heard so many times before that I had stopped listening.  Instead, I saw beautiful drawings coupled with beautiful sentences that opened up the story and gave it a depth and meaning I hadn't seen in a long time.

The Cinderella that Cynthia Rylant tells is simultaneously the same as the Disney movie and completely different.  The plot details, of course, tell the same story that we are all familiar with.  From beginning to end, however, Rylant emphasizes that Love was Cinderella's one dream and desire.  Literally, the end--the back cover bears just the sentence, "In silence, Love found them," along with an illustration of a glass slipper surrounded by a rose bush.  Rylant manages to address the cruelty and unfairness of Cinderella's stepfamily while still keeping the optimism and hope of Love finding her in the end.  The language is serious and descriptive, giving the reader the feeling that even though Cinderella is not in control, Rylant will take care of her.

The pages are filled with the original illustrations on which the Disney movie was based.  The soft edges of Mary Blair's pictures support the storyline of a young girl dreaming of a more hopeful future.  Her use of colors, too, supports the romantic storyline, as she ties in many shades of pink, sparkles, and flowers.  The familiarity of the images also helps the reader to recognize the slight differences in Rylant's telling, how she focuses not on the details of the plot but instead on the emotions and backgrounds of the characters.

Everything about the book is magical and peaceful, and I kept turning the pages eager to see what happens next as though the story were brand new.

The Golden Slipper: An Ancient Egyptian Fairy Tale

                                                           By Savior Pirotta and Alan Marks
                                             North Mankato, MN:  Sea to Sea Publications (2007)

Every culture tells fairy tales a little bit differently, and these differences reveal the values and beliefs of that nation.  In this Ancient Egyptian tale of what we can recognize as a Cinderella story, these differences seem to be a little shallow.  At the very beginning we are introduced to a young Greek girl named Rhodopis, a graceful and elegant dancer.  One day, she was dancing on the shore and was kidnapped by Egyptian pirates.  When they reached land, she was sold as a slave to a Greek master and was forced to work with three Egyptian slaves, who made Rhodopis do all of their work because they were afraid she would be their master's favorite.  Despite this, he did bring her home a beautiful gift:  golden slippers.  The other slaves were jealous and, when word came that the Pharaoh was looking for a wife, they tricked her.  While they traveled to the Pharaoh, she was forced to stay behind and do the cleaning.  Then, even worse, a falcon swooped in and stole one of her slippers!  It flew all the way to the Pharaoh and dropped it on his lap; the Pharaoh took it as a sign and proclaimed that whichever girl fit into the slipper would be his wife.  From here, the story is familiar:  the Pharaoh travels the land and, despite the slaves' attempts to hide Rhodopis from him, the truth comes out and she becomes queen, living happily ever after.

Although there are aspects of this tale which could inform children's knowledge of Egyptian culture, overall the text and drawings don't connect.  The cover illustration is taken from the climax of the story, when the falcon flies off with Rhodopis's golden slipper, which gives away a crucial part of the story from the first glance.  The illustrations in the story are very expressive:  the three jealous slaves always look mad or mischievous, Rhodopis looks appropriately happy or sad, and the pirates at the beginning look tough and scary.  Beyond that, however, I think they fall short.  In a story about Ancient Egypt, I had some high expectations:  much has been discovered about Egyptian writings, drawings, and traditions that could be worked into the illustrations.  I was disappointed to find almost nothing Egyptian at all about the style except for the Pharaoh's distinctive crown and the three slaves' long black hair and heavy makeup.  I feel like this was a missed opportunity to inform the readers about the rich history and culture of the Ancient Egyptians.

One thing that I did like about this book, however, is that it put the well-known version of Cinderella right after the Egyptian one.  This would help young readers to see the connections between the tale they know from Disney and a tale they may not have heard before.  

To sum it all up, while the story itself is enjoyable, if predictable, it reveals almost nothing about the culture from which it came.  The drawings are pretty but are not specific to the Egyptian culture, leaving the viewer/reader feeling like something big is missing from the tale, regardless of its happy ending.

Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal: A Worldwide Cinderella

                           by Paul Fleischman and illustrated by Julie Paschkis
                                        New York:  Henry Holt and Co.  (2007)

In a Disney-fied country where the word "princess" brings to mind a sparkly dress, matching crown, and glass slippers, it can be easy to remain unaware of the long tradition of fairy tales in other cultures which far predate our own.  In Fleischman's retelling of the familiar tale of Cinderella, cultures which are normally never associated are represented on the same page, introducing new insights to the traditional story of a mistreated girl who finally finds love.  The translations from different countries--including Mexico, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Russia, and Ireland, among many others--seamlessly tell the familiar story without any disconnects other than differing cultural details.  For example, when the girl is dressing for the ball, Fleischman represents different countries' ideas of her garments: in Indonesia, she wears "a sarong made of gold," while in China she wears "a cloak sewn of kingfisher feathers" and in Japan "a kimono red as sunset."  Still, these details do not distract from the story in the slightest.  On the contrary, they offer a new insight into unfamiliar traditions and cultures.

The very beginning and the very end of the story, however, are purposely generic.  In this way, Fleischman maintains the universality of the tale, rather than giving one example of a beginning and an end.  I appreciate this detail because it calls attention to the unique format of the book:  it creates a frame that forces the reader to think back and notice all the details.  This could easily have been lost had Fleischman chosen to focus these pages on one specific culture.

The illustrations are an integral part of the unique format of the story, as well.  Each section of the story is labeled and decorated with a distinct color and style to identify the source country.  These colors remain consistent throughout the book; when a pink section comes up, for instance, the reader knows the words are from India.  The figures themselves, too, change with the cultural source.  The girl and her sisters look different on pages from Ireland, for example, than on pages from Japan.  Even more impressive, however, is the illustration work in the background of the pages.  Included in each drawing is not only the scene being described but also certain distinct cultural or national symbols.  On German pages, for instance, the characters have side buns, as is often represented, and the Irish pages contain Irish knots and Celtic-style designs.  To master one of these styles would be an impressive feat on its own; Paschkis has somehow managed proficiently represent them all in a recognizable and respectable way.

In the end, the reader/viewer is left with a sense of comfort and familiarity:  in substituting details from other nations, Fleischman adds nothing that completely changes the plot of the tale.  Because it is remarkably similar to the story our children are used to hearing, it allows them to focus on the new details:  that the Indian Cinderella wears diamond anklets instead of glass slippers, or that the Russian Cinderella finds her outfit in a birch tree.  The familiar plot line and ending allow children to instead open themselves up to learning about these new and unfamiliar people who, they might realize, are really not much different from us.