First Fandom: My Top Ten Favorite Fairy Tales
Sleeping Beauty’s dress should be blue.
Her dress is blue for the majority of the movie. When she gets the dress, it’s blue (and she appears to love it). When she wears the dress, it’s blue. When the prince finds her asleep, she’s in a blue dress. Just because Flora changes it to pink occasionally, why is it that in almost every picture and toy figurine, Princess Aurora is depicted in a PINK dress?
These are questions that need answering.
When I was little, my grandma wrote me a letter after I watched Sleeping Beauty for the first time at her house and asked me if I thought that Aurora ever ended up with just one color of dress (and which it was) or if it just kept changing colors forever.
I said that she told the fairies in no uncertain terms that she liked her dress to be blue, and could they please leave it that way.
4-year old me had very definite opinions about these things.
See? It’s blue. Has been since she got it for her birthday.
Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was the fairy tale that made me fall into the fairy tale fandom. Since I first saw this movie when I was… oh… four? Sleeping Beauty remained at the absolute top of my “favorite Disney movies” list. It wasn’t until 2010, that anything even came close to knocking it out of first place… even though I loved just about every fairy tale that Disney released.
The Little Mermaid couldn’t do it. No matter how much I loved the tv show that came after (and am super excited I can now watch on Disney+)!
Beauty and the Beast couldn’t do it. As beautiful as that movie was, and as much as I relate to Belle, and in spite of the fond memories I have of going to see it in the theater… it still couldn’t knock Sleeping Beauty off its place.
Mulan couldn’t do it.
The Swan Princess couldn’t do it, even if I did watch this movie over and over until I had pretty much the entire thing memorized and sang the songs constantly.
Aladdin, in spite of putting in a phenomenal effort and ALMOST taking first place in my affections… couldn’t quite do it.
But Tangled… Tangled swooped into first place, unthroning the reigning queen of my favorites. Which should tell you something about how much I love that movie. I don’t let go of my favorites easily. It takes a lot for me to even declare a favorite in the first place… so letting it be usurped? Doesn’t happen often.
It helps probably that my little sister basically IS Rapunzel….
But it was Sleeping Beauty that began my fall into the fandom of fairy tales.
When I was about six or seven, my grandpa gave me an enormous treasury of fairy tales. And while it said “A Children’s Book of Fairy Tales” on the front… these are not your watered-down, sanitized fairy tales. Not at all! Some of these stories are quite tragic, and even gruesome.
And I loved them.
Oddly enough… while Disney’s Sleeping Beauty was my favorite movie fairy tale on screen, it has never been my favorite fairy tale in written form. So what are my favorite fairy tales? Well, I’m not sure I can pick a singular favorite. But I think I can narrow it down to my top ten. With a couple of honorable mention runners-up, of course!
Honorable Mention 1: Diamonds and Toads
I was shocked to find out that this isn’t a very well-known fairy tale, despite the fact that Gail Carson Levine retold this one in The Fairy’s Mistake. I reference this story briefly in my own (extremely polarizing) Destined for Greatness, though that is not a retelling of this fairy tale. It’s more of a Jack and the Beanstalk retelling. I just always found it satisfying that the mean sister doesn’t just not get the reward that her kind sister gets, but she gets cursed and has to live with the consequences of her actions.
Honorable Mention 2: The Steadfast Tin Soldier
While this one has a tragic—oh! so tragic!—ending, I always loved the adventure of it. And I love the tin soldier himself. I’d love to see a good retelling of this one, I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of one.
10. The Little Mermaid
I fell in love with The Little Mermaid at my grandparent’s house. It was one of the few fictional books they had. Usually, we went to visit them at the same time as my cousins, but on the rare occasions when it was just our family, I would curl up with this book and read it over and over again. The reason it sits at number 10 is because it’s just so stinkin’ tragic. It probably accounts for my ability to enjoy a good tragedy every now and then, but I highly prefer happily ever after endings. Especially in my fairy tales!
Retellings I’ve particularly enjoyed:
The Little Siren by J.M. Stengl
Talori and the Shark by Jessica Elliot (which is kind of Cupid & Psyche meets Beauty and the Beast meets The Little Mermaid)
9. Cinderella
I tend to prefer the lesser-known fairy tales. Though I have by no means read them all! However, Cinderella may be about the most well-known fairy tale there is. It’s also one of those stories that has so many old variations already, that retelling possibilities are almost limitless.
Retellings I’ve particularly enjoyed:
Ever After (the movie)
Cinderella (2015 live-action)
A Cinder’s Tale by Stephanie Ricker (part of the Five Glass Slippers anthology)
Seriously want that dress. Just so I could twirl around in it for a while.
8. The Princess on the Glass Hill
This one is such a fun story, and I have IDEAS for this one. I just need them to coalesce into something whole and beautiful. But the whole princess sitting on a glass hill (why is she up there? how did she get there?) combined with the youngest son of a farmer who manages to tame these three wild horses who are tearing up his father’s farmland every night (where did they come from? who did they belong to? why are they doing this? why is the boy able to tame them?) these are questions I must write the answers to!
Gail Carson Levine also wrote a retelling of this Cinderellis and the Glass Hill. While I enjoyed this story, I definitely think this story could be turned into something… more.
7. The Goose Girl
I enjoyed this tale when I first read it. But I really fell in love with it after reading Shannon Hale’s version and then was reminded of how much I love it when I read Sarah Pennington’s Blood in the Snow, which so beautifully combines The Goose Girl with Snow White.
There’s so much tragedy in this story. And it’s a little gruesome. The talking dead horse head. The evil maid getting dragged around town in a barrel of nails (after having a very Haman-like moment in which she is asked by the king to unwittingly spell out her own punishment). It’s intense. But it has such a lovely HEA. And there’s so much story! I love fairy tales that have a lot of story, if that makes sense.
6. The Six Swans
This is a really horrible story in a lot of ways. And I just can’t help but love it. Hans Christian Andersen also has a version of this called The Wild Swans, but I slightly prefer the Brothers Grimm version. Partially because it’s shorter. And partially because there are some more obvious villains. I also appreciate that in The Six Swans, the father of all the children isn’t really an idiot or a neglectful dad, but he really does try to keep his children safe. Unlike in The Wild Swans, where it’s another one of these, “I got remarried and clearly I have zero brains because I picked this evil creature and now I don’t care about my kids anymore” characters. What is up with that?
Anyway. I think I’ve read one retelling of this, which I cannot recommend due to very adult content.
Definitely have some ideas on this one. And a few new ones thanks to January being all about The Wild Swans over at The Fairy Tale Central blog!
5. 12 Dancing Princesses
We have made it to the top five, and honestly… I could put these stories in any order. Depending on the day, or my mood, any of these next few could be tied for first. But because this is a visual list, I have to put them in some semblance of order.
12 Dancing Princesses has been an absolute favorite of mine forever. I read it over and over and over again in the Random House Book of Fairy Tales I had as a kid (different than the other book of fairy tales I talked about earlier in this post). There is just so much fun and mystery and so many different possibilities with this story. And so many characters to choose from!
This is also the one that I’ve read the most retellings for, so clearly I am not the only person intrigued by this tale.
Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier
A Branch of Silver, A Branch of Gold by Anne Elisabeth Stengl
The Firethorn Crown by Lea Doue
The Princess Curse by Merrie Haskill (this is a blend of 12 Dancing Princesses with a delightful sprinkling of Beauty and the Beast mixed in)
The Thirteenth Princess by Diane Zahler
Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George - one of the more recent ones I’ve stumbled across, and it is absolutely stunning.
4. Beauty and the Beast
This fairy tale is probably the one that’s been the most meaningful to me. While it may not quite make TOP FAVORITE in this particular list… it is dear to my heart in so many ways.
The experience of seeing this movie on the big screen with my family… this movie was to cartoons what Jurassic Park was for dinosaurs. It changed everything. The animation was so much more beautiful than it had ever been, and combined with the music and the characters and the plot… it was perfection on screen.
Then I read Beauty by Robin McKinley, and it was perhaps the first time I’d ever read an actual retelling of a fairy tale. I was hooked. I finished the book and immediately flipped back to the first page and read it again. I couldn’t bear to only read it once.
Then, of course, in 2015, I won a slot in the Rooglewood Anthology of Five Enchanted Roses with my own retelling: Stone Curse. I was reacquainted with this delightful story and got the chance to make it my own and put my own spin on it.
There are so many retellings of this one that I love.
3. The Snow Queen
I love this story. And just for the record… Frozen is NOT a Snow Queen retelling. It can be a “based on” or perhaps “inspired by” but it is NOT a retelling. (I have opinions).
I honestly haven’t ever read a good retelling of this, but I really want to. Or perhaps I’ll write my own one day. I have too many ideas and not enough time for all of them. I wish I could write faster.
2. The Apple of Contentment
This is one of those that fewer people have heard of, but it’s way up there on my favorites list. It’s got a little bit of Cinderella, a little bit of its own thing, and it’s just so fantastic and magical. I’d love to write my own retelling of this one, too. I think there are a lot of things you could do with it. Maybe even blend it with Snow White… not sure. I don’t love Snow White… but sometimes it can be amazing when combined with something else.
I have no retellings of this one to offer, either. It’s even a little difficult to track down the original by Howard Pyle at times, but you can find it online.
1. The Light Princess
Okay, well… maybe this is cheating. But The Light Princess by George MacDonald is only 50 years younger than Grimm’s or Andersen’s fairy tales, and at 157 years old, I feel like it belongs here in this list. Also, it truly is my all-time favorite. I suppose it’s perfectly appropriate to end here… kind of bringing us full circle in this blog post, since this story apparently pulled some inspiration from The Sleeping Beauty (although other than the whole witch showing up uninvited at the princess’ christening and cursing her there aren’t a whole lot of other similarities… since the curse is vastly different). But this story is just so incredibly beautiful. And it’s written with more characterization and dialogue and just straight-up style than most old fairy tales (which is what makes them so retellable, of course). Anyway, I love this story, and it’s my favorite fairy tale. If you haven’t read it, you should definitely go get yourself a copy!
Your turn, dear Reader! What are your favorite fairy tales? Do you know of any retellings of any of these I should add to my TBR pile? Have you read any of the retellings I mentioned?
What was the first fandom you were a part of? Are you still a fan of it?