The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
Registered by AM10000 of Sunnyvale, California USA on 8/18/2010
This book is in a Controlled Release!
This book is in a Controlled Release!
3 journalers for this copy...
Amazon.com Review
Francesca Lia Block, whose Weetzie Bat novels have often been called pop fairy tales, here turns to the real thing for some very different imaginings of Snow White, Thumbelina, Cinderella, Rose Red and Rose White, and other tales. Block's stories are more resonance than retelling, fevered dreams behind which the outlines of the traditional tales move fitfully like figures glimpsed now and then through a summer fog. Veiled references to Block's own Los Angeles appear in the twisty house of the seven dwarfs built into a canyon like Laurel or Topanga, the redwood forest on a seaside cliff through which Beauty travels to her Beast, the tree-darkened canyon houses with French doors that open onto exuberant neglected gardens lush with irises and roses. In these evocations Bluebeard becomes an aging blue-haired producer, Sleeping Beauty pricks her arm with a heroin needle, Red Riding Hood's wolf is a lecherous stepfather, and the Snow Queen is a sex goddess who lives in a marble mansion with her boy toy, possibly in Beverly Hills. Sensuous images enrich these languid and darkly ironic visions: jasmine-scented night gardens, leopard couches with velvet pillows, luscious food flavored with mint, coconut milk, or pomegranate sauce, cool candlelit baths. As always, Block's poetic allegories of adolescence are strikingly original and a bit dangerous, a feast for connoisseurs of YA fiction and savvy older teens. (Ages 14 and older)
Francesca Lia Block, whose Weetzie Bat novels have often been called pop fairy tales, here turns to the real thing for some very different imaginings of Snow White, Thumbelina, Cinderella, Rose Red and Rose White, and other tales. Block's stories are more resonance than retelling, fevered dreams behind which the outlines of the traditional tales move fitfully like figures glimpsed now and then through a summer fog. Veiled references to Block's own Los Angeles appear in the twisty house of the seven dwarfs built into a canyon like Laurel or Topanga, the redwood forest on a seaside cliff through which Beauty travels to her Beast, the tree-darkened canyon houses with French doors that open onto exuberant neglected gardens lush with irises and roses. In these evocations Bluebeard becomes an aging blue-haired producer, Sleeping Beauty pricks her arm with a heroin needle, Red Riding Hood's wolf is a lecherous stepfather, and the Snow Queen is a sex goddess who lives in a marble mansion with her boy toy, possibly in Beverly Hills. Sensuous images enrich these languid and darkly ironic visions: jasmine-scented night gardens, leopard couches with velvet pillows, luscious food flavored with mint, coconut milk, or pomegranate sauce, cool candlelit baths. As always, Block's poetic allegories of adolescence are strikingly original and a bit dangerous, a feast for connoisseurs of YA fiction and savvy older teens. (Ages 14 and older)
Sent today for the first sentences VBB at bookcrossing.com
Enjoy! :)
Enjoy! :)
Received as a first sentence VBB ~ When she was born her mother was so young, still a girl herself, didn't know what to do with her.
I'm so excited to read this because retellings of fairy tales are some of my favorite books ever!
I'm so excited to read this because retellings of fairy tales are some of my favorite books ever!
Read this book yesterday and I enjoyed the stories, but i have to say that the first story was my favorite :) I wasn't expecting some of the stories to be so modern, but it worked out.
Journal Entry 5 by Izzy5000 at 2011 BookCrossing Convention in -- Mail or by hand-rings, RABCK, meetings, etc, Virginia USA on Friday, April 15, 2011
Released 13 yrs ago (4/15/2011 UTC) at 2011 BookCrossing Convention in -- Mail or by hand-rings, RABCK, meetings, etc, Virginia USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Releasing at the Book Buffet at the 2011 BCinDC!
I originally picked this up from the book buffet at the DC convention intending to use it for a themed release at the zoo. But then I noticed the author's name, and recognised her as a author we'd been recommended in a Children's Literature paper I sat in on a couple of years ago, so read it instead.
A selection of "fairy" tales are retold in a way that returns them to their (according to some theories, at least) original purpose, not as entertainments for children, but as cautionary tales for adults, dark and thought-provoking, and invoking the same sense of horror in a modern mind as tales of wolves in the forest must have for our ancestors.
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A selection of "fairy" tales are retold in a way that returns them to their (according to some theories, at least) original purpose, not as entertainments for children, but as cautionary tales for adults, dark and thought-provoking, and invoking the same sense of horror in a modern mind as tales of wolves in the forest must have for our ancestors.
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Released 12 yrs ago (6/29/2011 UTC) at Christchurch, Canterbury New Zealand
CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:
Given to Otakuu at today's meetup, but then passed on to Lemurkat a couple of hours later when we spotted her (or rather, she spotted the bookcrossing labels on our books) in Whitcoulls.
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