ACHUKA Book of the Day, Wednesday 4 Nov 2020
People have been telling fairy tales to their children for hundreds of years. And for almost as long, people have been rewriting those fairy tales – to help their children imagine a world where they are the heroes. Karrie and Jon were reading their child these stories when they hit upon a dilemma, something previous versions of these stories were missing, and so they decided to make one vital change.
They haven’t rewritten the stories in this book. They haven’t reimagined endings or reinvented characters. What they have done is switch all the genders. It might not sound like that much of a change, but you’ll be dazzled by the world this swap creates – and amazed by the new characters you’re about to discover.
“Absolutely stark and unignorable is the prejudice against an older, or uglier woman, trying to sexually exploit a beautiful young man: the female Beast, even the Queen in “Cinder” (mother to the Princess who throws the ball, who “old as she was, could not help watching” Cinder) seem predatory and unnatural as cougars, while as men they were sinned against or harmless. ”
Zoe Williams in a recommended Guardian review of the book
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