Most of the time the main characters don’t even have names! Of course, this need for padding is a godsend to the reteller, who can fill in those blanks with creative abandon. Like film adaptations of books, fairy tale retellings require padding, since the original material is inevitably short story length, though often even more lacking in detail. If the larger wave of children’s fantasy in the nineties was a product of Harry Potter’s popularity, I’d attribute this wave of retellings in part to a couple of other successes: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine and the movie version of Shrek. In fact, this corner of the fantasy market seems to be experiencing a golden age, to the delight of die-hard fairy tale fans like me. Even as picture books based on folk and fairy tales are on the wane, the world of children’s books is seeing a rise in fairy tale retellings for middle grade and young adult readers.
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