Harking back to a time when “fairy tales were scarier . . . and the heroes and heroines were more interesting,” 13 fantasists spin trenchant remakes or sequels. The editors mix work from fixed stars and rising ones: Jane Yolen’s chubby Cinderella gets her prince almost in spite of inept help from a flock of birds; Michael Cadnum envisions “Jack and the Beanstalk” from the point of view of the giant’s wife; Delia Sherman (“The Months of Manhattan”) and Garth Nix (“Hansel’s Eyes”) give their versions of well-known tales with urban settings; Nancy Farmer reworks “The Goose Girl” so that the horse Falada survives. In a lighter vein, Neil Gaiman offers “Instructions” to anyone suddenly trapped in a fairy tale (“A red metal imp hangs from the green-painted front door, / as a knocker, / do not touch it; it will bite your fingers”). Tanith Lee’s well-read 14-year-old unenthusiastically works herself up to kissing a clumsy, obviously bespelled wolf, and Janeen Webb chronicles a Close Encounter in “Ali Baba and the Forty Aliens.” Most of the protagonists are young, the violence is toned down (the giants do keep stepping on people but not deliberately), and readers will come away from this collection satisfied, whether they’re after romance or danger, psychodrama or belly laughs. Author comments, mostly about favorite childhood fairy tales, follow each story. (Short stories. 11-15)
Pub Date: July 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-689-82138-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2000
Drawing on her experience with a relief organization on the Thai border, Ho tells the story of a Cambodian family, fleeing the rival factions of the 80's while hoping to gather resources to return to farming in their homeland. Narrator Dara, 12, and the remnants of her family have arrived at a refugee camp soon after her father's summary execution. At first, the camp is a haven: food is plentiful, seed rice is available, and they form a bond with another family- -brother Sarun falls in love with Nea, and Dara makes friends with Nea's cousin, Jantu, who contrives marvelous toys from mud and bits of scrap; made wise by adversity, Jantu understands that the process of creation outweighs the value of things, and that dead loved ones may live on in memory. The respite is brief: Vietnamese bombing disrupts the camp, and the family is temporarily but terrifyingly separated. Later, Jantu is wounded by friendly fire and doesn't survive; but her tragic death empowers Dara to confront Sarun, who's caught up in mindless militarism instigated by a charismatic leader, and persuade him to travel home with the others—to plant rice and build a family instead of waging war. Again, Ho (Rice Without Rain, 1990) skillfully shapes her story to dramatize political and humanitarian issues. The easily swayed Sarun lacks dimension, but the girls are more subtly drawn—Dara's growing courage and assertiveness are especially convincing and admirable. Touching, authentic, carefully wrought- -and with an unusually appealing jacket. (Fiction. 11-15)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-374-31340-7
Page Count: 163
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991
After witnessing the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, Daniel is suddenly transported, at age 14, from his comfortable life in Frankfurt to a Polish ghetto, then to Auschwitz and Buchenwald—losing most of his family along the way, seeing Nazi brutality of both the casual and the calculated kind, and recording atrocities with a smuggled camera (``What has happened to me?...Who am I? Where am I going?''). Matas, explicating an exhibit of photos and other materials at the new United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, creates a convincing composite youth and experience—fictional but carefully based on survivors' accounts. It's a savage story with no attempt to soften the culpability of the German people; Daniel's profound anger is easier to understand than is his father's compassion or his sister's plea to ``chose love. Always choose love.'' Daniel survives to be reunited, after the war, with his wife-to-be, but his dying friend's last word echoes beyond the happy ending: ``Remember...'' An unusual undertaking, effectively carried out. Chronology; glossary. (Fiction. 11-14)
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-590-46920-7
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1993
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