Has anyone noticed the massive appearance of fairy tale rellings in YA books lately? I know that teen trends tend to go in cycles, and things that were once down come back (think of all the vampire books we had right after Twilight, for example). However, there are an AMAZING amount of retellings showing up in YA, and they’re capturing all sorts of readers- not just the romantic types you might expect. These books are drawing from diverse backgrounds of legends and cultures to create their worlds, and those details are attracting teens in abundance. If you look at YALSA’s Teens’ Top Ten for 2014, which is voted on by the teens, two of the ten books are fairy tale re-imaginings. And more are on board for 2015!
Epic Reads released a massive chart of 162 retellings detailing not only the books but also what tale they come from, and I’m not about to try to duplicate their wonderful work. Instead I’ve pulled the covers of the fairy tales that are popular with my teens to share; the next post will be about the ones coming soon!
Are these being read by your teens? Share in the comments!
I tried my hand at one a couple years back called EXTRAORDINARY*. It was WAY harder to do than I thought it would be when I started. Fairy tales put characters in impossible situations and you have to be clever enough to find a solution yourself before the character can.
Ah! I have never seen this before now! I will now have to track it down and read it IMMEDIATELY! The thing I really like about the reimagining of fairy tales in YA is the way authors break down the conventions that most people understand the tale to have. I’ve had teens come up to me afterwards and start telling me everything that they loved about one, and then discuss how it’s so off from the DISNEY version of the tale, which is the only one they’ve ever been exposed to- then I can show them other versions by YA authors, and Grimm’s tales, and we can have a wandering exploration of how things should go.
🙂 christie