Welcome to the beginning of the reading challenge! I hope you had a good New Year's Eve.
First off, if you haven't signed up for this challenge, you can until January 31. Go to
the introduction post with the master sign-up linky. Other technical details: don't forget to tweet with the hash-tag #fairytaleRC so I'm able to see all your tweets.
I hope you are all ready to get some reading done (let me know in the comments which level you are aiming for and what your first book might be.) At the end of this post you can put links to your challenge page/post and every review you post on your blog. Please make this easy to navigate by putting it like this:
UPDATE @ your name/blog name. This is your master post, like your challenge page.
REVIEW – book title @ your name/blog name.
CHALLENGE1 - @ your name/blog name.
Once upon a time, in a faraway land,
A young Prince lived in a shining castle
Although he had everything his heart desired,
The Prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind.
Since this is the first month and start of our reading challenge, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about beginnings. The most popular one is of course
Once upon a time which has been used since at least 1380 according to Oxford English Dictionary. It is commonly used as translation for the stories of the French Charles Perrault for ‘il était une fois’ , the Danish Hans Christian Anderson for ‘der var engang’ (this means literally ‘there was once.’) or the German Brothers Grimm for ‘es war einmal’ (which means ‘it was once.’) There is a long list with different openings right here:
Folktale openings.
Originally the stories we nowadays call fairytales were not seen as separate genre. They come from the German term ‘Märchen’ which means ‘little story.’ The genre was first marked by writers of the Renaissance and stabilized through the works of collectors like the Brothers Grimm. The English word ‘fairytales’ comes from Madame d’Aulnoy who invented the term ‘conte de fée’ in the late 17th century.
Source. Besides Once upon a time, are you familiar with another openings sentence? I know ‘Once there was’ which is the English translation from our Dutch ‘Er was eens’ beginning.
But then, one winter's night, an old beggar-woman came to the castle,
And offered him a single rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold.
Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the Prince sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away,
But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances,
For beauty is found within.
Another beginning I want to talk about is how it all started.
Your challenge is; write a post about your first memory and why you love fairytales and retellings. (This is of course optional.) If you’re not participating in the challenge, definitely leave a comment. The first thing I can remember is how my mother used to read bed-time stories and she always had to read Beauty and the Beast. We had this hardback picture book from a Disney collection (I still have it) and I knew the story by heart. I was enchanted by Belle and her dance scene with the Beast was my favorite part – together with the scene where he gives her his library. You can say that Disney started it all and I talked a bit about this before in my
Why I love Disney post. We also had two gigantic fairytale books with original stories in it and I couldn't get enough of it. I believe one was from the Brothers Grimm and the other from Anderswn.
To me, there is something magical about a good old fairytale. There is something charming and captivating about them and yes, I do love my happily-ever-after once in a while. I love retellings, because the authors manage to transform the basics into an unique new story. It still holds the magic from the original tale, but they add interesting twists or sassy characters. That's in short why I can’t get enough of this genre.
By the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken.
If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.
As the years passed, he fell into despair, and lost all hope.
For who could ever learn to love a Beast?