CINDERELLA AND THE GLASS CEILING

4 stars out of 5

Definitely not your mother's fairy tales! Well, not mine, anyway - she was of a generation that firmly believed a woman's job was to find a man who would "provide" for her while she kept their home immaculate and served him three squares a day. In my mother's case, the fact that she had beautiful black curls and could grow, kill and fry up a chicken accompanied by a killer cherry pie no doubt gave her a leg up on the competition.

In spite of (more likely, because of) that upbringing, as a young adult out on my own I enthusiastically embraced the "Women hold up half the sky, Adam was a rough draft" feminist concepts - which, BTW, I hold to this day. That, of course, explains my primary attraction to this book. The other is humor; I love jokes, puns and parodies - no matter how irreverent they may be. In this case, the authors have rewritten a few familiar fairy tales, in which, they explain, "...women get the last word on their own terms."

And boy, do they ever! Honestly, though, I'd be remiss if I didn't offer a word of caution here: Don't sit down to read these stories at bedtime to your young daughter without reading them for yourself first. The language is frank, honest and overall a hoot, but for the most part it's not for anyone who wouldn't dream of uttering the word "vagina" anywhere except in the bathroom with the door closed. That said, the authors certainly get their point across, usually with some chuckles thrown in (Cinderella's stepmother, for instance, resented the girl for "...being the only one in the family without a widow's peak").

In all, there are about two handfuls of revised stories, all of which turn the usually sappy and clueless females into thinking adults (who among us was really happy that Snow White had to do all the cooking and cleaning for seven perfectly healthy little men, one of whom was Grumpy all the time)? My personal favorite is "Some Princesses Are Gay," a modern spin on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Princess and the Pea." Did she feel it? Yes, she did. Will she wed the handsome prince? Well, you'll just have to read it and see.

All told, this is an enlightening and quite entertaining compilation (and kudos for the really neat illustrations as well). Now that I've finished, I'm reminded that there's no shortage of other fairy tales that present women in ways at least some of us would rather not be depicted. Hopefully, then, the authors will set about to rectify a few more in another volume. While I wait, I'll thank the publisher, via NetGalley, for my pre-publication copy to read and review.

Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling: And Other Feminist Fairy Tales by Laura Lane and Ellen Haun (Seal Press, March 2020); 128 pp.