Fairy Tales

Flights And Chimes And Mysterious Times

In nineteenth-century England, a boy is about to discover a mysterious mechanical world he may never escape. Ten-year-old Jack Foster has stepped through a doorway and into quite a different London. Londinium is a smoky, dark, and dangerous place, home to mischievous metal fairies and fearsome clockwork dragons that breathe scalding steam. The people wear goggles to protect their eyes, brass grill insets in their nostrils to filter air, or mechanical limbs to replace missing ones. Over it all rules the Lady, and the Lady has demanded a new son—a perfect flesh-and-blood child. She has chosen Jack. His only hope of escape lies with a legendary clockwork bird. The Gearwing grants wishes—or it did, before it was broken—before it was killed. But some things don’t stay dead forever.

Egg & Spoon

Elena Rudina lives in the impoverished Russian countryside. Her father has been dead for years. One of her brothers has been conscripted into the Tsar’s army, the other taken as a servant in the house of the local landowner. Her mother is dying, slowly, in their tiny cabin. And there is no food. But then a train arrives in the village, a train carrying untold wealth, a cornucopia of food, and a noble family destined to visit the Tsar in Saint Petersburg — a family that includes Ekaterina, a girl of Elena’s age. When the two girls’ lives collide, an adventure is set in motion, an escapade that includes mistaken identity, a monk locked in a tower, a prince traveling incognito, and — in a starring role only Gregory Maguire could have conjured — Baba Yaga, witch of Russian folklore, in her ambulatory house perched on chicken legs.

The Girl with a Brave Heart

After showing kindness to a strange old woman, Shiraz receives the gift of beauty but her lazy and unkind stepsister, Nargues, suffers a less pleasant fate in this adaptation of the Grimm’s fairy tale, Mother Hulda, reset in Tehran, Iran.

Baba Yaga And The Wise Doll

A memorable Russian fairy tale about a little girl who, with the advice of her wise doll, escapes a truly terrifying witch and her slimy, child-gobbling toads.

A Question of Magic

Serafina was living the normal life of a village girl, when she gets a mysterious letter—her first letter ever, in fact—from a great aunt, she’s never heard of. Her great aunt is actually a Baba Yaga, a magical witch who lives in an even more magical cottage. Serafina’s life takes an amazing turn as she finds herself becoming the new Baba Yaga. But leaving behind home and the boy she loves isn’t easy, and as Serafina grows into her new and magical role answering the first question any stranger might ask her with the truth, she also learns about the person she’s meant to be, and that telling the future doesn’t always mean knowing the right answers.

Climbing Rosa

Outside the King’s palace grows an enormous tree, its top hidden in the clouds. It’s so tall that no one has ever climbed to the top or collected any of its seeds. Rosa’s stepmother and stepsister Irma always call her a monkey because she can climb anything from drainpipes to trees. So when the King proclaims that whoever brings down seeds from the tree will marry his son, strong and sprightly Rosa decides to make her stepfamily regret their words. Shelley Fowles’s enchanting, faux-naïf illustrations highlight this gloriously funny adaptation of a traditional Hungarian folktale.

The Minpins

Little Billy strays into the forest, where he meets the Minpins—tiny people who live within the trees. The Minpins tell Billy about The Gruncher, who preys on them. So Billy embarks on a mission to rid the Minpins of their foe once and for all, and sets off—on the back of a swan—to confront The Gruncher.

Red Ridin’ in the Hood: And Other Cuentos

Eleven classic tales are retold with an injection of Latino culture, providing a twist on the traditional forms while sustaining a freshness all their own. The title story, “Red Ridin’ in the Hood,” moves the setting to the barrio, where Red decides to brave dangerous Forest Street in order to reach her abuelita and encounters the menacing wolf in a thumping Chevy lowrider. Some stories are set in the Mexican countryside; in “Belleza y La Bestia,” the beautiful heroine is a defender of the Revolution and teaches the beast about the righteousness of the freedom fighters. “El Día de los Muertos,” a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, takes place in the time of the Aztecs and casts Orpheus as the feather-maker Nochehuatl.

These and the other cuentos in this book are further brought to life by abundant illustrations, by turns comical and poignant.