Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales

Gr 9 Up—A dozen original stories that emanate from the "nut" of a classic or other well-known tale comprise this inventive collection. Marr and Pratt invited their writer friends to select stories that spoke to their imaginations and then to create new tales that veered off in different directions. The result is an interesting mix of fantasy, science fiction, and horror-well written and highly varied-that is sure to appeal to older teens. Some stories, such as Rick Yancey's "When First We Were Gods," Kelley Armstrong's "New Chicago," and Carrie Ryan's "That the Machine May Progress Eternally" alter the time of the originals, propelling Hawthorne's "The Birth-Mark," Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw," and Forster's "The Machine Stops," respectively, into the future. Others rework either the setting, as occurs in Margaret Stohl's "Sirocco," an offshoot of Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, or the point of view, as happens in Garth Nix's "Losing Her Divinity," a reworking of Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King." Still others, such as Melissa Marr's "Awakened," or Kami Garcia's "The Soul Collector," transform the protagonists of their parent stories (Chopin's The Awakening and the Grimms' "Rumplestiltskin") to focus on a particular theme, in these cases the inequality and maltreatment of women. Each story is followed by the author's explanation of the selected tale and the way in which its essence was altered. Thus, readers may be moved to explore the source material, or teachers might assign the two versions as an exercise in comparative literature. Charles Vess's six precisely drawn illustrations from mid- to late-19th- and early- 20th-century fantasy novels add to the atmosphere of the collection; the descriptions that accompany them may inspire readers to write their own versions of these forgotten fantasies. This anthology merits first-purchase status.—Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, formerly at LaSalle Academy, Providence, RI