A Year of Fairy Tales

Sophie Anderson has the magic touch for reworking fairy tales and this collection of twelve stories – one for each month of the year – brims with everything that makes her writing so strong: an understanding of the lasting appeal of the stories; an ability to bring the characters and their worlds to life on the pages, human and other; inventive, vigorous storytelling. The stories are inspired by European folktales that have been passed down for generations. Some will be more familiar to readers in the UK than others, there’s a version of Jack and the Beanstalk for example, Tam Lin, and Rapunzel, but Anderson mixes elements from different tales and gives them all a spin for today’s readers. These young girls and boys are distinguished by their bravery and determination but most often what saves them is their love for others, human or from magical realms, and their rewards are not wealth or power but community, self-knowledge and happiness. The fairytale form allows full exploration of the natural world and as we read through the stories from January to December, descriptions of the weather, scenery and settings move us through the seasons. There are of course lessons to be learned, tolerance, kindness and friendship working their magic, and if the morals seem about to veer into the heavy-handed, the protagonists almost too good to be true, Anderson finishes with The Swan Sister, inspired by a German fairy tale The Seven Ravens and a Norwegian fairy tale The Twelve Wild Ducks, which brings us siblings Oona and Eric who bicker and argue, before Eric’s anger dooms his sister to life as a swan if he can’t reverse the spell he mistakenly cast.  This December story neatly references all the previous months’ tales too with mentions of all slipped into descriptions of a very festive Christmas fair. Sophie Anderson’s fans will be delighted with the November story which features Baba Yaga (based on a Russian fairy tale Vasilisa the Beautiful), but the collection will delight readers old and new. It looks beautiful too, handsome hardback with gorgeous colour illustrations by Elisa Paganelli throughout and it’s a book to treasure.