While I have always been fascinated by fractured fairy tales, I am always weary of picking them up because writers oftentimes mess up a classic, rather than honor the source in the reshaping. In this collection Yolen shows that she knows her way around a classic tale. Readers will understand her appreciation for the original sources while admiring these new twists to old tales.

So, first of all, I adore retellings. I pick them up pretty much whenever I find them. Of all the fairy tale retellings I've had the opportunity to devour, Marissa Meyer's have been my favorites. What does Marissa Meyer have to do with this collection by Jane Yolen? Well, Meyer, wrote the introduction! I couldn't have been more delighted to discover that I was about to read a collection endorced by Marissa Meyer!
One of my favorite stories was Three Billy Goats Gruff. I don't think I"ve ever come across a retelling of it before this particular collection. The second piece in this collection is called The Bridge's Complaint - its the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, as told by the troll.. Such a fun twist on things!
I think one of my favorite things about this collection is that you aren't outright told what fairy tale you will be reading. Sure, each tale has a title, but that title doesn't necessarily give away the original. It was really fun to guess what tale I would be told as I went along.
Overall, this was a really fun, original collection. Perfect for when you only have time to read something short.

I enjoyed some of these stories a whole lot, but there were some I wasn't as enthused about. The version I read had notes from the author, but they were in the back of the book and didn't mean as much when not read at the same time as the story. My favorites include: The Moon Ribbon, Happy Dens, Great-Grandfather's Dragon's Tales, Sister Death, and The Gwynhfar. I wasn't as enthralled with the following: The Bridge's Complaint, One Old Man With Seals, The Unicorn and the Pool, and The Golden Balls. Honestly, The Golden Balls was my least favorite of them all. <spoiler> (**Trigger Warning**)It was very suggestive and not at all in a good way. It was more of a statutory date rape-y kind of way that made me feel dirty afterwards. Really brought the book down for me. </spoiler> There were a few stories I was really impressed with, but the ones I didn't like killed off two stars for me.

An interesting new look at classic stories, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Almost thirty creative ideas, worth the read.

Different version of classic fairy tales. Thought-provoking and deals with difficult topics. Well done and nice to see all of them published together.

Are you a fan of books that take familiar stories and turn them on their heads? How to Fracture a Fairy Tale does this masterfully. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these tales with a twist. I highly recommend this to fans of magical and unique fairy tale retellings.

A bit too bleak for me, and triggering in places. I absolutely acknowledge that I might have remembered a little better that fairy tales can be triggering, so that's on me. I didn't really gel with the writing style, either, unfortunately.

All the TWs, if obliquely.

As a librarian who works primarily with kids, I've become very well acquainted with Yolen's backlist of picture books over the last five years. Her "How Do Dinosaurs ..." series is one of my absolute favorite series in existence, and some of her other picture books are beloved as well. She always seems to partner with amazing artists, and clearly she has a firm grasp of how much text per page the average toddler or preschooler can handle. In fact, I think Yolen seems to have something of a sixth sense for how to write for a number of different age groups, which is really (REALLY) rare.

HOW TO FRACTURE A FAIRY TALE is neither the first of Yolen's short stories that I've read nor the first of her books for adults (or older teens, at least), but it feels the most unusual to me as a result of gathering together a number of stories informed by her Jewish heritage as well as her current roots in Scotland. As other reviewers have noted, there's still a lot of range and variation in content, theme, and style, but this book comes as close as any to showing me who Yolen is as a writer coming from a certain time and place (or a few times and places).

At first when I started into this book I was a bit worried by the content. Yolen doesn't hold back from embracing or riffing off of or responding to the dark underbelly inherent to any number of the "classic" fairy tales. As morality tales, they often offer really doubtful morals, and some downright frightening observations about the human condition, sin, and so forth. Yolen's stories are certainly in keeping with that. And I'll admit, I came to trust her even with the most triggering of content: incest and the depredations of the Holocaust are often brought up in talking about this book, and they are certainly present--and I think could still certainly be triggering to some readers--but they are not handled casually or graphically or in such a way as to titillate readers.

That said, the book certainly still has some weaknesses. Separating each story from its commentary and the poems that Yolen wrote to complement them was, I think, a mistake. And I think it's a very academic thing to do, really, which makes sense given Yolen's role in academia. But for a casual reader? Making the connections between story and poem and analysis is much more difficult. I also think that certain stories could have done with a bit more imagination, which feels weird to say. The collection as a whole doesn't feel even in polish and value, and apart from these all being fairy tales (or fairy tale adjacent), many of them weren't really talking to each other. It felt like a grab-bag of Yolen stories, which is fine, but it doesn't make it a book that holds together as an entity unto itself.

I've never read a fractured fairytale collection by Jane Yolen before and I find it to be a very interesting collection. It's order throws me a little but I like the way she's given a new fractured spin to familiar fairytales. I spotted at least 3 different cinderella fractures, all very interesting. If I had to name a favourite from this collection, however, it would be the story of <i>One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King</i>.

Stunning stories! However, not all of them were just as good. It had it's ups and downs. Great author, Yolen is magical.

Parts I enjoyed:
--The sheer variety of the fairy tales Yolen chose to retell and the ways in which she retold them were amazing.
--Yolen's writing is clear, clean, and imaginative.

Parts I did not enjoy:
While, like some other reviewers, I didn't connect with a lot of the stories, I really didn't enjoy mentions of things like rape. This isn't something I expected to find in a book about fairy tales. This might not bother others, and it could be argued that I should have expected something like that in a book where traditional fairy tales are turned on their heads. But this was not my cup of tea.

This is an excellent collection that showcases Jane Yolen's ability to rework classic stories and tease out thought-provoking allegories for real-world issues. It's so hard to review short story collections, even for an author I love as much as Jane Yolen - some are funny, some are sad, all are clever. This may not be what people are looking for if they want a straightforward collection of fairytales, but if you're interested in the bones and shapes and underlying tensions of fairy tales, it's well worth a read.

This is a collection of various retold and reworked fairy tales that had been written by Jane Yolen. She is a fantastic writer for fairy tales and the magical realism style, so I leapt at the chance to read and review this book. Bonus, she also calls this genre fractured fairy tales like I do! In a forward to the collection she explains her process, and the afterward explains the context for some of the stories. Like a lot of classical fairy tales, there are problematic themes woven into them: murder, incest, body dysmorphia, anti-Semitism, colonialism and misogyny. Not of all of those things are featured in the text in a way that shows how problematic they are, so some readers might think there is tacit approval.

A few of the stories that deal with the Holocaust and anti-Semitism are actually heartbreaking. Even a demon could love a child and want to save her from it in one story, and a girl goes back in time to save people for Elijah and at the end discovers why. The retelling of Rumplestiltskin is sad, and also in keeping with the way people treated the Jews leading up to the Holocaust. Selkies usually are women with seal skins, but apparently selchies are the male version. Dragons have their own fairy tales to pass down to their grandchildren, and animals have their own tales to tell around a watering hole. The Southern style of Snow White was an interesting twist to the old tale that I enjoyed a lot.

Jane Yolen includes an afterward explaining the origins of each story, as a lot of them were written for different collections throughout the years. She also includes a poem inspired by the story written, or inspired by the original fairy tale that she had fractured. It's an interesting look into the writing process, and includes a few autobiographical bits as well. I think this section would be most appreciated by fans of her work or of fairy tales, and can be an inspiration for authors looking to fracture tales in the future.

I love fairytales growing up.. And when I saw this in netgalley I immediately asked for it for me try and see if it’ll be a great addition..
In every collection of faerytales, there are stories you’ll love and stories you’ll forget and well, this definitely has both.. there are some great gems hidden in this collection.. I found some of mine and now, try finding yours..
not every story is a treasure but in every faerytale and adventure the real journey is finding that treasure hidden under all the dangers and mischief right?..

Like any short story collection this one had it's ups and downs. Some of the stories in this were brilliant, but I unfortunately didn't love them all.

Great collection of fast paced easy reads! Thank you netgalley for the free arc in exchange for an honest review!

Fairy tale/fantasy expert Jane Yolen has done it again in her tome of fractured fairy tales, which not only anthologizes short stories and poems from throughout her career, but also introduces over a dozen original works. The stories are told in a variety of tones (from the slapstick parody in "Sleeping Ugly" to the horrific, haunting psychological piece "Allerleirauh"), yet all possess the same strong literary depth and construction that make this work worthy of study in university classrooms. A good fit for fairy-tale lovers and haters alike, and has strong appeal for fans of magical realism, like the works of Steven Milhauser. Includes an appendix with background on the creation process of each story.

I overall am conflicted on this anthology. There were multiple stories that I really did enjoy, but then there were also ones that I did not really like. Jane Yolen has a very unique voice in fantasy right now, and I will continue to pick up the books she writes since there were a good amount of stories that I did enjoy a lot. She added a fresh take to the genre of retellings, and I adore the fact that the whole concept was to "fracture"/"ruin". It was a very fun twist.

Since I was so split on either loving the short stories or disliking them a lot, I don't feel comfortable actually giving it a full rating, so by default decided to rate it a 3 stars. Since I felt it was the closest to a split opinion. But I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has an interest in reading it.

How to Fracture a Fairy Tale
Jane Yolen
Tachyon Publications
SF & Fantasy, Teens & YA


How I feel about Jane Yolen’s How to Fracture a Fairy Tale has a lot to do with the book’s title. It is what drew me to the book, as a reader and as a writer. I started at the beginning and was reading through. The first couple of essays and stories caught my attention, but my interest started to flag. Maybe because I’ve read so many fairy tales and rewritten fairy tales, they lose their shininess after a few. A writer really has to alter the fairy tale significantly or remove the traces of the fairy tale in an updated telling. It isn’t enough to wave politics to reflect today’s mores (unless this is your first book of revised fairy tales).



I skipped to the poetry to see how those fared and found what I was looking for in the title. The commentary and poems show the writer’s mind at work. The writer herself said the poems were written to go with the stories, so I wondered why they were so separated from their story pairings. Maybe some people don’t like commentary. Maybe some don’t like poems, but the design should at least stand the poems beside the stories if not the commentary as well. Let those who only like stories turn one page instead of making everyone else—who is intrigued by the interplay between works, the way a fairy tale can be reconstructed in different ways—flip to the end of the book to read together what was intended to go together.



To me, the ordering affects how I’d rate the book. As it stands, it’s fine with some interesting retellings. If it were ordered as it seemed intended from the title and from the commentary, I’d recommend readers mob the book. At least, my mind became more engaged when I reordered.



The highlights of the collection include “Snow in Summer” (a Snow White retelling with a down-home voice) and “The Bridge's Complaint” (a bridge tells his version of the troll and the billy goats, mostly for the surprising perspective), “Great-Grandfather Dragon's Tale” (this describes an unusual “man raised by wild animals” tale—dragons, no less—interesting for its frame structure and the emotion evoked by a simple symbol). In “Cinder Elephant” Cinderella is overweight and can speak in the language of birds.



Even if the stories aren’t stunning, they contain intriguing aspects such as “Happy Dens; or, A Day in the Old Wolves' Home” where wolves in a nursing home get to tell their side of the story (a curious and ambiguous ending). There’s a nice wish-fulfilment one where the prophet, Elijah, saves Jews from concentration camps while another tells of a mother who’s died to return as a vampire.



A few, like the thrilling novelette “One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King,” could have been improved by updating the fairy-tale-ness a little further, perhaps modernizing the language a little more or erasing more of the fairy-tale tracks.



The collection is definitely worth investigating. Maybe you agree with the present ordering, or maybe you can try it as the book seems to suggest it wants to be. Either way, turning the page isn’t too hard a chore to get the book that you want. I, for one, want How to Fracture a Fairy Tale.

This book as not what I was expecting. I enjoyed it, but it was much more thought provoking than I anticipated. These certainly are not the fairytales you are used to, and that isn't a bad thing at all.