Following our library’s recent refurbishment, I was excited to find several bilingual picture-books in the newly-revamped children’s section… I borrowed two and we will definitely be going back for more!

Yeh-Hsien: A Chinese Cinderella, retold by Dawn Casey and illustrated by Richard Holland, with a French translation by Annie Arnold (Mantra Lingua, 2006) is familiar but different – there’s no fairy godmother, instead Yeh-Hsien befriends a fish: “she nourished her fish with food and with love, and soon he grew to enormous size.” However, the wicked stepmother kills the fish, cooks it and eats it (this detail gives the story the frisson of horror that is sometimes missing from modern fairy-tale retellings…). The magic fish bones that are left allow Yeh-Hsien to make wishes come true – soon she has enough to eat; and then she is able to conjure up beautiful clothes to go to the Spring Festival… It’s great to have a feisty Cinderella, who has to think and do for herself – and who runs away from the party because her nightmarish step-mother frightens her, not because she forgot the time…

Grandma’s Saturday Soup by Sally Fraser and illustrated by Derek Brazell with a Cantonese translation by Sylvia Denham (Mantra Lingua, 2005) is a delightful book – Mimi takes young readers/listeners through her week during a British winter. Everything reminds her of some ingredient in the soup she will be having at Grandma’s house on Saturday (clouds like dumplings, shoots of new growth through the snow like spring onions); and everything also contrasts with the stories Grandma tells of life in Jamaica – (more…)

Last week I volunteered to drive students in my son’s class to a local theatre to see Cinderellas. This wasn’t the regular run-of-the mill Cinderella play though, so instead of just dropping the kids off, I purchased a ticket for the show. Put on by ABC Let’s Act, this production presented the story of Cinderella as told in four different traditions: Walt Disney’s, the Chinese, the First Nations and the Korean versions. Did you know that there are over 300 versions of the story of Cinderella throughout the world?

The young cast did a wonderful job of telling the story of four Cinderellas from four different cultures and proved that Cinderella can indeed have brown eyes and black hair! It truly was a multicultural experience with aspects of traditional Chinese theatre, a Korean fan dance, Tae Kwon Do martial arts and the singing of a sacred First Nations song that has been passed down from generation to generation. Director Mandy Tulloch says she wanted to ensure that each version of Cinderella was shown in a manner that was true to its respective culture:

Advisors were consulted to make sure the play was as culturally responsible as possible. In the segment from China, we utilize the traditional method in Chinese theatre where the audience is asked for permission for the performance to take place. We also have the property men as well. For the First Nations piece, we were granted permission by the local elders for the performance to take place. They also blessed the show and worked with us on the music and mask making. In the Korean segment, which was written specifically for this show, you will see an authentic Korean Fan Dance performed by kids as well as award winning Tae Kwon Do artists.

Multicultural versions of Cinderella abound in children’s and young adult books too. To get a sense of what’s out there, check out our blog posts Globe-trotting Cinderella and Bound by Donna Jo Napoli and Books at Bedtime: Fairy Tales (2); and read this review of Abadeha: The Philippine Cinderella, which forms part of our current focus on the Philippines…

Summer is drawing to a close here in Canada and I’ve just returned from a fabulous four-week holiday spent cruising British Columbia’s gorgeous Central and South Coasts. There are a lot of wonderful things about boating but one of my favorites is that a lot of time can be devoted to reading! The kids and I always bring along a big stack of library books, purchase a few books along the way and make the most of the free drop-off/trade-in shelves at most marinas. Needless to say we never run out of reading material!

One of the books I brought along this year was Donna Jo Napoli’s young adult novel Bound. Initially intrigued by the book’s cover, one month after reading it I am still entranced by the story! Set in a small village during China’s Ming period, Bound is a Chinese version of Cindrella. Reviewer Jennifer Mo says:

This is not your familiar, comfortable Cinderella story. There are no magic wands or pumpkin coaches, and happily ever after happens only in, well, fairy tales. Real life offers few of these sugar-spun fantasies, particularly for three unsupported women in a Ming dynasty Chinese village. Fourteen-year-old Xing Xing, her stepmother and her half-sister Wei Ping are each bound: socially, ideologically and financially. The physical, crippling binding of Wei Ping’s feet is a metaphor for an encompassing system of patriarchal privilege. But in another sense of the word, to be bound is also to be heading towards something — not so much a fate, as a rare and precious choice of fates.

Donna Jo Napoli writes for all ages, from picture books through young adult books (great reads for adults too!); and is the recipient of many book awards. Her writing ranges from contemporary fiction to fantasy to historical novels (my favorite!); and her books have been translated into over 13 languages. She also writes mathematics and science tales, as well as books geared toward helping deaf people learn to read. Several of her books are re-tellings of fairy tales: Hansel and Gretel in The Magic Circle, Rapunzel in Zel, Jack and the Beanstalk in Crazy Jack, Rumpelstiltskin in Spinners, and Beauty and the Beast in Beast, which Napoli sets in ancient Persia.

I can’t believe this book was first published 25 years ago: but Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China, retold by Ai-Ling Louie and illustrated by Ed Young, is just as fresh today – and of course, being a fairy-tale, it is timeless anyway. It makes a lovely bed-time story – and would work well, too, as a class story-time readaloud.

The story will be familiar in its essence to most children and this is a lovely variation. Or perhaps I should say that the Cinderella story we all know and love follows the pattern of this lovely story: on the book’s dedication page, there is a salient quotation from Iona and Peter Opie’s The Classic Fairy Tales (now a bit of a classic itself). This dates the story of Yeh Shen to The Miscellaneous Record of Yu Yang, which first appeared during the T’ang Dynasty (618-907AD), about 1,000 years before the oldest European version.

The major elements are all there: the rags and chores, the wicked step-mother, the party and the magic slippers. The main difference is that the fairy god-mother figure in the story is actually a magic fish. The fish is Yeh-Shen’s only friend until it is killed by the step-mother. Yeh-Shen learns of its magic powers and gathers up the bones, which can now grant her special wishes. At first, her requests are bound up with survival as she asks for food to eat; but then, as the party approaches:

“Oh, dear friend,” she said, kneeling before the precious bones, “I long to go to the festival, but I cannot show myself in these rags. Is there somewhere I could borrow clothes fit to wear to the feast?” At once she found herself dressed in a gown of azure blue [and] on her tiny feet were the most beautiful slippers she had ever seen. They were woven of golden threads, in a pattern like the scales of a fish…

The fish is also the motif for Ed Young’s stunning illustrations throughout: each image from the story is set against an enormous, carp-like fish, to the extent that sometimes the characters are even enclosed within its gaping mouth. The backgrounds are starkly white but the pages are divided up into red-bordered, screen-like frames, which also help to convey the magic at work, since the fish’s bulk simply moves across them. Young’s shading is beautiful… and I would love to know how many colors he actually used!

Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal, the new picture book by Newbery Award winner Paul Fleishman, takes the story of Cinderella for a spin around the world. Fleishman starts out traditionally, “Once upon a time there lived a wealthy merchant whose wife had died. They had one daughter, gentle-eyed and good-hearted.” But once the stepmother messes things up and Cinderella cries, the story takes several directions. “…the animal poured honey for her from its horn…and a fairy gave her figs and apricots…and Godfather Snake gave her rice.”

By the time the prince/king/headman marries Cinderella, the page is overflowing with dancers and food from Zimbabwe to Korea, and readers of all ages will be under the spell of Fleishman’s lovely worldwide enchantment. Illustrator Julie Paschkis traces the story variations with colorful bands of textile-inspired images, labeled with country of origin. Click here and scroll down for an interview with Glass Slipper, Gold Sandal‘s illustrator extraordinaire.

Fleishman may be the first to meld so many Cinderella tales into one narrative. In doing so, he communicates something very special about this beloved story. But Cinderella’s multiculturalism is well documented; here‘s an ALA BookLinks list of worldwide Cinderellas by region and culture. Here‘s an extensive list from the Cinderella specialists, our friends at Shen’s Books. You can also search for Cinderella, if not her glass slipper, here at PaperTigers.