A delightful collection of stories that span around the world retold then tweaked in a manner as to make them all new and with a lot more depth. definitely a good read

Thank you to Jane Yolen for pulling back the curtain and showing us how it is done. This is a must read for those who love reading, who are ready for fairy tales that might not be made into Disney movies, and for anyone who might be interested in writing one of their own!

Do you love fairy tales? Do you love remixed tales? This collection of Yolen's short form work is a masterpiece. These aren't simply alternative endings slapped onto well-known stories. These aren't simply told from a different perspective. Each and every story is a masterpiece. The stories she fractures come not only as twists to familiar traditional fairy tales of the western European cannon, but also Greek myth, Asian stories, and Jewish folktales. Yolen also includes how she came to write each story along with a short poem. This is a must-read for those who love retold tales.

As the title suggests, this is a book of various retellings of pre existing fairytales and folklore, with an introduction on how to create such works.

The first retelling was brilliant. Yolen gives us an alternate Snow White. I had a good chuckle at the ending and definitely prefer this version.
The Happy Den is an old folks home for wolves who tell their own versions of stories such as little red riding hood and three little pigs.
Sleeping Ugly was a nice short tale of the usual- maiden awakened by a princes kiss.
I also really enjoyed the story of St George from a family of dragons' POV.

HTFAF uses religion in most of the stories- as can be expected of fairy tales. There are Jewish themes threaded heavily through much of the content and the word God is only written as G-d in this book.

50% of the fairytales didn't work for me, some were too strange, some felt a little pointless and some were just plain boring.
I preferred the shorter of all these stories though I'm not quite sure why, perhaps it was harder to invest in any set up knowing the tales aren't very long.

The fun of this collection was trying to match up the stories to their original fairy tales, there are quite a few in this anthology that I didn't recognise but perhaps you will.
All are explained at the end of the book with an afterword and a poem. I would've preferred these to be printed alongside each tale rather than at the end.

How To Fracture A Fairytale is a useful instruction with varying examples for anyone considering writing their own retelling or simply interested in the art.

A collection of short stories, this volume of reimagined fairy tales is sharply written. Jane Yolen takes elements of familiar traditional tales and spins her own versions. The style isn’t quite my cup of tea, but the writing is skilful and lyrical.

I have a very mixed feelings about this collects of short stories. I like retelling, i like reading retelling 'cause i'll be able to see how in depth and twisted the writer would make it, in their own stories.
In this case, I certainly like a few of the stories. there are stories that is interesting enough but unfortunately there are also stories that didnt sufficiently grabbed my interest. I like the fractured fairy tales but i was looking for a more drastic changes from the original story or source material. If you're going to do a retelling you must take that risk of turning the story into a complete 180 degrees. i mean, whats the point of retelling of youre not turning the whole story upside down.

This is an amazing book for lovers of Young Adult fantasy, specifically for fairy tale writers and Fantasy authors. It was a real treat to read this and to share it with my friends in my writing community.

I regret that I was unable to schedule this book into my blog's schedule, but will still whole heatedly recommend it to others. Thank you for sharing it with me!

How to Fracture A Fairy Tale collects stories and poems from across Jane Yolen's long career and adds in a significant amount of new material. It covers not only fairy tales, but also myths and legends--such as Icarus, or Arthur and Guinevere.

The bulk of the book is given over to the stories, while the final 15% or so contains explanations of how Yolen put her own spin on each story and pairs it with a poem. I personally would have preferred each explanation and poem to immediately follow the story, in part because I have a terrible memory. However, it does allow readers to move easily from one story to the next. One could easily skip the poems and explanations if one wanted to... though I wouldn't recommend it. I often found the poems to be punchier than the stories and many contained lovely imagery.

As with any collection or anthology, the material was a bit hit and miss for me. I felt many of the stories were more focused on ideas than emotions, making the fractured fairy tale an intellectual exercise. This is another reason I would have liked to see the explanations immediately follow the story.

Yolen has had a long and successful career. Many of the stories date back decades and I found myself noticing the ways they didn't meet the standards of today in terms of representation. Although there are a few self-rescuing princesses, a lot of the gender roles remain traditional, with the women taking care of domestic chores, while the men are the hunters, bread-winners or rulers. I only noted two stories where a prominent character had been gender-flipped and both involved turning an avatar of death into a woman. By and large, people of colour appear only in stories where the entire story is set in a non-white culture. There were a handful of such stories. One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox and the Dragon King rather rubbed me the wrong way, substituting a dragon with a Western temperament for the calmer Eastern one. But by and large, the remainder of these stories seemed okay--with the caveat that I'm not of the cultures represented and am therefore not the best judge. Unsurprisingly, the Jewish stories fared best and seemed to have the most heart, tapping into Yolen's own background.

Being fairy tales, there was a lot of dark material. Stories come with trigger warnings for sexual assault, incest, concentration camps, and physical and emotional abuse. There was also some body shaming and sex shaming. Readers are advised to tread with caution.

Some favourites of mine included One Old Man, With Seals, which takes the Greek shapeshifting sea god Proteus and introduces him to a modern, retired librarian; Great-Grandfather Dragon's Tale in which an elderly dragon tells his grandchildren the tale of Saint George and the split between dragons and men; and Mama Gone, yet another story about a dead mother... but one who returns as a vampire. Of the poems, I liked Warning from the Undine, a nicely sinister poem with a more traditional rhyming scheme than most of the other poems in the collection; To Be Paid, a satisfying and rather political poem about writers taking vengeance through their art; and When I was a Selchie, a poignant meditation written after the death of her husband.

All in all, How to Fracture a Fairy Tale shows the span of an impressive career, but it's a collection that needs more inclusivity for a modern audience.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

How to Fracture a Fairy Tale is a collection of short stories by Jane Yolen. All of these stories have been published before in various places. However, at the end of the book, there is a little background on how she decided to write each story and an accompanying poem for each story.

I was unfamiliar with some of the fairy tales she used to base her own stories on; others, I could easily recognize. As tends to be the case with short story collections, I liked some of the stories better than others. The stories varied in length and tone; some had happy endings, while others were very bleak. My favorite story in the collection was "One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King".

** I received an Arc in exchange for an honest review.**
I love different takes on fairytales. This book is a full of short retellings. The introduction by Marissa Meyer was awesome and the authors discussion about how to deconstruct a fairytale was fantastic.
If you like retellings, this book might be an awesome way to palate cleanse between books. You could definitely read a few stories at a time. It would also be a great resource if you are looking to break a fairy tale down on your own.

This had a nice variety of stories, and the author's notes about how she fractured and why she decided to include each one are very enjoyable. Even though each story is a fairy tale, the tones are very different. We see the Three Billy Goats Gruff from the Bridge's point of view, a non-attractive Cinder-Elephant, and trips to a concentration camp. I liked the creativity of the approaches, and enjoyed reading the book.

Received via Netgalley for review.

2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

I think maybe Jane Yolen isn't for me. Or, at least, this collection of her stories isn't for me. I appreciate that it's a mix of original stories and others previously collected, but the tone and quality varied so wildly that I kept getting the equivalent of whiplash.

I don't think this is suitable for younger readers (less than maybe 12/11, depending on the maturity of course) - there's a lot of discussion of sex, incest, and rape. I understand that these are aspects that were present (usually) in the original tales, and that they were much darker than we are used to, which is why some might be drawn to it., but is why I wouldn't add it to a middle school collection. The way that she glosses over some potentially troubling aspects made me a little uncomfortable, though (things like how the Foxwife didn't want to get married, and I wasn't sure if the sex in "Sule Skerry" was consensual or not).

The notes on how Yolen fractured her tales in the back half of the book were interesting to read, and provided some enlightenment, but I don't understand why the poems were included here as well. It would make more sense to have the poems accompanying the actual story they're meant to accompany; I think few people will read them in their current placement.

The ones I didn't like were generally the ones that she originally envisioned as pictures books - "Happy Dens or A Day in the Wold Wolves' Home" (and yes, there are a little more than a few typos in my version, but I'm sure that will be corrected before publication), "The Bridge's Complaint," and "Sleeping Ugly," generally because they still felt juvenile and out of place in a collection where other stories discuss topics such as the commodification of women etcetera.

I really enjoyed "The Golden Balls," "Allerleirauh," and "Cinder Elephant" (and the poem meant to accompany "Wrestling with Angels"). Cinder Elephant is a fairly innocent tale with a beautiful last couple of lines (about the step-sisters's not being able to understand her forgiveness), while the other two were darker and more poignant. I had absolutely no idea that "Allerleirauh" was a Cinderella variant - I thought it was Snow White!

For so many stories, liking 3, disliking 3, and feeling ambivalent about the rest isn't a successful record.

2.5 Stars

ARC provided by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review

One thing I discovered upon reading this book is that I don't like books made up of short stories.

It's really hard to come up with a review for this book because there are so many stories. Each of them is different, and there are some that I really enjoyed, and some that really rubbed me the wrong way.

I liked that there was a variety of writing styles within the book since if the entire book was written in a fairytale type way I would not have enjoyed it at all. Some of the stories came across as very childish, “Happy Dens or A Day in the Old Wolves’ Home”, in particular, is one that comes to mind.

Also, some of the story's gave off a misogynistic/racist/anti-semitic vibe? I think that Jane Yolen was trying to write it like a Grimm's fairy tale, but I don't think that the product of their time converts well into a product of our time.

One story in particular like this was "The Foxwife”. In this story, a guy forces a woman (or in this case a fox spirit) to marry him. It mentions that she didn't want to, but it ends up glossing over it and leaving it with a "happy ending".

"Sleeping Ugly" was another story that I didn't really understand. The moral of the story is that just because someone is pretty on the outside doesn't mean they're pretty on the inside as well. But I don't know how someone magically making someone else fall in love with them and then using the body of the "ugly" princess as a house decoration is supposed to show how kind they are.

There were also a few stories that didn't make much sense? I don't know if they were supposed to be a parable or something, but the point and plot were definitely lost on me. "The Unicorn and the Pool" is one of these. In this story there is a pool of poisoned water, the unicorn touches its horn to the water and removes the poison from the water so that the other animals can drink, but a few days later the unicorn dies. This story was only two pages, and I'm not quite sure what it was supposed to mean.

I'm also not sure what age group this book is intended for. Some stories are written very simply, as if they are children's stories, while others contain mature content that is definitely for adults. ("Golden Balls", "The Undine")

I really wanted to like this, because I love fairy tale retellings but it just wasn't my cup of tea.

I adored this - a great re-telling of some pure classics. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, it didn't feel like a task at all and definitely something I would recommend to my family and friends if they like fairy tales.

This book was received as an ARC from Tachyon Publications in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and thoughts expressed in this review are completely my own.

I absolutely love fairy tales and loved renditions of books that put a modern twist to a famous tale such as The Three Little Pigs, Rumplestilskin and many other just as Jane Yolen did. When hearing about the book and from reading the title I automatically thought of Rocky and Bullwinkle and their fracture fairytales segments throughout the show. These stories no matter how twisted they are always make me happy and I love to see how close they stick to the original story or completely deviate from the original storyline and Yolen did a wonderful job sticking with the original story with a twist.

We will consider adding this title to our YFiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars.

So I’m a little frustrated. I read an eARC of this that had no linked table of contents and so I didn’t know there were authors notes to go with every story at the back!! I would have liked these at the beginning or end of each story within the book context. Especially because some of the notes Jane Yolen made at the end of the book are key to understanding her decision to include the story or why she changed what she did.

The Tales
There are a lot of fairy tales in this book. Some are multi-sectioned and upwards of 75 pages. Others are not even 1000 words long. The variety is well spread-out and you could easily choose to read these in any order you wanted. None of them rely on you having read the story before.
I really enjoyed the ones based on traditional fairy tales. There are many that are not based in stories you may know. Some are from foreign folklore many may not be familiar with (but what a great time to learn about it!) and others have biblical context to them. As someone who is familiar with the commonly known Bible stories this was fine for me but someone less versed in religious text may find this frustrating.

What's a Fairy Tale?
Yolen's collection has really made me think about what is a fairy tale? Does Disney need to have made an animated movie for it to count? (I hope not!) Does it need to be 'well known' and who defines what is common enough? Does it need to have a strong moral? A princess? An evil villain? You get where I'm going with this. It's hard to define a fairy tale. And so my thought on what is a fairy tale is different from Yolen. Once I accepted that to be the case things were better for me. The first Bible story threw me for a loop; even though I really enjoyed the one where the man is taken to Hell and then Heaven to see 'what they are like'.

The Best?
The obvious question with anthologies is, which story is best? I don't know if I can answer this. There are so many great merits to most of the stories in this anthology. There are a couple duds (including one early on, so what out!) but overall a clear 80% or more of these stories are excellent. I did really enjoy the unique take on Rumpelstiltskin (a personal fave), the dragons whom no one remembers and the Snow White reversal.

Overall
There are a lot of hidden gems in How to Fracture a Fairy Tale and I'm confident any reader could find at least one or two stories they liked. That is perhaps the true genius of Yolen's writing and interpretations is that she sees them from all different perspectives. There is no one 'fracture' point of view that all the stories are told from. Instead it's as though a different person wrote the stories in some cases.
The introduction by Marissa Meyer is repetitive, dull and easily skipped. It feels included to capitalize on her name recognition. But don't skip over Yolen's short introduction to the stories. She has a couple important things to say about what she deems a fracture and how fairy tales have evolved over the years.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

Jane Yolen is just brilliant! I love her stories, so well written! I thought this would be a "how to write" book and was was happy to discover more stories! Her stories are going to be remembered and passed down along side Grimms, Anderson, and others who collected great stories or wrote them. Another wonderful browsing book and I love the notes about the tales at the end of the book; very useful.

I read Jane Yolen as a child and an adult, so I was excited to see new stories from her but most of these have been published before or seemed familar. Fairy tale adaptions can either feel timeless or can quickly feel trite or out of date. Sadly, while there were some wonderful stories, many of them felt trite or did not add anything to the original. I also actually wish the notes on each story were not there as they actually managed to take away from the stories and the poetry would have been better interspersed between the stories. In the end, it felt odd going from stories of rape to childhood stories and back again. Fairytales are dark but the whiplash was unexpected. The most redeeming part for me was the nostalgia factor as I grew up reading Yolen.

DNF - After multiple tries I have come to find I do not like the genre of fairytale rewriting. I never was a big fan of fairytales to begin with but thought rewrites would change that fact. However, it has not. I don't post DNFs unless I find something completely disturbing about it. This is not the case with HTFAFT. I gave it 3 stars since it is a lesson I've learned about personal preference for a genre not the quality of the book itself.

Fairy tales were my first love. In the house where I grew up there was a specific bookshelf dedicated to fairy tales from all over the world. African, Hebrew, Asian or Native American fairy tales, all were collected there and I just loved opening those books and entering a different, more magical world. I have fallen in love repeatedly with fairy tales in different guises, whether it is through novel adaptations or through re-workings. And now this has led me to Jane Yolen's How to Fracture a Fairy Tale. Thanks to Tachyon Publications and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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I have to admit I hadn't heard of Jane Yolen before this collection. Just how I have managed to miss her will remain a mystery but I was immediately drawn to How to Fracture a Fairy Tale on its premise alone. I have always thought of fairy tales as a mirror. They reflect our reality but twist it ever so slightly, thereby revealing deeper truths we can't see in our own lives. Sometimes the morals of these fairy tales are very clear, sometimes fairy tales have been so twisted to make them more "appropriate" that hardly anything remains of them. Authors like Jane Yolen, or for example Angela Carter, take these tales we all think we know so well, and fracture them. Suddenly the mirror shows us all kinds of other sides we had never considered. Suddenly the Beauty and the Beast tale has a different meaning, and suddenly Snow White isn't half as innocent as she seemed. This is how fairy tales continue to have meaning in different ages and for different people. Also, fractured fairy tales are very often bad ass!

'With their basis in well-known fairy tales, ;legends, and myths, the stories contained here are familiar, but only to a point. Some have been altered in ways that are subtle, yet profound. others have been smashed into pieces and glued back together. They have been reimagined, reworked, and, now, retold.
The result?
Poetry. Wishes. Heartache. Dreams.'
Thus describes Marissa Meyer the fairy tales in How to Fracture a Fairy Tale and I couldn't agree more. Each story in this collection feels oddly familiar, as if you've met it before, and yet it shows itself to be a completely different creature than you'd thought. 'Snow in Summer' is a modern take on the Snow White tale where our heroine sees the old lady for who she is.'The Moon Ribbon' is a magical take on the Cinderella story that feels both mystical and slightly horrifying. 'Happy Dens or A Day in the Old Wolves' home' tells us not to trust blindly in the stories handed down to us, especially if they're about wolves. One of my favourite, although that is hardly the right word, stories in How to Fracture a Fairy Tale is 'Granny Rumple'. Yolen uses the Rumpelstiltskin story to do many difficult things. She shows us how stories are used to explain history, how prejudices underlie stereotypes, and how pervasive anti-antisemitism is. In stories like 'The Foxwife' and 'One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King' Yolen explores Asian fairy tales, while 'Sun/Flight' is a fascinating take on the tale of Icarus. 'Allerleirauh' is a truly tragic tale and 'Wrestling with Angels' made me want to cry. How to Fracture a Fairy Tale has something for everyone and shows Yolen's range. The tales are followed by a 'Notes and Poems' section, with each tale linked to a poem and explanation. Usually this doesn't really do much for me, but I enjoyed seeing Yolen combine story themes across prose and poetry, especially because she seems delightful in her Notes!

Jane Yolen is an icon of fantasy writing, as I realized once I started reading. She has written and edited hundreds of novels and stories throughout her long career. In How to Fracture a Fairy Tale Yolen employs all the necessary tools to keep readers engaged. Her stories are funny, outrageous, epic, dreamy, and everything in between. Yolen moves almost seamlessly between these different atmospheres and each story is solid in its own right. Yolen writes with joy and that joy infects the reader as well. In a number of stories Yolen uses her own family history and Jewish heritage to fracture the tales. Although that doesn't make them any easier to read, it does show just how intrinsic fairy tales are. They are elemental, in a way. We all grow up with stories and they are intensely personal and widely universal all at once. In each story in How to Fracture a Fairy Tale Yolen's love for stories comes through and that is what kept me exploring each new story. Not all of the stories necessarily clicked for me, perhaps it showed me a fracture I wasn't interested in seeing. But each story nonetheless taught me something interesting about its foundation story, let me look at these characters and themes anew.

I really enjoyed the wide variety of stories in How to Fracture a Fairy Tale. Yolen is a pro and handles each in such a way it shines anew. Some of the stories are cheeky fun, the others are beautifully tragic. In the end, there is a story for everyone in this collection. I am now off to explore Yolen's other work. Apparently there are books about wizards!