This book is a gem! Among the many popular and happening fairy tale retelling, this one stands out. The voice of the narrator is almost the same as the orthodox narration of fairytales, but the plot is a complete new spin on the classic. Andrea Blythe did such a great job with the choice of words, sometimes even evocative of other fairy tales. I like the illustrations, but I like even more the lack of illustration for the story about the sixth sister: it is brilliantly saying so much by literally nothing being there. I was expecting verse, but I found prose; nonetheless, these are poems through and through.

I love fairytale retellings. I especially love fairytale retellings that return a sense of agency to the too-often-ignored female characters. Thus I was immediately drawn to this poetic retelling of the 12 dancing princesses.

Blythe makes some interesting points, especially in the author's note at the end. However, the stories weren't quite poems - they were more similar to a couple of paragraphs per princess. The writing, though beautiful, was a bit strange. A smidgen too short to feel complete but too long to be what one usually thinks of as a poem.

There is some beautiful writing and some interesting characterization:
"When she was young, she ate apples whole, swallowing the core and bitter seeds along with the white flesh. Her sisters joked that a tree would take root and grow inside her. Now, as her belly swelled, her sisters whispered behind her hands, not quite meeting her eyes."

Personally, I enjoyed the "The Eighth and Ninth Sisters," "The Tenth Sister," and the beginning of "The Fifth Sister" the most. I say the beginning of that one because it felt like Blythe lost steam near the end of most of the poems, going from concrete and beautifully written characterizations to not-quite sticking the landing.

(A couple small notes. One, it strikes me as odd that a story meant to be centering the princesses doesn't give any of them names. Additionally, the last poem implies that the fairies were bad/draining the women's life force - does that not technically absolve the king of some of the blame, if his actions did protect his daughters? Just a thought.)

3.5/5

I’d never heard of the poet before but I decided to read this because I loved the idea of a poetry collection inspired by The Twelve Dancing Princesses. I tend to enjoy fairytale retellings so I was looking forward to this. I enjoyed this book, a lot. The only issue is that the tales included her are not poems. I’m a bit old fashioned but to me, a poem has a very specific structure split into lines and stanzas. The tales in Twelve are short vignettes but clearly prose, not poetry. The language is poetic though. This bothered me because I was looking forward to getting lost in a collection of fairytale retellings in poetry form. I’m only vaguely familiar with the original fairytale so I’m not sure how close or different to the original Twelve is. Twelve explores the stories of the twelve princesses after the events contained in the original poem. I found this enjoyable and entertaining.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Twelve: Poems Inspired by the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale retells the story of the twelve dancing princesses, and what happens to each sister after they are cu off from the fairy realm in which they dance each night.

As a little kid, I remember watching the Barbie version of the 12 dancing princesses and being so heartbroken when they were no longer allowed to return to the fairy realm, that I never watched the movie again. I never searched for the original source of the story either, so I am glad that I stumbled upon Andrea Blythe's retelling. I was a little surprised that it read more like a short story than poetry to me, but there definitely was an artful quality and flow to her words.

I was most enamored with the story of the disappearing sister and the final sister. There was something about the description of the disappearing sister's setting that was haunting, yet beautiful. I could clearly picture every detail of her surroundings, and was transported to that dreamlike realm. I feel like the final sister's adventures could be turned into a fantastical sequel, which I would be very interested in reading. I have a suspicion that the longer I reflect on this work, the more I will begin to appreciate its intricacies.

My one complaint was that it felt a little bit like something I would read in high school as part of made-for-AP lit piece to practice analyzing literary devices. I cannot quite articulate the feeling it gave me, if it seemed a bit of a forced narrative at times, or possibly just retained the air of the old enchanted fairytale from which it came.

Either way, it was a pleasant and short work to read that took me back to my childhood, and for that I am delighted!

Whereas fairy tales tend to elide large sibling groups, Andrea Blythe gives each of the Twelve Princesses a unique personality and story. The midnight dancers in the impossible land come to grittier life as they make their way in a more ordinary world. Brief, haunting, carefully poised en pointe.

“They had secrets, selves they kept hidden.”

The Twelve Dancing Princesses has always been my favorite fairytale. It's a mystery and fantasy all wrapped up into one. It's not a love story. Instead, it's one of the original stories of a strong sisterhood--predating Frozen and Lilo and Stitch. And yet for some reason this story often goes unread or gets forgotten.

Andrea Blythe's stories (because to me they read more like poetically written stories than stories wrapped in poems) honors the original tale while exploring the favored question of modern fairytale fans "What comes next?"

Story-wise, I loved how each sister spiraled in different directions after having their secret found out. It showed how there's not just one way to react to misfortune befalling.

Additionally, if you have not read the Twelve Dancing Princesses, Blythe does an excellent job at summing up the story without it feeling entirely like boring exposition to get on with the rest of the book.

But this book's greatest victory was at guiding the readers through a feminist reading without ever making them roll their eyes or feeling like they're being preached at. The misogyny of fairytales is there and treated as a fact that the sisters must sidestep or sigh and fight against. It does not have the warriors mentality but rather that of an every day woman going against the subtle bs of a world that's not fair. It felt more like a shared joke between the narrator and reader over the foolishness of men underestimating women as the reader no doubt would never do. An example from page 3 and a call-back to the original fairytale: "The soldier, we note, did not credit the old woman on the road, who had ensured this success by warning him to avoid the drugged wine and gifting him a cloak of invisibility."

The message does not get in the way of the story or its telling. Rather, it is amplified through the stories of the characters. Other authors should take notes!

She also plays with cliches and tropes like a master. They are there but tilted and used to leverage or understanding and preconceptions of the trope to place us in the group of characters underestimating these princesses.

Writerly-wise, this book was HEAVEN to read. I adored the cheeky narrative voice threaded throughout the prologue and some of the following chapters. (See the above quote.)

Blythe uses words the way a poet does (thus the categorization of these stories as poems), but bends language so it's easy for prose readers to navigate. (I myself am one such reader.) It wanted to pick out my favorite sentences to prove this point, but it was difficult given that there were so many.

Each word in this book is chosen on purpose. All of the verbs are powerful and poignant. She also uses sentence structure and punctuation to her advantage and to clearly convey certain ideas and emotions and to build a scene.

This is a beautiful work. A literary masterpiece minus the pretension. I can't wait to read it again and again and again.

(Thank you so much to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!)

This was amazing. These poems felt more like short stories of what happened to the princesses after they stopped dancing. It talks about how girls are trapped in a society of innocence and purity created just for women.

This collection is powerful, funny, sensual and so eye-opening to those who do not understand the woman experience. It comments on the way women are treating not directly but symbolically and I think that is so much more powerful.

Blythe really took the story of the twelve princesses' and created a whole new realm.

This is a fascinating read- both illuminating and dark as fairy tales were often written to be.
There are tales by the Brothers Grimm that are rarely found in publication and which parents would be aghast at their children reading. This would fit that category if it had indeed been written by them.

Andrea Blythe's take on "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" brings the princesses to the forefront of their own story. As each sister makes her bold choice as to how she will dance away her shoes in the realms of the dark, the tellings of the stories are inventive, surprising, sometimes shocking and totally fascinating.

Blythe is bold: her notes and conclusions on the writing of this book are a valuable and eye-opening addition, and very necessary to tying her approach and content together for the reader's opinion to be both emotional and analytical.

Not for kids. It’s a quick read with a lot of morbid details in one chapter. Do read it if you’re into fairytales and the description of different sisters.

Short and sweet, Twelve re-imagined the lives of the twelve dancing princesses from the Grimm's fairy tale of the same name giving them fully-developed stories beyond simply twelve beautiful princesses.

I loved the variety of the lives that they princesses had, each one feeling more powerful than the last.

The poetry was much freer than I am accustomed to but that made it all the easier to read and devour.

I will look forward to reading more from Blythe in the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection as it retold what happened after the 12 dancing princesses were found out and their dancing had been stopped. Each sister experienced the loss of their nightly adventures differently - some escape, some take revenge and some find their new normal. All of them react very differently and each of their stories is a little vignette into how they survive.

I would hesitate to call this poetry, I would call it flash fiction or vignette type stories, but it was beautifully written and each look into the sisters' lives was unique and varied. It's a quick read that flies and is a great example of retellings with a twist.

I really enjoyed this book! It was really interesting to see the aftermath of the classic tale. I have always loved the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses and I enjoyed this one just as much.
I liked how short and easy this book was to read. I also enjoyed how each chapter left on a sort of cliffhanger. It was also cool to see how different each sister was.
Overall I really liked reading this. I would recommend it to anyone who loves classics and the Brothers Grimm stories.

I thought this book had a really interesting viewpoint on the Twelve Dancing Princesses. It was pretty short, but started to form fascinating characters. My favorite part of the book was actually the authors note, where she explained that she wanted to create characters that weren't necessarily good or evil. I think this is particularly interesting to do with a Brothers Grimm fairy tale because most of them follow the black or white viewpoint of things. I wish this book was not considered a poetry book because to me it felt less like poetry and more like an unfinished novel. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and want to thank the publishers and author for this opportunity to review on netgalley.

"Twelve: Poems Inspired by the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale" is a retelling of the classic tale "The Twelve Dancing Princesses". This book does a really good job of exploring the "after" and how the experience of getting caught travelling to a fairy realm effects all twelve princesses. As the reader we get a god look at the lives of the princesses and every one of them was effected and dealt with the experience differently. I like that not every story had a happy ending and some of them did, it made it feel believable. The story definitely felt more narrative to me, and less poetic. It's definitely not poetry in the traditional sense, it is very much narrative poetry. I just felt that some of the poems were more of full on short stories while other poems were more narrative poems. The constancy in poems was really there for me but that being said, I still really enjoyed reading about each sister and gaining a new perspective on the original tale.

Thank you to Interstellar Flight Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of "Twelve: Poems Inspired by the Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale" by: Andrea Blythe in exchange for an honest review.

Being a lover of Grimm's fairy tales, I was very intrigued by the concept that this book promised. Although classed as poems, I would refer to them more as short stories that retell the tale of the twelve dancing princesses.

Each chapter encaptures the life of one of the princesses from first to last and how they deal with being unable to dance as they so wish to do.

Some of the tales are dark and twisted while others like the tenth sister are a joy to read. The imagery and insinuation of princesses knitting the dead away so she can fold it up and the possibility of one growing a tree rather than baby in her stomach was engaging and quick to read.

A huge thank you to NetGalley, the publishers and the author of this book for the chance to read this arc. I only wish that some of the tales provided more knowledge and dedication to the different sisters and magic to tie it in with the other tales.

'The 12 Dancing Princesses' was one of my absolute favorite Grimm tales as a child so I genuinely enjoy the myriad of interpretations and "new versions" of a familiar story that is decidedly dark and grim.

I had been expecting more traditional poetry in this collection -- these read as short stories centered around each of the twelve princesses *after* the story. What comes after "happily ever after" is decidedly dark and sad. A unique and dark take that breathes life in to the women at the heart of this story (when most fairy tales just expect them to be good girls, thankful for their rescue and be obedient and happy wives). No one makes it out the same in *this* imagining. Perhaps that's what makes it so engaging.

Grimm's Fairy Tales are well known as a different kind of story, loved by adults as well as children. This is most definitely targeted at adults and older children. Some of the references would be lost on younger children. Twelve refers to the 12 women who assume their beings from nature to become a powerful presence. Told in poetry and short story form, it's a really different take on a well known fairy tale. Unique is only one of the many descriptive words you could use for this book. Lets hope their is another twisted tale to follow. Andrea Blythe stirred up a winner this time. What's next?

Name: Twelve
Author: Andrea Blythe
Genre: Children Fiction, Fairytale, Fantasy, Magic
Review:
A beautiful, lyrical and feminist retelling of the Twelve Dancing Sisters from The Brother Grimm's Fairytale. It tells the story of Twelve sisters who are forced to lived in the ordinary world after being discovered by their father.
This book is divided into eleven parts which tells the tale of each sister after their magic is closed, and their dancing expedition with the fairy princes came to an end. Each part has a unique perspective and shows their own ways of coping with their lives after losing their power.
Intriguing, bewitching and enthralling, it explores the lives of those twelve sisters, one who fell in despair, one who was haunted by ghost, one who cooked, one who fell in love with alchemy and the one who was forced to marry a soldier against her wishes.

What happens to the twelve princesses? Those women who spent magical nights dancing with fairies and sprites. What happens to them after the door is is barred and they are forced back to the obligations of the court and the expectations of society? Why was this even the end of the story? That wasn't a happily-ever-after ending for anyone but the King.
Andrea Blythe gives each princess a voice, a story and their own ending (not necessarily happy). It is brilliant and uplifting and such a great idea. I hope she writes a whole series.

This was a lovely little read. I’m not sure why it’s categorized as poetry, though. Each chapter is one of the twelve sisters and her outcome written in pretty, but not poetic, prose. Some sisters felt more fully developed than others, and I’d have loved to see each of them fleshed out consistently. My favorite was the twelfth sister, and I could honestly see that story becoming its own book. I loved the imaginative care, and Blythe’s voice encourages the reader to open more doors – whether in writing or art. I love fiction that inspires, and Blythe’s work here does just that.

Thank you to NetGalley and Interstellar Flight Press for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.