| ________________
CM . . .
. Volume XXIV Number 8. . . October 27, 2017
excerpt:
Poor Cinderella! She experiences one disappointment after another until she decides to take matters into her own hands; or, to reflect the theme of the story, she empowers herself. Cinderella and the Furry Slippers, a fractured fairy tale, introduces the traditional telling of Cinderella who, without ever complaining, serves her nasty stepmother and spoiled stepsisters hand and foot. But soon the reader realizes that perhaps this story will follow another path. Cinderella daydreams about magazine photographs of the handsome prince, beautiful gowns and the promise of living happily ever after. These serial stories are not very different from what real girls read about in magazines such as CosmoGirl and Seventeen which sell dreams of popularity and blemish free skin. Cinderella wakes up to fact that perhaps she has been sold an illusion when she contacts the fairy godmother from an ad in her magazine. The fairy godmother is not at all what Cinderella had envisioned. Cinderella becomes more and more disenchanted as everything from her frilly dress and fur slippers to the turnip coach turn out to be not at all what she had imagined for her entrance to the prince’s ball. Yet our heroine does manage to attract the dull prince’s attention when her shoe flies from her foot during her strange dance and wakes him from his nap. He is not at all what was pictured in the glossy pages of the magazine, and Cinderella makes a run for it. She runs right into a “girl’s only job fair” which holds the promise of Cinderella’s achieving goals greater than attracting the attention of a listless prince. The message is empowering for young girls as the job fair offers many opportunities for growth and achievement. The magic in this story is about a young girl who breaks away from the norm and chooses her own path. The illustrations in Cinderella and the Furry Slippers by Barbanègre are lively, colourful and offer quite a bit of fun to the story, especially with the deadpan expressions on some of the animals’ faces. Recommended. Tamara Opar is Section Head of Children’s and Teen Services at the Millennium Branch of the Winnipeg Public Library.
To comment
on this title or this review, send mail to cm@umanitoba.ca.
This Creative Commons license allows you to download the review and share it with others as long
as you credit the CM Association. You cannot change the review in any way or use it commercially. Commercial use is available through a contract with the CM Association. This Creative Commons license allows publishers whose works are being reviewed to download and share said CM reviews provided you credit the CM Association.
Next Review | Table of Contents For This Issue - October 27, 2017 |
